The Engaged Academic: Academic Intellectuals and the Psychiatric Survivor Movement

Abstract

This paper considers some political and ethical issues associated with the ‘academic intellectual’ who researches social movements. It identifies some of the ‘lived contradictions’ such a role encounters and analyses some approaches to addressing these contradictions. In general, it concerns the ‘politico-ethical stance’ of the academic intellectual in relation to social movements and, as such, references the ‘theory of the intellectual’ associated with the work of Antonio Gramsci. More specifically, it considers that role in relation to one political ‘field’ and one type of movement: a field which we refer to, following the work of Peter Sedgwick, as ‘psychopolitics’, and a movement which, since the mid- to late-1980s, has been known as the ‘psychiatric survivor’ movement—psychiatric patients and their allies who campaign for the democratisation of the mental health system. In particular, through a comparison of two texts, Nick Crossley's Contesting Psychiatry and Kathryn Church's Forbidden Narratives, the paper contrasts different depths of engagement between academic intellectuals and the social movements which they research.

Keywords:

• Psychopolitics
• academic intellectuals
• movement intellectuals
• psychiatry/mental health

Notes

 1. It could be objected, particularly given our valorisation later in this paper of the experiential reflexivity of Church, that we are not ‘practicing what we preach’. This excellent point was also made by an anonymous reviewer for Social Movement Studies. We accept the point and it has also formed the basis of our own self-criticism. Lack of space in part explains the omission but we would also add that we are interpreting ‘reflexive auto-critique’ in two complementary senses: (i) in the sense given to it within ‘auto-ethnography’ (see Reed-Danahay, 1997), or what Church terms ‘critical autobiography’ and (ii) in the sense that we are also advocating a reflexive ‘turn’ within academia which turns the academic ‘gaze’ back upon the role and function of the academic intellectual in their relations with social movements. It is the first of these senses—but not the second—that is lacking in this paper.

 2. We give these examples of movement intellectuals as the two texts we contrast are based on social movement research in Canada and England.

 3. It is important to be clear that neither we, nor Cox and Barker, are arguing that any research about social movements necessarily objectifies movement participants, but it is an important tendency and concern.

 4. The survivor academic who is doubly located within psychopolitics and the academic field undoubtedly faces a number of highly specific lived contradictions which we do not address here, but which deserve to be considered in their own right.

 5. Although it is worth noting that this ‘presumed anonymity’ has been challenged within social science research generally, where it is often wrongly assumed that research participants prefer to remain anonymous (e.g. Grinyer, 2002).

 6. This situation has led SHG to attempt to identify the interviewees of various sociological accounts of survivor SMOs in the UK—to bring ‘critical agency’ back into official documentation of movement histories. See ‘Contesting Psychiatry’ at the Survivors' History Group website: http://studymore.org.uk/mpu.htm#ContestingPsychiatrybox.

 7. We recognise that in some contexts there may be good reasons for ‘minimal engagement’ and are not seeking to fetishise the act of engagement itself, regardless of form or content.

 8. The University and College Union (UCU) have defined ‘grey literature’ as ‘outputs that are not in conventional published form such as confidential reports to government or business, software, designs, performances and artefacts’. For more information see http://www.ucu.org.uk/media/pdf/1/h/ucu_REFresponse_dec09.pdf.

 9. From Church's webpage at the School of Disability Studies, Ryerson University, Toronto, Canada; available at http://www.ryerson.ca/ds/for-faculty/index.html#Church.

10. ECT refers to ‘Electro-Convulsive Therapy’, a controversial treatment within psychiatry.