Occupied Clinic

Saiba Varma is Assistant Professor of Anthropology at the University of California, San Diego.

“The Occupied Clinic situates psychiatry as humanitarian state strategy in Kashmir. Saiba Varma offers us a beautifully crafted ethnography, providing political insight without objectifying the recipients of care as victims or sufferers. She articulates the place of mental health and the nuances and difficulties of everyday psychiatric practice in a state of exception that has come to be normalized over decades of military occupation. The need for such an analysis, at once poignant and nonpolemical, cannot be overstated.” - Kaushik Sunder Rajan, author of (Pharmocracy: Value, Politics and Knowledge in Global Biomedicine) “The Occupied Clinic is a chilling, thought provoking, and beautifully written work that is likely to garner a great deal of attention for its arguments and intellectual generosity. Saiba Varma's astute and incisive portrayal of life, survival, and care in conditions of occupation is original and valuable.” - Sarah Pinto, author of (The Doctor and Mrs. A.: Ethics and Counter-Ethics in an Indian Dream Analysis) "The Occupied Clinic could hardly be any timelier.… A thought-provoking and rigorously crafted ethnography that advances the growing discussions of care and its paradoxes in anthropology.… A must-read for scholars interested in the transdisciplinary discussions of clinical, governmental, nongovernmental, and communitarian modes of care." - Tankut Atuk (Anthropology Book Forum) "Packed with many narratives and experiences, Varma's book is deeply disturbing and incisive. It turns many assumptions, inferences and even the concept of care as a redemptive practice, on its head or inside out. It needs to be debated and discussed far more thoroughly for its content." - Freny Manecksha (Indian Journal of Medical Ethics) "The book is a deeply moving work from a committed medical anthropologist. It will be of great help to anyone who wants to understand the cost of living in a highly and densely militarized zone of the world." - Khalid Bashir Gura (Kashmir Life) "A book crafted with professional care. . . . Even as Varma displaces the meanings of lazily deployed words like Care, Siege, Disturbed Area, Disappeared, Shock, Disbelief, Gratitude and Duty by imbuing them with varied local senses, she comes into her own while she dwells on the vernacular used by her informants. She labours to translate the meanings of dense words they invoke and theorises on some of them at length. At times I liked the train of her thought so much that I wished for more." - Gowhar Fazili (The Wire) "Varma’s rich ethnographic insights demonstrate how militarism and care are not distinct but rather closely bounded. . . . Clinicians, undergraduate students, and anyone curious about the fraught translation between biomedical psychiatry and local contexts of suffering will greatly appreciate Varma's dexterous and generous ethnography. Varma’s beautiful writing, interspersed with vibrant images and artwork and haunting poetry, will be greatly appreciated. . . ." - David Ansari (Anthropology and Humanism) "Weaving together ethnographic narratives with poetry, the book offers a compelling analysis that at once contributes to conversations in medical anthropology, feminist studies of care, and the anthropology of humanitarianism and violence." - Victoria Sheldon (Journal of Asian Studies)

• Map  viiiNote on Transliteration  ixAcknowledgments  xiLetter to No One  xvIntroduction. Care  11. Siege  322. A Disturbed Area  67Interlude. The Disappeared  1013. Shock  1144. Debrief  1445. Gratitude  167Notes  201Bibliography  253Index  273