Kim Hopper | Columbia University (original) (raw)

Papers by Kim Hopper

Reproductive Health, Apr 13, 2021

Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 2021

Although access to adequate sanitation is formally recognized as a basic human right, public toil... more Although access to adequate sanitation is formally recognized as a basic human right, public toilets have long been flagged as absent necessities by groups marginalized by class, gender, race, and ability in the United States. Navigating public spaces without the guarantee of reliable restrooms is more than a passing inconvenience for anyone needing immediate relief. This includes workers outside of traditional offices, people with medical conditions, caretakers of young children, or anyone without access to restroom amenities provided to customers. This absence is also gendered in ways that constrain the freedom of those who menstruate to participate in the public sphere. Managing menstrual hygiene requires twenty-four-hour access to safe, clean facilities, equipped for washing blood off hands and clothing and mechanisms for discreet disposal of used menstrual products. Public provision of such amenities is woefully inadequate in New York City (NYC), and homeless women especially b...

Contemporary Sociology, 1987

American Journal of Psychiatry, 2007

Madness, distress and the politics of disablement, 2015

International Journal of Mental Health, 1999

As practiced , ethnography means carrying out two distinct kinds of inquiry, two ways of knowing:... more As practiced , ethnography means carrying out two distinct kinds of inquiry, two ways of knowing: what might be referred to (in shorthand) as "framework" and "fieldwork." They relate to one another as context and story, discipline and caseat-hand, or history and action. But however formulated, a full anthropological account invariably includes both. "Framework" is concerned chiefly with "tracking] the condition" [2]; it monitors the changing configuration of local limits and pressures within which the object of study is situated. It includes all activities directed at the documentation of setting in its most encompassing sense from the genealogy of a program, to

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1998

British Journal of Psychiatry, 2005

BackgroundEstablished legal mandates and high expectations for psychiatric advance directives are... more BackgroundEstablished legal mandates and high expectations for psychiatric advance directives are not matched by empirical evidence documenting their actual implementation.AimsTo explore the interests, concerns and planning activities of informed mental health service users contemplating such directives.MethodStandard qualitative research techniques were used: field observations, interviews, focus groups, archival research and key informant interviews; 33 persons participated in the interviews and focus groups. Transcripts were coded and analysed for thematic content, and results were member-checked.ResultsTraining set in motion labour-intensive projects: conceptualising how a psychiatric advance directive would work in one's life, mobilising resources, reviewing past experiences and assessing risks. Especially meaningful was the prospect of being treated as a responsible agent in future interactions with the mental health system.ConclusionsAdvance directives are best thought of...

American Ethnologist, 1985

Public Understanding of Science, 2011

The Center for Alaska Native Health Research is a community-based participatory research center t... more The Center for Alaska Native Health Research is a community-based participatory research center that conducts studies involving genetic research with Yup’ik Eskimo community members in Southwest Alaska, where Yup’ik remains the first language for most residents. Cultural equivalents are needed to communicate results of these studies among all partners and members of the participating communities, since many scientific terms have no direct translation in Yup’ik. To inform that effort, we examined local understandings of genetics and heredity in one community. Here, we report results from back-translated Yup’ik interviews, and identify working genetic concepts shared by participants from interviews and focus groups. We suggest issues involved in, and some potential steps toward, developing a concise, scientifically accurate and culturally relevant term for “genetics” and other health concepts.

Développement Humain, Handicap et Changement Social

Spurred by a working conference convened in the fall of 2009 by the Center to Study Recovery in S... more Spurred by a working conference convened in the fall of 2009 by the Center to Study Recovery in Social Contexts and INTAR (the International Network Towards Alternatives and Recovery), this paper first develops a serviceable version of Sen’s capabilities approach for use in public mental health and then explores how its conceptual toolkit might aid us in rethinking about we approach “first breaks” and early crises. This will be exploratory labor.2 Provisional efforts have been made to use the capabilities approach to rethink recovery and social integration as outcomes, to support self-determination, and to make a case for peer participation in research. This paper shifts the focus from the remedial work of treatment and social re-entry to the preventive work of crisis management and biographical continuity. After sorting through Sen’s approach for grounding principles and heuristic guides – which is here compiled into a sort of primer or toolkit, distilled into 8 key ideas and an an...

