A Life of Worry: Politics, Mental Health, and Vietnam’s Age of AnxietyA free ebook version of this title is available through Luminos, University of California Press’s Open Access publishing program. Visit www.luminosoa.org to learn more. Who, what, and how we fear reflects who we are. In less than half a century, people in Vietnam have gone from fearing bombing raids, political persecution, and starvation to worrying about decisions over the best career path or cell phone plan. This shift in the landscape of people’s anxieties is the result of economic policies that made Vietnam the second-fastest-growing economy in the world and a triumph of late capitalist development. Yet as much as people marvel at the speed of progress, all this change can be difficult to handle. A Life of Worry unpacks an ethnographic puzzle. What accounts for the simultaneous rise of economic prosperity and anxiety among Ho Chi Minh City’s middle class? The social context of anxiety in Vietnam is layered within the development of advanced capitalism, the history of the medical and psychological sciences, and new ways of drawing the line between self and society. At a time when people around the world are turning to the pharmaceutical and wellness industries to soothe their troubled minds, it is worth considering the social and political dynamics that make the promises of these industries so appealing. |
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A Life of Worry: Politics, Mental Health, and Vietnam’s Age of Anxiety Allen L Tran Limited preview - 2023 |
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Abby affective age of anxiety American anthropology anxiety disorders applied behavioral analysts Arthur Kleinman Bác Lan become behavior Bình biomedical cafés California Press cảm xúc Chi Minh City China clients clinical cognitive cognitive behavioral therapy conceptual Confucian contemporary context cultural Danh diagnosis discourses đổi mới economic emotional ethnographic everyday example experience feelings forms gender global Hải Hinton Ho Chi Minh increasingly individual intimacy Kiệt Kleinman Leshkowich lives marriage Medicine mental health mental illness middle class Minh City residents Minh City’s models modern moral neoliberal neurasthenia Ngọc Nguyen one’s oriented patients people’s personhood political psy-disciplines Psychiatric Hospital psychological psychotherapeutic psychotherapy reflects relation relationships role romantic love self-making project selfhood sentiment Shohet social socialist symptoms tâm theory therapeutic therapy tình cảm tion Trâm Tran transformations treatment understand University of California University Press urban Viet Vietnam Vietnamese Vũng Tàu Western worry