Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health

This article investigates recovery from mental health problems with reference to recent geographical analysis of affective atmospheres. In so doing, my research responds to recent calls to clarify the ways social, spatial and political factors may promote or impede recovery. As it is normally deploy...

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Main Author: Duff, Cameron
Format: Journal Article
Published: Pion Limited 2016
Online Access:http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12602
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author Duff, Cameron
author_facet Duff, Cameron
author_sort Duff, Cameron
building Curtin Institutional Repository
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description This article investigates recovery from mental health problems with reference to recent geographical analysis of affective atmospheres. In so doing, my research responds to recent calls to clarify the ways social, spatial and political factors may promote or impede recovery. As it is normally deployed, the notion of recovery emphasises the deeply personal character of rehabilitation from mental illness. It describes neither the full restoration of health (as a return to some ‘pre-morbid’ condition), nor the symptomologies characteristic of chronic illness, introducing the need for new ways of conceiving of a kind of health in illness. Throughout my analysis, I will treat recovery as an emergent capacity to manipulate the affects, spaces and events of a body’s “becoming well”. The always-unfinished event of recovery links human and nonhuman spaces, bodies, objects and forces in the joint expression of an enhanced capacity to affect (and be affected by) other bodies and spaces. I ground this discussion in analysis of ethnographic data collected in studies of recovery conducted in Melbourne, Australia. In presenting my findings, I will focus on three discrete atmospheres encountered in the course of this inquiry, and the ways these atmospheres modulated particular recovery events. In each instance, I will explore how atmospheres were encountered and co-constituted in the work of recovery, in the creation of an assemblage of health, and how these atmospheres gave social and material form to the process of becoming well. I will conclude by assessing how an attunement to affects, spaces and bodies may yield novel means of “staging” atmospheres of recovery in the promotion of an assemblage of health.
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spelling curtin-20.500.11937-126022017-09-13T14:58:13Z Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health Duff, Cameron This article investigates recovery from mental health problems with reference to recent geographical analysis of affective atmospheres. In so doing, my research responds to recent calls to clarify the ways social, spatial and political factors may promote or impede recovery. As it is normally deployed, the notion of recovery emphasises the deeply personal character of rehabilitation from mental illness. It describes neither the full restoration of health (as a return to some ‘pre-morbid’ condition), nor the symptomologies characteristic of chronic illness, introducing the need for new ways of conceiving of a kind of health in illness. Throughout my analysis, I will treat recovery as an emergent capacity to manipulate the affects, spaces and events of a body’s “becoming well”. The always-unfinished event of recovery links human and nonhuman spaces, bodies, objects and forces in the joint expression of an enhanced capacity to affect (and be affected by) other bodies and spaces. I ground this discussion in analysis of ethnographic data collected in studies of recovery conducted in Melbourne, Australia. In presenting my findings, I will focus on three discrete atmospheres encountered in the course of this inquiry, and the ways these atmospheres modulated particular recovery events. In each instance, I will explore how atmospheres were encountered and co-constituted in the work of recovery, in the creation of an assemblage of health, and how these atmospheres gave social and material form to the process of becoming well. I will conclude by assessing how an attunement to affects, spaces and bodies may yield novel means of “staging” atmospheres of recovery in the promotion of an assemblage of health. 2016 Journal Article http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12602 10.1177/0308518X15603222 Pion Limited unknown
spellingShingle Duff, Cameron
Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title_full Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title_fullStr Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title_full_unstemmed Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title_short Atmospheres of recovery: Assemblages of health
title_sort atmospheres of recovery: assemblages of health
url http://hdl.handle.net/20.500.11937/12602