Psychiatric Services, 2019

This ethnographically informed implementation analysis of Parachute NYC between 2012 and 2015 doc... more This ethnographically informed implementation analysis of Parachute NYC between 2012 and 2015 documents the obstacles that can impede disruptive innovations in public mental health. Parachute combined family-based dialogic practice with peer-staffed crisis respite centers and mixed teams of clinicians and peers in an ambitious effort to revamp responses to psychiatric crises. This Open Forum reviews the demands posed by formidable contextual constraints, extended trainings in novel therapeutic techniques, and the effort to ensure sustainability in a managed care environment. It cautions that requiring innovations AUTHOR AND ARTICLE INFORMATION

Transcultural psychiatry, 2016

Transcultural psychiatry, Jan 30, 2016

As applied anthropologists used to working at arm's length from public psychiatry, we step ou... more As applied anthropologists used to working at arm's length from public psychiatry, we step out of the daily grind to take stock of the challenges of taking on ethnography entrained-harnessed to the implementation of a new program. These include the loss of critical distance, the struggles to negotiate locally viable forms of authority and relevance, the necessity of sustaining a Janus-faced relation with principal players, the urgency of seeing time-sensitive information converted into corrective feedback, and the undeniable attraction of being part of "committed work" with game-changing potential. In so doing, we rework the terms of witnessing and revive an old alternative: that documentary dirty work be reclaimed as a variant of public anthropology, one that transforms the work of application from mere afterthought to integral part of the original inquiry.

Social Science & Medicine, 2007

Resurgent hopes for recovery from schizophrenia in the late 1980s had less to do with fresh empir... more Resurgent hopes for recovery from schizophrenia in the late 1980s had less to do with fresh empirical evidence than with focused political agitation. Recovery's promise was transformative: reworking traditional power relationships, conferring distinctive expertise on service users, rewriting the mandate of public mental health systems. Its institutional imprint is considerably weaker. This article takes sympathetic measure of that outcome and provides an alternative framework for what recovery might mean, one drawn from disability studies and Sen's capabilities approach. By re-enfranchising agency, redressing material and symbolic disadvantage, raising the bar on fundamental entitlements and claiming institutional support for complex competencies, a capabilities approach could convert flaccid doctrine into useful guidelines and tools for public mental health. Keywords recovery; schizophrenia; capabilities; disability; public mental health; USA Ambiguity about core values, operational principles, and organizational goals has its strategic uses, among them the formation of unlikely coalitions in pursuit of structural change. Such amalgams have figured critically in the annals of mental health reform, though the roles of specific groups or external constraints remain disputed and the verdict of history mixed (compare Scull, 1976, with Grob, 1991). Institutional reform inevitably involves a reckoning, a sorting out of competing versions of allegedly shared assumptions, and their selective translation into practice and policy. "Working misunderstandings" can carry a merry band of reformers only so far before political realities step in to call the question and tally the bill. This article takes stock of the institutional imprint of "recovery" from severe psychiatric disability in U.S. public mental health, and does so from an applied anthropological stance. This may surprise some. Anthropologists are best known for bringing a spoiler's sensibility to their reading of psychiatric procedure, dusting for cultural fingerprints on the suspect premises of clinical practice-like discerning traces of "governmentality" where others see therapy or empowerment (Rose, 1999; Joseph, 2002). A second, lesser-known tradition claims the same ancestry but applies a rather different sensibility. Its proponents (initially Estroff, 1981) tend to portray contemporary community psychiatry as unusually hard repair work in socially suspect precincts (Rhodes,

Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.), 2008

Reproductive Health, Apr 13, 2021

Columbia Journal of Gender and Law, 2021

Although access to adequate sanitation is formally recognized as a basic human right, public toil... more Although access to adequate sanitation is formally recognized as a basic human right, public toilets have long been flagged as absent necessities by groups marginalized by class, gender, race, and ability in the United States. Navigating public spaces without the guarantee of reliable restrooms is more than a passing inconvenience for anyone needing immediate relief. This includes workers outside of traditional offices, people with medical conditions, caretakers of young children, or anyone without access to restroom amenities provided to customers. This absence is also gendered in ways that constrain the freedom of those who menstruate to participate in the public sphere. Managing menstrual hygiene requires twenty-four-hour access to safe, clean facilities, equipped for washing blood off hands and clothing and mechanisms for discreet disposal of used menstrual products. Public provision of such amenities is woefully inadequate in New York City (NYC), and homeless women especially b...

Contemporary Sociology, 1987

American Journal of Psychiatry, 2007

Madness, distress and the politics of disablement, 2015

International Journal of Mental Health, 1999

As practiced , ethnography means carrying out two distinct kinds of inquiry, two ways of knowing:... more As practiced , ethnography means carrying out two distinct kinds of inquiry, two ways of knowing: what might be referred to (in shorthand) as "framework" and "fieldwork." They relate to one another as context and story, discipline and caseat-hand, or history and action. But however formulated, a full anthropological account invariably includes both. "Framework" is concerned chiefly with "tracking] the condition" [2]; it monitors the changing configuration of local limits and pressures within which the object of study is situated. It includes all activities directed at the documentation of setting in its most encompassing sense from the genealogy of a program, to

Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 1998

British Journal of Psychiatry, 2005

BackgroundEstablished legal mandates and high expectations for psychiatric advance directives are... more BackgroundEstablished legal mandates and high expectations for psychiatric advance directives are not matched by empirical evidence documenting their actual implementation.AimsTo explore the interests, concerns and planning activities of informed mental health service users contemplating such directives.MethodStandard qualitative research techniques were used: field observations, interviews, focus groups, archival research and key informant interviews; 33 persons participated in the interviews and focus groups. Transcripts were coded and analysed for thematic content, and results were member-checked.ResultsTraining set in motion labour-intensive projects: conceptualising how a psychiatric advance directive would work in one's life, mobilising resources, reviewing past experiences and assessing risks. Especially meaningful was the prospect of being treated as a responsible agent in future interactions with the mental health system.ConclusionsAdvance directives are best thought of...

American Ethnologist, 1985

Public Understanding of Science, 2011

The Center for Alaska Native Health Research is a community-based participatory research center t... more The Center for Alaska Native Health Research is a community-based participatory research center that conducts studies involving genetic research with Yup’ik Eskimo community members in Southwest Alaska, where Yup’ik remains the first language for most residents. Cultural equivalents are needed to communicate results of these studies among all partners and members of the participating communities, since many scientific terms have no direct translation in Yup’ik. To inform that effort, we examined local understandings of genetics and heredity in one community. Here, we report results from back-translated Yup’ik interviews, and identify working genetic concepts shared by participants from interviews and focus groups. We suggest issues involved in, and some potential steps toward, developing a concise, scientifically accurate and culturally relevant term for “genetics” and other health concepts.

Développement Humain, Handicap et Changement Social

Spurred by a working conference convened in the fall of 2009 by the Center to Study Recovery in S... more Spurred by a working conference convened in the fall of 2009 by the Center to Study Recovery in Social Contexts and INTAR (the International Network Towards Alternatives and Recovery), this paper first develops a serviceable version of Sen’s capabilities approach for use in public mental health and then explores how its conceptual toolkit might aid us in rethinking about we approach “first breaks” and early crises. This will be exploratory labor.2 Provisional efforts have been made to use the capabilities approach to rethink recovery and social integration as outcomes, to support self-determination, and to make a case for peer participation in research. This paper shifts the focus from the remedial work of treatment and social re-entry to the preventive work of crisis management and biographical continuity. After sorting through Sen’s approach for grounding principles and heuristic guides – which is here compiled into a sort of primer or toolkit, distilled into 8 key ideas and an an...

