Synaptic Connections

Abstract

This project critically evaluates sociological and biological epistemological approaches to the study of mental health and illness, such as anti-psychiatry, social constructivism, Actor Network Theory, neuroscience, and epigenetics, and addresses implications for establishing theoretical links between these domains of scholarship. How, for example, can neuroscience and epigenetics contribute to contemporary accounts of the embodiment of mental illness in the social sciences? What can the sociology of mental health contribute to contemporary biological accounts of behaviour? How might an integrative approach to the study of mental illness help better the lives of women and men living with mental illnesses? In order to address these questions, this project traces shifting sociological and natural scientific trajectories from the 1960s to present, and theorizes a more nuanced alignment between social and biological research in mental health. This dissertation is situated within a growing science studies tradition, one which examines the relationality between human and nonhuman processes, and which investigates how mental illness might be viewed as a constitutive state of relations between somatic (internal) and social (external) environments.