Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics

This study was first published in 1983. It traces the social disintegration of "Ballybran", a small village on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland, exploring the symptoms of the communities decline: from emigration to schizophrenia. This edition contains a new preface and epilogue. " Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics, in its original form--now integrally reproduced in the new edition--is a most important seminal study of an Irish community."—Conor Cruise O'Brien TWENTIETH ANNIVERSARY EDITION, UPDATED AND EXPANDED When Saints, Scholars, and Schizophrenics was published twenty years ago, it became an instant classic--a beautifully written study tracing the social disintegration of "Ballybran," a small village on the Dingle Peninsula in Ireland. In this richly detailed and sympathetic book, Nancy Scheper-Hughes explores the symptoms of the community's decline: emigration, malaise, unwanted celibacy, damaging patterns of childrearing, fear of intimacy, suicide, and schizophrenia. Following a recent return to "Ballybran," Scheper-Hughes reflects in a new preface and epilogue on the well-being of the community and on her attempts to reconcile her responsibility to honest ethnography with respect for the people who shared their homes and their secrets with her.