Psychiatric Services, 2019

This ethnographically informed implementation analysis of Parachute NYC between 2012 and 2015 doc... more This ethnographically informed implementation analysis of Parachute NYC between 2012 and 2015 documents the obstacles that can impede disruptive innovations in public mental health. Parachute combined family-based dialogic practice with peer-staffed crisis respite centers and mixed teams of clinicians and peers in an ambitious effort to revamp responses to psychiatric crises. This Open Forum reviews the demands posed by formidable contextual constraints, extended trainings in novel therapeutic techniques, and the effort to ensure sustainability in a managed care environment. It cautions that requiring innovations AUTHOR AND ARTICLE INFORMATION

Transcultural psychiatry, 2016

Transcultural psychiatry, Jan 30, 2016

As applied anthropologists used to working at arm's length from public psychiatry, we step ou... more As applied anthropologists used to working at arm's length from public psychiatry, we step out of the daily grind to take stock of the challenges of taking on ethnography entrained-harnessed to the implementation of a new program. These include the loss of critical distance, the struggles to negotiate locally viable forms of authority and relevance, the necessity of sustaining a Janus-faced relation with principal players, the urgency of seeing time-sensitive information converted into corrective feedback, and the undeniable attraction of being part of "committed work" with game-changing potential. In so doing, we rework the terms of witnessing and revive an old alternative: that documentary dirty work be reclaimed as a variant of public anthropology, one that transforms the work of application from mere afterthought to integral part of the original inquiry.

Social Science & Medicine, 2007

Resurgent hopes for recovery from schizophrenia in the late 1980s had less to do with fresh empir... more Resurgent hopes for recovery from schizophrenia in the late 1980s had less to do with fresh empirical evidence than with focused political agitation. Recovery's promise was transformative: reworking traditional power relationships, conferring distinctive expertise on service users, rewriting the mandate of public mental health systems. Its institutional imprint is considerably weaker. This article takes sympathetic measure of that outcome and provides an alternative framework for what recovery might mean, one drawn from disability studies and Sen's capabilities approach. By re-enfranchising agency, redressing material and symbolic disadvantage, raising the bar on fundamental entitlements and claiming institutional support for complex competencies, a capabilities approach could convert flaccid doctrine into useful guidelines and tools for public mental health. Keywords recovery; schizophrenia; capabilities; disability; public mental health; USA Ambiguity about core values, operational principles, and organizational goals has its strategic uses, among them the formation of unlikely coalitions in pursuit of structural change. Such amalgams have figured critically in the annals of mental health reform, though the roles of specific groups or external constraints remain disputed and the verdict of history mixed (compare Scull, 1976, with Grob, 1991). Institutional reform inevitably involves a reckoning, a sorting out of competing versions of allegedly shared assumptions, and their selective translation into practice and policy. "Working misunderstandings" can carry a merry band of reformers only so far before political realities step in to call the question and tally the bill. This article takes stock of the institutional imprint of "recovery" from severe psychiatric disability in U.S. public mental health, and does so from an applied anthropological stance. This may surprise some. Anthropologists are best known for bringing a spoiler's sensibility to their reading of psychiatric procedure, dusting for cultural fingerprints on the suspect premises of clinical practice-like discerning traces of "governmentality" where others see therapy or empowerment (Rose, 1999; Joseph, 2002). A second, lesser-known tradition claims the same ancestry but applies a rather different sensibility. Its proponents (initially Estroff, 1981) tend to portray contemporary community psychiatry as unusually hard repair work in socially suspect precincts (Rhodes,

Psychiatric services (Washington, D.C.), 2008