Black Skin, White Coats

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"Black Skin, White Coats contributes to a rich strand of work in the history of psychiatry that highlights-and in fact insists upon-not just the transnational nature of colonial and postcolonial psychiatric discourses, but the fact that these transnational flows traveled in many directions and crossed borders in surprising ways, often bypassing 'the Metropole' altogether...[Heaton's book] will rightfully be regarded as an important contribution to the history of psychiatry in Africa." (Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences) "The book's greatest achievement may be its demonstration that the rise and fall of social medicine in the second half of the twentieth century is not merely a story about Europeans and Americans attempting to impose their visions on the rest of the world, but also the story of a collaboration - albeit a tense, tenuous, and limited collaboration - in which Africans actively participated." (Canadian Journal of History) "An important contribution...Heaton's Black Skin, White Coats ... squarely [addresses] the impact of nationalism and decolonisation on health care in Africa. ... [it] uses psychiatry as a lens through which to evaluate the continuities and changes of colonialism. It has broad appeal and encourages scholars to move 'away from an outdated reliance on the development and spread of 'Western psychiatry...'" (Contemporary European History) "Based on solid research, Black Skin, White Coats is well written and makes for a good read, and should attract a readership in colonial studies, African history, the history of science and medicine, global studies, and development studies." "Black Skin, White Coats is clearly written and accessible to readers who are not professional historians. While of interest to scholars of African ethno psychiatry, Heaton's social and historical account of the period from the late 1940s to early 1980s provides an engaging narrative of the complexities of integrating Western psychiatry into an African society within a very compressed time frame. As such, the book should be of interest to a broad range of social scientists as well as the interested lay reader." (Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry) "Matthew Heaton's innovative Black Skin, White Coats is the first full-length history of a national mental health system focusing on the transition between the colonial and postcolonial periods." (Bulletin of the History of Medicine) "Black Skin, White Coats uses psychiatry as a lens through which to evaluate the continuities and changes of colonialism. It has broad appeal and encourages scholars to move 'away from an outdated reliance on the development and spread of "Western" psychiatry and towards a theorization of a "global" psychiatry that recognizes a greater diversity of actors.' As a result, [Heaton's] methodological approach ... is ripe for comparison to different diseases and public health concerns in other contexts." (Contemporary European History)