Joanna Cook is a Reader in Medical Anthropology at University College London. She is the author of Meditation in Modern Buddhism: Renunciation and Change in Thai Monastic Life and the coauthor of The State We're In: Reflecting on Democracy's Troubles and other books.
How mindfulness came to be regarded as a psychological support, an ethical practice and a component of public policy
Mindfulness seems to be everywhere-in popular culture, in therapeutic practice, even in policy discussions. How did mindfulness, an awareness training practice with roots in Buddhism, come to be viewed as a solution to problems that range from depression and anxiety to criminal recidivism? If mindfulness is the answer, asks Joanna Cook, what is the question? In Making a Mindful Nation, Cook uses the lens of mindfulness to show how cultivating a relationship with the mind is now central to the ways people envision mental health. Drawing on long-term fieldwork with patients, therapists, members of Parliament and political advocates in Britain, Cook explores how the logics of preventive mental healthcare are incorporated into people's relationships with themselves, therapeutic interventions, structures of governance and political campaigns.
Cook observed mindfulness courses for people suffering from recurrent depression and anxiety, postgraduate courses for mindfulness-based therapists, parliamentarians' mindfulness practice and political advocacy for mindfulness in public policy. She develops her theoretical argument through intimate and in-depth stories about people's lives and their efforts to navigate the world-whether these involve struggles with mental health or contributions to evolving political agendas. In doing so, Cook offers important insights into the social processes by which mental health is lived, the normative values that inform it and the practices of self-cultivation by which it is addressed. "How are we aware of being aware? Making a Mindful Nation shows that that the very experience of thinking, which seems so natural and automatic, is in fact a deeply cultural process with distinct political implications. Mindfulness in the UK is not so much a Buddhist practice, used to discipline and detach, as it is a UK practice understood to make more effective citizens. This is a quite fascinating study of the way what seems to be psychological is in fact deeply social."-Tanya Luhrmann, author of How God Becomes Real: Kindling the Presence of Invisible Others
"There have been many works on mindfulness in recent years, but this book is unique in its ethnographic approach and its important theoretical interventions. By attending to the rise of mindfulness and metacognition in public health policy, it skillfully shows that the way we relate to our minds influences the health of our selves and our society today."-Julia Cassaniti, Washington State University
"Absorbing and compelling. The reader is treated to a fascinating story that unfurls in unexpected twists and turns, bringing together Buddhist monks and parliamentarians, ordinary people and those with severe mental suffering."-Jason Danely, Oxford Brookes University
