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Psychological and Medical Anthropology: Bibliography of Recommended Readings

Introduction: About this Bibliography

This is a bibliography of recommended readings pertinent to psychological anthropology.  It was compiled by UCSD Anthropology professor, Dr. Steven Parish, for a garduate-level seminar to introduce students to the field of psychological anthropology.  It was designed to introduce the theoretical perspectives and the ethnographic work and methods used in this sub-discipline. 

This bibliography does not include a complete list of works by current UCSD psychological anthropology faculty—Thomas J. Csordas, Janis H. Jenkins, and Steven Parish.  Jenkins works on such topics as expressed emotion, mental illness, political trauma, subjectivity; Csordas on embodiment, healing and religion, enculturation; Parish on emotion, ethical subjectivity, religion and self, hierarchy, and person-centered ethnography.  The founder of the UCSD Dept. of Anthropology, Professor Emeritus Melford Spiro, has worked extensively in this field.   Edwin Hutchins in the Dept of Cognitive Science (an alumnae of the Dept of Anthropology) works on socially distributed cognition and cognitive ethnography.

Contents:

Overview of the Field

Person-Centered Ethnography

Religion & Subjectivity

Political & Ethical Subjectivity

Emotion in Self, Society & Culture

Human Development & Enculturation

Identity, Agency, Subjectivity in Cultural Worlds

Psychoanalytic Anthropology

Theory: Mind, Self, & Subjectivity in Culture

Person & Self

Psychiatric Anthropology

Existential Anthropology & Suffering

Cognition, Culture, & Meaning

General Recommended Supplements

Ethos (Journal of the Society for Psychological Anthropology) : Notable Issues