Summary
Madness is not only shaped by clinicians within the walls of asylums and psychiatric hospitals, but by ordinary people within communities. The non-material and material aspects of their lives, from belief and religiosity to physical environment, have driven individual and collective understanding, experiences and responses to mental difference and distress throughout history. Through shared cultures and experience, these community contexts can extend across the national and political boundaries which have dominated studies in the history of madness and psychiatry. MADSEA's primary objective is to develop an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of madness in these transnational community contexts, inclusive of the complex interaction of belief (religiosity) and materiality (environment) in the lives of ordinary sufferers. It uses early modern seafarers as a spatial, socio-cultural frame for its investigation, as their shared mobility and exposure to the dynamic effects of the ocean transcended borders and left a rich historical record of the action of religiosity and environment in their lives. Employing a microhistorical approach, MADSEA undertakes an in-depth comparative archival study of the meaning and societal impact of madness in the records of the eighteenth-century Danish-Norwegian and British navies. Blending qualitative and quantitative methods, it achieves three further objectives: establish how seafaring communities understood madness; gauge the degree mental difference and distress were stigmatised or tolerated; and evidence a trans-European seafaring community culture and response towards madness, to demonstrate how religiosity and environment, rather than national boundaries, shape mental illness. As such, MADSEA provides researchers with an empirical foundation and innovative methodological toolkit for accessing and analysing the experiences of ordinary people outside modern clinical settings, revitalising the history of madness 'from below'.
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More information & hyperlinks
| Web resources: | https://cordis.europa.eu/project/id/101028958 |
| Start date: | 01-02-2022 |
| End date: | 31-01-2024 |
| Total budget - Public funding: | 207 312,00 Euro - 207 312,00 Euro |
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Original description
Madness is not only shaped by clinicians within the walls of asylums and psychiatric hospitals, but by ordinary people within communities. The non-material and material aspects of their lives, from belief and religiosity to physical environment, have driven individual and collective understanding, experiences and responses to mental difference and distress throughout history. Through shared cultures and experience, these community contexts can extend across the national and political boundaries which have dominated studies in the history of madness and psychiatry. MADSEA's primary objective is to develop an interdisciplinary methodology for the study of madness in these transnational community contexts, inclusive of the complex interaction of belief (religiosity) and materiality (environment) in the lives of ordinary sufferers. It uses early modern seafarers as a spatial, socio-cultural frame for its investigation, as their shared mobility and exposure to the dynamic effects of the ocean transcended borders and left a rich historical record of the action of religiosity and environment in their lives. Employing a microhistorical approach, MADSEA undertakes an in-depth comparative archival study of the meaning and societal impact of madness in the records of the eighteenth-century Danish-Norwegian and British navies. Blending qualitative and quantitative methods, it achieves three further objectives: establish how seafaring communities understood madness; gauge the degree mental difference and distress were stigmatised or tolerated; and evidence a trans-European seafaring community culture and response towards madness, to demonstrate how religiosity and environment, rather than national boundaries, shape mental illness. As such, MADSEA provides researchers with an empirical foundation and innovative methodological toolkit for accessing and analysing the experiences of ordinary people outside modern clinical settings, revitalising the history of madness 'from below'.Status
CLOSEDCall topic
MSCA-IF-2020Update Date
28-04-2024
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