Madness and Marginality
The Lives of Kenya's White Insane
Published on 19. August 2016
Book
Paperback/Softback
224 pages
978-1-5261-0655-1 (ISBN)
Description
Based on over two hundred and fifty psychiatric case files, this book offers a radical new departure from existing historical accounts of what is still commonly thought of as the most picturesque of Britain's colonies overseas. By tracing the life histories of Kenya's 'white insane', the book allows for a new account of settler society: one that moves attention away from the 'great white hunters' and heroic pioneer farmers to all those Europeans who did not manage to emulate the colonial ideal. In doing so, it raises important new questions around deviance, transgression and social control. Sitting at the intersection of a number of fields, the book will appeal to students and teachers of imperial history, colonial medicine, African history and postcolonial theory and will prove a valuable addition to both undergraduate and postgraduate courses. -- .
Reviews / Votes
With this insightful and sensitive analysis of Europeans incarcerated for mental illness in colonial Kenya, Will Jackson manages not only to reclaim these troubled, marginalized individuals as historically meaningful actors. He also casts a fresh and revealing light on the settler community as a whole. The result is a strikingly original and important contribution to the scholarship on settler colonialism.'Dane Kennedy, Elmer Louis Kayser Professor of History and International Affairs, George Washington University
'The self-disciplined effort to sustain imperial prestige did not inevitably send Kenya's white settlers mad - just as the constraints of subjection did not necessarily madden Africans. But ordinary human weaknesses - financial, social, or sexual - did seem especially dangerous to an anxious white minority. The documented confinement of their 'poor men and loose women' has enabled Jackson, in this carefully observed and beautifully written study, to portray Kenya's settlers in the round. Not all were libidinous aristocrats swapping wives in Happy Valley, nor all gentleman farmers pioneering under the flame trees of Thika.'
John Lonsdale, Emeritus Professor of Modern African History and Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge -- .
More details
Series
Language
English
Place of publication
Manchester
United Kingdom
Target group
College/higher education
Professional and scholarly
Dimensions
Height: 234 mm
Width: 156 mm
Thickness: 13 mm
Weight
386 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-5261-0655-1 (9781526106551)
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Schweitzer Classification
Other editions
Additional editions
E-Book
03/2017
1st Edition
Manchester University Press
from
€44.99
Available for download
Person
Will Jackson is Associate Professor of Imperial History at the University of Leeds -- .
Content
General Editor's introduction
Introduction
1. Approaching madness: deviant psychology in Kenya Colony
2. No ordinary chaps: class, gender and the licensing of transgression
3. The lives of Kenya's white insane
4. Battered wives and broken homes: the colonial family
5. Stigma, shame and scandal: sex and mental illness
6. States of emergency: psychosis and transgression
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index -- .
Introduction
1. Approaching madness: deviant psychology in Kenya Colony
2. No ordinary chaps: class, gender and the licensing of transgression
3. The lives of Kenya's white insane
4. Battered wives and broken homes: the colonial family
5. Stigma, shame and scandal: sex and mental illness
6. States of emergency: psychosis and transgression
Conclusion
Appendices
Bibliography
Index -- .