Since the middle of the 20th century, suicidology, as a group of disciplines working to understand and prevent suicide, has reinforced the long-held view that suicide is caused first and foremost b...

Summary Using the neurological syndrome kuru as a frame, Warwick Anderson examines the social dynamics and material culture of its medical investigation among the Fore people conducted by D. Carleton Gajdusek beginning at midcentury. The Collectors of Lost Souls: Turning Kuru Scientists into White Men uses a postcolonial framework to complicate dominant/subordinate binaries and diffusionist accounts of indigenous contacts with medical science. Anderson proposes that colonies are specific sites of production of medical knowledge. He draws a distinction between traditional and (...) advanced economies in regard to individual rights to make an argument in support of context-specific ethical regulation for medical research and suggests a role for historians of science in interrogating the process of globalisation. (shrink)

Summary Watters questions the universality of mental illness and warns of the harms that accompany the exportation of Western typologies to non-Western cultures. He is particularly concerned that these effects will be exacerbated by the upcoming revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-V). Building on his examination of non-Western practices, Watters exposes the historical instability of mental health classifications in North America to question the validity of current DSM categories. Although Watters' warnings about the dangers of (...) the globalisation of the DSM are persuasive, they may be overreaching as our examination of the successful incorporation of Western created autism services, information, and interventions in the developing world suggests. (shrink)