Published: March 2024

Keywords:
Ethnography, Anthropology of Health and Illness, Mental Deviance, Spoiled Identity, Co-movement, Stigma.

Abstract

The article draws from an ethnographic research in a guest house –almost 15 people live there diagnosed officially as schizophrenics- in a city in Thrace. The research lasted from January 2023 until June 2024 and led to the accumulation of a rich, qualitative ethnographic material (fieldnotes, diary, photographs, interviews and historical records of the patients). Yet this is an ongoing research and soon to be continued. An anthropological perspective is used throughout the analysis and anthropological lenses are used in order to problematise the notion of “spoiled identity”. The notions of embodiment and affectivity are also reflectively analyzed and criticized. The article is inspired by the anthropological critiques of the bipolar cognitive scheme “healthiness/illness” and attempts to define mental illness as a form of deviance thus avoiding victimizing medical discourses. Belonging and the feeling of communality are proposed as offering alternative insights to the discussion of therapy and relief.

Vasiliki Kravva

Associate Professor in Social Anthropology and the Anthropology of Consumption, Department of History and Ethnology, School of Classic Studies and Humanities, Komotini, Greece, 69100. E-mail vkravva@he.duth.gr & valia.kravva@gmail.com. ORCID 0009-0001-5692-0864