Tehseen Noorani

A sociological comparison of anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim sentiment in Britain

Comparisons of anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment 2(the latter also known as ‘Islamophobia’) are noticeably absent in British accounts of race and racism. This article critically examines some public and media discourse on Jewish and Muslim minorities to draw out the similarities and differences contained within anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim sentiment. It provides a rationale for focusing upon the period of greatest saliency for Jewish migrants prior to the Second World War, compared with the contemporary representation of Muslims, and identifies certain discursive tendencies operating within the representations of each minority. The article begins with a discussion of multiculturalism, cultural racism and racialization, followed by a brief exploration of the socio-historical dimensions of Jewish and Muslim groups, before turning to the public representation of each within their respective time-frames. The article concludes that there are both hitherto unnoticed similarities and important differences to be found in such a comparison, and that these findings invite further inquiry.

Service user involvement, authority and the ‘expert-by-experience’ in mental health

This article re-examines the politics of engagement of the UK mental health service user and survivor movement by focusing upon the mental health ‘expert-by-experience’. Using qualitative data, I illustrate how the service user and survivor movement is able to draw upon an experiential authority that is rooted in practices of self-help and peer-support. I do this by bringing an experimentalist reading of self-help and peer-support practices into dialogue with a model of traditional authority. As such, the personal can be linked up to the political in ways that emphasise the value of self-help and support practices as forms of political participation, while highlighting modes of engagement that are predicated on the capacities, rather than the needs, of the movement.

Posthuman attunements: aesthetics, authority and the arts of creative listening

This introduction to the themed section on attunement explores the varied practices, politics, and aesthetics of attuning to more-than-human voices, temporalities, and material processes. What happens when we attempt to attune ourselves to forms of agency that do not possess a conventionally recognized voice to be amplified? What new intersections among research, invention, and political agency might emerge when voices have to be assembled rather than merely amplified, and when new methods of listening need to be invented? The concept of attunement speaks to subtle, affective modulations in the relations between different bodies. We describe four broad traditions of scholarship that render differently the concept of attunement. First is the Kantian sense of attunement as a harmonious and playful mediation between the human faculties of imagination and understanding. Second, attunement can be seen as a preconscious way in which we find ourselves disposed, or tuned, to our environment. Third, attunement can be conceived of as a form of embodied relationality and interconnectedness that capacitates individual empathy and grounds the possibility of coproduction. Finally, attunement to vastly different spatiotemporal scales can be seen as strange, uncanny, and uncertain—transient achievements that bring us into contact with lost futures, haunted presents, and even different versions of ourselves. The contributions we have drawn together explore the concept of attunement in relation to themes that include technology, aesthetics, human–animal relations, class, landscape, feminist, political, and postcolonial theory.

Engines of alternative objectivity : re-articulating the nature and value of participatory mental health organisations with the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company

Through two case studies, the Hearing Voices Movement and Stepping Out Theatre Company, we demonstrate how successful participatory organisations can be seen as ‘engines of alternative objectivity’ rather than as the subjective other to objective, biomedical science. With the term ‘alternative objectivity’, we point to collectivisations of experience that are different to biomedical science but are nonetheless forms of objectivity. Taking inspiration from feminist theory, science studies and sociology of culture, we argue that participatory mental health organisations generate their own forms of objectivity through novel modes of collectivising experience. The Hearing Voices Movement cultivates an ‘activist science’ that generates an alternative objective knowledge through a commitment to experimentation, controlling, testing, recording and sharing experience. Stepping Out distinguishes itself from drama therapy by cultivating an alternative objective culture through its embrace of high production values, material culture, aesthetic standards. A crucial aspect of participatory practice is overcoming alienation, enabling people to get outside of themselves, encounter material worlds and join forces with others.

Participatory Research and the Medicalization of Research Ethics Processes

This article illustrates how medicalized epistemologies and methodologies significantly influence the institutional ethical review processes applied to sociolegal research in law schools. It argues this development has elevated particular renderings of mental distress and objectivity to universal definitions, potentially placing a straitjacket on methodological innovation. The authors use two case studies from their experiences as researchers in a UK Law School, alongside a small-scale survey of sociolegal researchers in other UK law schools, to illustrate the problems that can arise in securing ethical approval for sociolegal research, in particular with participatory research designs that mobilize ideas of mental distress and objectivity not premised on conventional medical understandings. The article develops key proposals that the authors feel merit further inquiry. First, there should be a comprehensive evaluation of how the jurisdiction of ethical review for sociolegal research is established. Second, sociolegal scholarship can contribute to debates concerning the discursive, material and procedural constitution of institutional ethics approval processes. Finally, we might rethink the nature of, and relationship between, university-based research ethics committees and National Health Service research ethics committees, by placing both within wider ecologies of capacities for ethical decision-making.

Psychedelic therapy for smoking cessation: Qualitative analysis of participant accounts:

Background: Recent pilot trials suggest feasibility and potential efficacy of psychedelic-facilitated addiction treatment interventions. Fifteen participants completed a psilocybin-facilitated smoking cessation pilot study between 2009 and 2015. Aims: The aims of this study were as follows: (1) to identify perceived mechanisms of change leading to smoking cessation in the pilot study; (2) to identify key themes in participant experiences and long-term outcomes to better understand the therapeutic process. Methods: Participants were invited to a retrospective follow-up interview an average of 30 months after initial psilocybin sessions. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 12 of the 15 participants. Data were analysed using thematic analysis. Results: Participants reported gaining vivid insights into self-identity and reasons for smoking from their psilocybin sessions. Experiences of interconnectedness, awe, and curiosity persisted beyond the duration of acute drug effects. Participants emphasised that the content of psilocybin experiences overshadowed any short-term withdrawal symptoms. Preparatory counselling, strong rapport with the study team, and a sense of momentum once engaged in the study treatment were perceived as vital additional factors in achieving abstinence. In addition, participants reported a range of persisting positive changes beyond smoking cessation, including increased aesthetic appreciation, altruism, and pro-social behaviour. Conclusions: The findings highlight the value of qualitative research in the psychopharmacological investigation of psychedelics. They describe perceived connections between drug- and non-drug factors, and provide suggestions for future research trial design and clinical applications.