| Title |
Kiyang-yang, a West-African Postwar Idiom of Distress
|
|---|---|
| Published in |
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, April 2010
|
| DOI | 10.1007/s11013-010-9178-7 |
| Pubmed ID | |
| Authors |
Joop T. de Jong, Ria Reis |
| Abstract |
In 1984, a healing cult for young barren women in southern Guinea Bissau developed into a movement, Kiyang-yang, that shook society to its foundations and had national repercussions. "Idiom of distress" is used here as a heuristic tool to understand how Kiyang-yang was able to link war and post-war-related traumatic stress and suffering on both individual and group levels. An individual experience born from a traumatic origin may be generalized into an idiom that diverse sectors of society could embrace for a range of related reasons. We argue that, for an idiom to be understood and appropriated by others, there has to be resonance at the level of symbolic language and shared experiences as well as at the level of the culturally mediated contingent emotions it communicates. We also argue that through its symbolic references to structural causes of suffering, an idiom of distress entails a danger for those in power. It can continue to exist only if its etiology is not exposed or the social suffering it articulates is not eliminated. We finally argue that idioms of distress are not to be understood as discrete diagnostic categories or as monodimensional expressions of "trauma" that can be addressed. |
Mendeley readers
The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 105 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.
Geographical breakdown
| Country | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| United States | 2 | 2% |
| China | 1 | <1% |
| France | 1 | <1% |
| South Africa | 1 | <1% |
| Unknown | 100 | 95% |
Demographic breakdown
| Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Student > Ph. D. Student | 22 | 21% |
| Student > Master | 14 | 13% |
| Researcher | 10 | 10% |
| Student > Doctoral Student | 10 | 10% |
| Student > Bachelor | 8 | 8% |
| Other | 23 | 22% |
| Unknown | 18 | 17% |
| Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
|---|---|---|
| Social Sciences | 29 | 28% |
| Psychology | 21 | 20% |
| Medicine and Dentistry | 11 | 10% |
| Nursing and Health Professions | 8 | 8% |
| Neuroscience | 3 | 3% |
| Other | 12 | 11% |
| Unknown | 21 | 20% |
Attention Score in Context
This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 16. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 28 May 2013.
All research outputs
#2,111,729
of 23,906,448 outputs
Outputs from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
#93
of 622 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#7,501
of 98,300 outputs
Outputs of similar age from Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry
#6
of 10 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,906,448 research outputs across all sources so far. Compared to these this one has done particularly well and is in the 91st percentile: it's in the top 10% of all research outputs ever tracked by Altmetric.
So far Altmetric has tracked 622 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a lot more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 12.1. This one has done well, scoring higher than 85% of its peers.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 98,300 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one has done particularly well, scoring higher than 92% of its contemporaries.
We're also able to compare this research output to 10 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one has scored higher than 4 of them.