Cultural consonance

doi:10.1017/CBO9780511543609.016

14 - Cultural consonance

from Part II - Culture and mental health

Published online by Cambridge University Press: 11 August 2009

William W. Dressler

Edited by

Dinesh Bhugra and

Kamaldeep Bhui

Show author details

William W. Dressler: Affiliation:
Department of Anthropology PO Box 870210 The University of Alabama Tuscaloosa Alabama 35487-0210 USA
Dinesh Bhugra: Affiliation:
Institute of Psychiatry, London
Kamaldeep Bhui: Affiliation:
Barts & The London, Queen Mary School of Medicine and Dentistry

Book contents

Get access

Summary

EDITORS' INTRODUCTION

The definitions of culture make it in some ways easy to understand but at the same time the inherent ambiguity in the definition makes it difficult to be used readily as a variable in research. Quite often language is confused with the ethnic group, ethnic groups are conflicted with racial identity and cultures get replaced with nation states in research studies and data analysis. The definitions of culture must include some dimensions which are easy to measure and their impact on mental illness easily gauged. Historically in epidemiological studies one group of individuals is compared with another group of individuals in a way that both groups are seen as homogenous and individual differences are ignored. Cultures influence physical illnesses as much as they do mental illnesses although the mediating factors may be different. The role of individual and the cultural characteristics have to be part of the assessment.

In this chapter, Dressler provides a theory of cultural consonance which links collective representations that make up the culture of a group with the practices of individuals who enact these representations. He argues that efforts to define more precisely the role of culture in processes of both physical and mental illnesses coincided with the development of the concept of psychosocial distress. Dressler suggests that the study of collective meanings and the relationship of culture to the individual are fundamental in culture theory. His concept of cultural consonance begins with the assumption that culture is both learned and shared and that the locus of culture is within individual beings and in the aggregate social groups made of human beings.

Type: Chapter
Information: Textbook of Cultural Psychiatry , pp. 179 - 190

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511543609.016 [Opens in a new window]

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Print publication year: 2007

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Book purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

Atran, S., Medin, D. L. and Ross, N. O. (2005). The cultural mind. Psychological Review, 112, 744–776.Google Scholar

Antonovsky, A. (1979). Health, Stress, and Coping. San Francisco, CA: Jossey-Bass.

Berger, P. L. and Luckman, T. (1966). The Social Construction of Reality. New York: Doubleday.

Bhugra, D. (2004). Cultural identities and cultural congruency: a new model for evaluating mental distress in immigrants. Acta Psychiatrica Scandinavia, 111, 84–93.Google Scholar

Bindon, J. R., Knight, A., Dressler, W. D. and Crews, D. E. (1997). Social context and psychosocial influences on blood pressure among American Samoans. American Journal of Physical Anthropology, 103, 7–18.Google Scholar

Boudon, R. (1988). Will sociology ever be a normal science?Theory and Society, 17, 747–771.Google Scholar

Bourdieu, P. (1990). In Other Words: Essays Toward a Reflexive Sociology, ed. M. Adamson (trans.). Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Cassel, J. C. (1976). The contribution of the social environment to host resistance. American Journal of Epidemiology, 104, 107–123.Google Scholar

Cassel, J. C., Patrick, R. and Jenkins, C. D. (1960). Epidemiological analysis of the health implications of culture change. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences, 84, 938–949.Google Scholar

Chavez, L. R., McMullin, J. M., Mishra, S. I. and Hubbell, F. A. (2001). Beliefs matter: cultural beliefs and the use of cervical cancer-screening tests. American Anthropologist, 103, 1114–1129.Google Scholar

Chin-Hong, P. V. and McGarvey, S. T. (1996). Lifestyle incongruity and adult blood pressure in Western Samoa. Psychosomatic Medicine, 58, 130–137.Google Scholar

Crossley, N. (2001). The phenomenological habitus and its construction. Theory and Society, 30, 81–120.Google Scholar

D'Andrade, R. G. (1984). Cultural meaning systems. In Culture Theory: Essays on Mind, Self and Emotion, ed. Schweder, R. A. and Levine, R.A. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 88–119.

D'Andrade, R. G. (1992). Schemas and motivation. In Human Motives and Cultural Models, ed. D'Andrade, R. G. and Strauss, C.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 23–44.

D'Andrade, R. G. (1995). The Development of Cognitive Anthropology. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

DaMatta, R. (1985). A Casa e a Rua. São Paulo, Brasil: Editora Brasiliense.

Munck, V. (2000). Culture, Self, and Meaning. Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.

Donnison, C.P (1929). Blood pressure in the African native. The Lancet, 1, 6–7.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (1982). Hypertension and Culture Change: Acculturation and Disease in the West Indies. South Salem, NY: Redgrave Publishing Co.

Dressler, W. W. (1991a). Stress and Adaptation in the Context of Culture: Depression in a Southern Black Community. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press.

