The Political Economy of Madness
The Expansion of the Asylum in Progressive America
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 5620134 |
|---|---|
| Authors | John R Sutton (corresponding author) |
| Year | 1991 |
| Volume | 56 |
| Issue | 5 |
| Pages | 665 |
| Publication date | 1991-10-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | American Sociological Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0003-1224 • E-ISSN: 1939-8271 |
| Publisher | SAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.2307/2096087 |
| OpenAlex | W2087131061 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 23 |
| References cited | 24 |
In the United States between 1880 and the 1920s, unprecedented numbers of people were confined in mental hospitals, leading many contemporary observers to conclude that the nation was experiencing an epidemic of madness. I analyze the expansion of asylums as a product of organizational and political forces rather than an increase in insanity. The analysis is based on Grob's (1983) historical argument that asylums were forced to absorb increasing numbers of the aged poor who could no longer be confined in almshouses. This analysis is supplemented by a more comprehensive model that treats political factors especially the fiscal capacities of state governments and the role of political parties as fundamental determinants of institutional policy. This model is tested using longitudinal quantitative data for U.S. states. Results confirm the direct effects of almshouse capacities in an attenuated way, and show further that political organization influenced the production of insanity
Economics · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Historical Economic and Social Studies · Historical Psychiatry and Medical Practices · Law · Mental Health Treatment and Access
The Criminalization of Hate
Labeling and Stigma
Moral Management in Mental Health Institutions in the British Colonial West Indies
Gender and Mental Health
From the Pews to Policy
Exchange, Action, and Social Structure
Neo-Institutional Analyses of Criminal Legal Organizations and Policies
Integrating space into a reactive theory of the asylum
Professionalization and State Building
Rent seeking for madness
Psychiatric Hospital Capacity, Homelessness, and Crime and Arrest Rates
Comparative-Historical Social Systems and Conservatism
La maladie mentale, quel objet pour la sociologie
The Spectacle of American Conservatism
The complexity of institutional niches
The Web of Group Affiliations Revisited
A Neo-Institutional Account of Prison Diffusion
The Enactment of State-Level Hate Crime Law in the United States
Free-Air Treatment for Mental Patients
The Pareto Theorem Restated and Examined
Modeling the Relationships Between Macro Forms of Social Control
Imprisonment and Social Classification in Five Common-Law Democracies, 1955-1985
Modeling the Relationship between the Criminal Justice and Mental Health Systems
Wayward Puritans
Mental health and social policy
Mental institutions in America
Social and Cultural Influences on Psychopathology
The iron cage revisited institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields
Bringing the State Back In
In the shadow of the poorhouse
An economic theory of democracy
The discovery of the asylum
The Division of Labor
Bureaucrats and Entrepreneurs
A Test of the Stability of Punishment Hypothesis
Prisons as Self-Regulating Systems
Doing Time
Growth and Decline Processes in Organizations
Regional Receptivity to Reform
Religious Insanity in America
Culture and psychopathology
States and Social Policies
Institutionalized Organizations
Society as the Patient
The problem of control in the weak state
| Unique citing works | 23 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,72 |
| Citation span | 1994 - 2026 (33) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 22 |