This book analyses three of the most prevalent illnesses of late modernity: anxiety, depression and Alzheimer's disease in relation to cultural pathologies of the social body. Arguing that these conditions have a social cultural profile that transcends the particularity of their symptomology, the book contends that these diseases are related to disorders of the collective ésprit de corps of contemporary society. Multi-disciplinary in approach, it addresses questions of how these conditions are manifest at the level of individual bodies and minds and, like other contemporary epidemics, are to be analysed in the light of individual and collective experiences of profound and radical change.

Kieran Keohane, Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the School of Sociology and Philosophy, University College Cork, Ireland.

Anders Petersen, Associate Professor of Sociology at Aalborg University, Denmark.

Bert van den Bergh, PhD candidate at the Faculty of Philosophy of Erasmus University Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Notes on contributors

Preface

1. Introduction to a Series

2. Modern Subjectivity / Postmodern Subjectivity (Dany-Robert Dufour)

3. Return to an Age of Anxiety - The Embedding of a Late Modern Social Pathology

4. Sadean Depression and the Work of Culture

5. Alzheimer's Disease: a Social Pathology of Contemporary Civilization

6. A Research Prospective

Index