Dressler, W. W. (1991b). Social support, lifestyle incongruity, and arterial blood pressure in a Southern black community. Psychosomatic Medicine, 53, 608–620.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (1995). Modelling biocultural interactions in anthropological research: an example from research on stress and cardiovascular disease. Yearbook of Physical Anthropology, 38, 27–56.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (1999). Modernization, stress and blood pressure: new directions in research. Human Biology, 71, 583–605.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (2001). Medical anthropology: toward a third moment in social science?Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 15, 455–465.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. (2005). What's cultural about biocultural research?Ethos, 33, 20–45.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W. and Bindon, J. R. (2000). The health consequences of cultural consonance: cultural dimensions of lifestyle, social support and arterial blood pressure in an African American community. American Anthropologist, 102, 244–260.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Dos Santos, J. E. D. and Balieiro, M. C. (1996). Studying diversity and sharing in culture: An example of lifestyle in Brazil. Journal of Anthropological Research, 52, 331–353.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Balieiro, M. C. and Santos, J. E. D. (1997). The cultural construction of social support in Brazil: Associations with health outcomes. Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry, 21, 303–335.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Balieiro, M. C. and Santos, J. E. D. (1998). Culture, socioeconomic status and physical and mental health in Brazil. Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 12, 424–446.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Balieiro, M. C. and Santos, J. E. D. (2002). Cultural consonance and psychological distress. Paidéia: Cadernos de Psicologia e Educação, 12, 5–18.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Ribeiro, R. P., Balieiro, M. C., Oths, K. S. and Santos, J. E. D. (2004). Eating, drinking and being depressed: the social, cultural and psychological context of alcohol consumption and nutrition in a Brazilian community. Social Science and Medicine, 59, 709–720.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Balieiro, M. C., Ribeiro, R. P. and Santos, J. E. D. (2005a). Cultural consonance and arterial blood pressure in urban Brazil. Social Science and Medicine, 61, 527–540.Google Scholar

Dressler, W. W., Borges, C. D., Balieiro, M. C. and Santos, J. E. D. (2005b). Measuring cultural consonance: examples with special reference to measurement theory in anthropology. Field Methods, 17, 531–555.Google Scholar

French, J. R. P., Rogers, W. and Cobb, S. (1974). Adjustment as person–environment fit. In Coping and Adaptation. ed. Coelho, G. V., Hamburg, D. A. and Adams, J. E., New York: Basic Books, pp. 316–333.

Goodenough, W. H. (1996). Culture. In Encyclopedia of Cultural Anthropology, ed. Levinson, D. and Ember, M., New York: Henry Holt, pp. 291–299.

Gorer, G. (1948). The American People: A Study in National Character. New York: Norton.

Handwerker, W. P. (2002). The construct validity of cultures. American Anthropologist, 104, 106–122.Google Scholar

Janes, C. R. (1990). Migration, Social Change and Health: A Samoan Community in Urban California. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.

Jenkins, J. H. and Barrett, R. J. (2004). Introduction. In Schizophrenia, Culture, and Subjectivity, ed. Jenkins, J. H. and Barrett, R. J.. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, pp. 1–28.

Jilek, W. G. (1995). Emil Kraepelin and comparative sociocultural psychiatry. European Archives of Psychiatry and Clinical Neuroscience, 245, 231–238.Google Scholar

Keesing, R. M. (1974). Theories of culture. In Annual Review of Anthropology, ed. Siegel, B. J., Beals, A. R. and Tyler, S. A., Vol. 3. Palo Alto, CA: Annual Reviews Inc., pp. 73–97.

Lazarus, R. S. (1966). Psychological Stress and the Coping Process. New York: McGraw-Hill.

Leighton, A. H. and Leighton, D. C. (1967). Mental health and social factors. In Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry, ed. Freedman, A. M. and Kaplan, H. I.. Baltimore: Williams and Wilkins, pp. 1520–1533.

Leite, D. M. (2002). O Caráter Nacional Brasileiro, 6th edn. Paulo, São, Brazil: Editora UNESP.

McDade, T. W. (2001). Lifestyle incongruity, social integration and immune function in Samoan adolescents. Social Science and Medicine, 53, 1351–1362.Google Scholar

McGarvey, S. T. and Schendel, D. E. (1986). Blood pressure of Samoans. In The Changing Samoans: Behavior and Health in Transition, ed. Baker, P. T., Hanna, J. M. and Baker, T. S.. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 350–393.

Oths, K. S., Carolo, A. and Santos, J. E. D. (2003). Social status and food preference in southern Brazil. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, 42, 303–324.Google Scholar

Rodspeth, L. (1998). Distributive models of culture. American Anthropologist, 100, 55–69.Google Scholar

Romney, A. K. and Moore, C. C. (1998) Toward a theory of culture as shared cognitive structures. Ethos, 26, 314–337.Google Scholar

Romney, A. K., Weller, S. C. and Batchelder, W. H. (1986). Culture as consensus: a theory of culture and informant accuracy. American Anthropologist, 88, 313–338.Google Scholar

Ross, N. (2004). Culture and Cognition: Implications for Theory and Method. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Searle, J. (1995). The Construction of Social Reality. New York: Free Press.

Shore, B. (1991). Twice-born, once conceived: meaning construction and cultural cognition. American Anthropologist, 93, 9–27.Google Scholar

Shore, B. (1996). Culture in Mind. New York: Oxford University Press.

Sperber, D. (1985). Anthropology and psychology – towards an epidemiology of representations. Man, 20, 73–89.Google Scholar

Tylor, E. B. (1871). Primitive Society. Boston, MA: Estes & Lauriat.

Veblen, T. (1899). The Theory of the Leisure Class. New York: Macmillan.