Bridging the social and life sciences to unlock the mystery of how
cities shape mental health and illness
Most of the world's people now live in cities and millions have moved
from the countryside to the rapidly growing megacities of the global
south. How does the urban experience shape the mental lives of those
living in and moving to cities today? Sociologists study cities as
centers of personal progress and social innovation, but also exclusion,
racism, and inequality. Psychiatrists try to explain the high rates of
mental disorders among urban dwellers, especially migrants. But the
split between the social and life sciences has hindered understanding of
how urban experience is written into the bodies and brains of urbanites.
In The Urban Brain, Nikolas Rose and Des Fitzgerald seek to revive the
collaboration between sociology and psychiatry about these critical
questions. Reexamining the relationship between the city and the brain,
Rose and Fitzgerald explore the ways cities shape the mental health and
illness of those who inhabit them.
Drawing on the social and life sciences, The Urban Brain takes an
ecosocial approach to the vital city, in which humans live and thrive
but too often get sick and suffer. The result demonstrates what we can
gain by a vitalist approach to the mental lives of those migrating to
and living in cities, focusing on the ways that humans make, remake, and
inhabit their urban lifeworlds.
