R Jasani

Violence, reconstruction and Islamic reform - Stories from the Muslim 'Ghetto'

This paper is a critique of popular and academic assumptions about the Muslim ‘community’ and Islamist organizations, especially in the context of displacement and reconstruction after the 2002 riots in Ahmedabad, western India. It explores the internal politics of Jamaat-led organizations and the engagement of survivors with ideas of reform and piety. Contesting contemporary understandings of reformist Jamaats, I argue that the growing influence of the latter organizations had little co-relation with their resettlement plans and policies. The reconstruction patterns were more closely linked to the history of labour migration to the city, and the subsequent movement of violence-affected people from the mill areas to larger Muslim ghettoes. My ethnography shows how the survivors strategically engaged with reform initiatives and negotiated with local Islamist organizations for ‘safe housing’. By illustrating certain ambiguities within the everyday practices of Islam, my paper also problematizes notions of ‘piety’ and ‘agency’, primarily after peoples experiences of communal violence.

Experiences of acute mental health care in an ethnically diverse inner city : qualitative interview study

PurposeEthnic inequalities in experiences of mental health care persist in the UK, although most evidence derives from in-patient settings. We aimed to explore service users’ and carers’ accounts of recent episodes of severe mental illness and of the care received in a multi-cultural inner city. We sought to examine factors impacting on these experiences, including whether and how users and carers felt that their experiences were mediated by ethnicity.MethodsForty service users and thirteen carers were recruited following an acute psychotic episode using typical case sampling. In-depth interviews explored illness and treatment experiences. Ethnicity was allowed to emerge in participants’ narratives and was prompted if necessary.ResultsEthnicity was not perceived to impact significantly on therapeutic relationships, and nor were there ethnic differences in care pathways, or in the roles of families and friends. Ethnic diversity was commonplace among both service users and mental health professionals. This was tolerated in community settings if efforts were made to ensure high-quality care. Home Treatment was rated highly, irrespective of service users’ ethnicity. In-patient care was equally unpopular and was the one setting where ethnicity appeared to mediate unsatisfactory care experiences. These findings highlight the risks of generalising from reports of (dis)satisfaction with care based predominantly on in-patient experiences.ConclusionsHome treatment was popular but hard to deliver in deprived surroundings and placed a strain on carers. Interventions to enhance community treatments in deprived areas are needed, along with remedial interventions to improve therapeutic relationships in hospital settings.

Predictors of engagement in first-episode psychosis

Engagement with psychiatric services is critical for ensuring successful outcomes in patients experiencing a first episode of psychosis (FEP). However, it is not known how sociodemographic factors and patient beliefs about the causes of mental illness affect engagement. This study explored predictors of engagement in a cohort of 103 FEP patients presenting to an early-intervention service. Beliefs that mental illness is caused by social stress or thinking odd thoughts predicted higher engagement scores. Patients with no qualifications were found to have higher engagement scores than those educated to a higher level. Ethnicity, gender, age and socioeconomic factors were not significantly correlated with engagement scores. Duration of untreated illness (DUI) significantly predicted higher engagement scores, but only for values >1220days. Duration of untreated psychosis (DUP) was not a significant predictor of patient engagement scores. Patient beliefs about the causes of mental illness are an important factor to be taken into consideration and may represent a target of interventions to increase engagement in FEP.

A game of hide and seek: gendered ethnographies of the everyday state after communal violence in Ahmedabad, Western India

This paper analyses the gendered experience of the state for the Muslim survivors of violence in Gujarat in 2002. Most of the scholarship on the working of the state after communal violence in post-independence India concentrates on the anxiety to re-instate the ‘myth of the state’, through policies that establish its respectability after violence. The emphasis is on understanding the mechanics of the state, its ‘order making’ function. Very little attention has been paid to understanding the lived experience of the modern state from a gendered perspective. What studies there have been tend to focus on the internal power structures within nationalist discourses, the patriarchal nature of state assertion, and point to forgotten narratives within the meta-narratives of violence and suffering. There is very little evidence examining how men and women experienced the same process differently, or how they make sense of their experiences, in a context where the lines between order and chaos, legitimacy and illegitimacy and trust and betrayal were constantly being redrawn. In examining memories of loss and suffering, this paper shows the contrasting and shifting ways in which the state is experienced, imagined and granted legitimacy by men and women from the margins.

South Asian women elders and everyday lives of ‘care in the community’ in Britain: the neoliberal turn in social care and the myth of the family

ABSTRACT This article focuses upon the myth of the South Asian family as a self-fulfilling unit in which a construction of ‘looking after their own’ in the diaspora is perpetuated which intrinsically assumes how care and caring are organised at home. The Care in the Community agenda in Britain, which comes out of the contemporary neoliberal paradigm of austerity in which social welfare services have been dramatically cut and reformulated, utilises this imagined myth of the South Asian family in its judgements of the needs of South Asian women elders. Based on fieldwork at a South Asian women’s centre in Britain, the article highlights how women’s senses of self and selflessness relate to and reflect the neoliberal decline of welfare in which ‘looking after their own’ presents an ideal for policies which are rescinding delivery of services and entitlements. We highlight how South Asian women elders are absorbing the burdens of this social care paradigm shift while also bearing the strains of generational shifts around the culture of the family and expectations of women’s roles as they move through the life course as carers and as those being cared for.

Culture and ethnicity: the missing dimensions of untreated psychosis

Of the several risk factors identified for adenocarcinoma of the esophagus (EAC) and the gastro-esophageal junction (GEJAC), smoking, body mass index and gastro-esophageal reflux symptoms are the three major established independent risk factors that are potentially modifiable or controlled. We aimed to quantify the proportion of adenocarcinoma attributed to these risk factors by estimating the population attributable fractions. We used data from a population based case-control study in Australia during 2002-2005. Participants included 791 cases (365 with incident EAC, 426 GEJAC, and 1580 population controls). After adjusting for other confounding factors, ever smoking attributed for 29% of EAC [95%Confidence Interval (95%CI) 16% - 45%] and 43% of GEJAC [95%CI: 32% - 54%] and overweight/obese attributed for 36% [95%CI 23% - 53%] of EAC and 22% [95%CI 10% - 41%] of GEJAC. Together, ever smoking and being overweight/ obese attributed for 50% of EAC and 48% of GEJAC, while also including reflux symptoms accounted for 76% [95%CI: 66% -84%] of EAC and 78% [95%CI 67% - 85%] of GEJAC. Partial population attributable fraction was highest among smokers who were overweight/obese and also experienced at least weekly reflux symptoms. Smoking, obesity and gastroesophageal reflux symptoms accounted for more than two-thirds of cases of EAC and GEJAC in the population.Thus these cancers may be largely prevented by maintaining healthy BMI, avoiding smoking from the population, particularly among those experiencing regular reflux symptoms.