https://press.princeton.edu/books/hardcover/9780691244471/making-a-mindful-nation

Bingjing Yang: I thoroughly enjoyed reading your book and have started practicing mindfulness myself to better understand this phenomenon that is unfolding globally. Your book explores how mindfulness serves not only as a reflective tool for personal mental experiences but also impacts the broader cultivation of mental health in everyday life. You describe your analysis of mindfulness as neither a critique nor an endorsement. Initially, you delineate the influence of Buddhism and meditation on the concept and practice of mindfulness in the UK. Could you explain how your focus shifted from meditation to mindfulness? Furthermore, could you elaborate on how this book explores the transformation of mindfulness from a therapeutic intervention to an integral part of living a “good life”? How does this integration challenge or reinforce societal understandings of mental health, especially in relation to the moral and practical aspects of mindfulness you discuss?

Joanna Cook: Thanks very much for some great questions and I’m delighted to hear that you enjoyed reading Making a Mindful Nation! It was a labour of love, so it’s great to hear that people are engaging with it. You’re right that this book represents a shift from meditation to mindfulness in my work. My first book, Meditation in Modern Buddhism, was about Buddhist monks and nuns in a monastery in Northern Thailand who practice and teach an intensive form of meditation called Burmese Vipassana. Meditating in the monastery involves taking on moral precepts and committing oneself to disciplined comportment. It is also often figured in relation to soteriological goals of cutting attachment to a sense of self and freeing oneself from suffering. As I was finishing that book, I started to get interested in the introduction of mindfulness in mental healthcare in the UK. As I show in Making a Mindful Nation, mindfulness shares genealogically links with the meditation in the monastery, but it is figured very differently: psychologically informed mindfulness is characterized by befriending the mind and integrating mindful awareness into the daily ups and downs of workaday lives; family struggles, relationship dynamics, stress and burnout. I set out to explore that transformation ethnographically.

What I found is that mindfulness provides a window onto a moment in which the category of ‘mental health’ has shifted radically: Mental health is now commonly thought of as a transversal issue, as important for psychologists as for patients, probation workers as for prisoners, politicians as for constituents. And it is no longer only framed in a negative register. In this new framing of mental health, the prevention of suffering remains important, but this is complemented by a positive framing of mental health as flourishing, happiness, purpose, psychological resilience, and so on. And, importantly, people across society have come to think of mental health as something that can be cultivated. This matters because, in the transversal shift from the prevention of illness to the cultivation of health, what one does about mental health far exceed the realms of professional psychological intervention. Mental health practices, like mindfulness, are incorporated into the small moments of daily experience (washing up, waiting for a bus), and living well is associated with maintaining a healthy relationship with one’s own mind amidst the ups and downs of everyday life.

Bingjing Yang: You have noted that philologists’ interpretations of Buddhism have shaped the British understanding of its core principles, presenting Buddhism as an ethical religion suited for modern principles through practices of “intercultural mimesis” that interpret its fundamental logic as non-superstitious and contemporary. This transformation illustrates how Buddhism has been simplified at the linguistic and pragmatic levels to serve the modern struggles of the UK. Furthermore, the romantic appropriation of Buddhism and the projection of values onto it—encompassing a fascination with mysticism, magic, and spiritual experiences, which are also classic subjects of anthropological study—shows that while Buddhism has evolved into a science of the mind in contemporary UK, it retains a romantic essence in psychological terms. Exploring the roots and significance of Buddhism in the UK can greatly enhance understanding of the dual utility of mindfulness today.

Joana Cook: I think so too! My intention in exploring the cultural history of British engagement with Buddhism since the 19^th century was not to dismiss mindfulness as a decontextualised or inauthentic version of putatively real or true Buddhism. Nor was it to champion mindfulness as a distillation of the essence of Buddhism, shorn of the polluting effects of cultural accretion. Instead, I wanted to explore the meaning, value and effects of meditation in different cultural and historical contexts. That might seem like an obvious intention for an anthropologist, but it’s important, I think, because both Buddhism and meditation are often characterized as timeless, authentic or culture-free. I’m really interested in the ways in which people navigate the worlds in which they find themselves and their efforts to lead good lives. And I found it fascinating to chart the history of meditation practices as they were constituted by and constitutive of prevailing cultural and intellectual concerns.

Bingjing Yang: You have described resilience as a goal of mindfulness practice, necessary for adapting to changes in the world and for individuals to develop stronger resilience and enriched self-management practices. Beyond the interplay of rationalism and romanticism, the blending of Buddhist doctrines with scientific validation in mindfulness practices, what exactly is resilience pursued as a goal? Is there a history in resilience thinking similar to pragmatists’ rationalization of Buddhist logic during the Enlightenment? You mentioned that “resilience thinking has increasingly drawn on a relationally embedded understanding of the subject in response to intractable problems, such as mental health.” (p. 41) How does this change in resilience thinking reflect a change in psychological subjectivity? What is the relationship between changing attitudes towards resilience and the evolution of the mental health category?

Joanna Cook: I found an ethnographic take on resilience interesting for a couple of reasons. Firstly, because resilience has its own cultural genealogy and, secondly, because resilience is a buzz word that does important political work. In Britain, earlier iterations of psychological resilience often framed it as an inner capacity, akin to grit or fortitude. It is what enabled people to weather adverse experiences, or get back on the horse. This framing of resilience as a capacity to bounce back has largely shifted to an emphasis on the capacity for reflective awareness of oneself: resilience is increasingly characterized by responsiveness and flexibility in a changing and complex world. This is an important part of how the people I worked with (patients, psychologists, parliamentarians, and political advocates) understand mental health, relate to themselves and engage with others. 

But resilience thinking also has an important political role. In the work of political advocacy, resilience has been used to understand everything from the war on terror to international development aid, and David Chandler opens his great book on the subject (Resilience: The Governance of Complexity, 2014) by describing it as ‘the policy buzzword of choice’.  I focused on how non-professional advocates developed a policy conversation about mindfulness in the British parliament. Engaging with existing political narratives and terms was an important way in which advocates communicated to parliamentarians what they understood to be the importance of mindfulness, and how they shaped mindfulness as a policy object in a highly professional political environment.

Bingjing Yang: I find your pragmatic approach to bridging the gap between anthropology and psychological diagnostic categories very enlightening. It effectively balances the analysis and therapeutic application of diagnostic categories with their social purposes, while focusing on the cultural specifics of mental health that anthropology examines. Mindfulness, for instance, skillfully circumvents the claims and stigmatization associated with diagnostic categories, emerging as an ethical and moral practice that reconciles cognitive structures with modern commercial developments. Could this achievement in the development of Mindfulness-Based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT) be considered a milestone in the trajectory of medical anthropology?

In Britain, the popularity of mindfulness reflects a recent destigmatisation of depression and anxiety, and mental health more generally.  In the book, I chart the reclassification of depression as a relapsing condition that can be addressed through psychosocial training, and I explore the development of preventative interventions, like Mindfulness-based Cognitive Therapy (MBCT). Through ongoing practice-based training, MBCT participants learn to establish a ‘friendly’ relationship with their own minds in order to prevent depressive relapse. This shows that diagnostic categories, meaning and self-cultivation mutually reinforce each other as practitioners learn and respond to a cognitive theory of mind. The implication of this is that, in preventative healthcare, the locus of intervention often lies far outside the remit of medical science and encompasses the relationship an individual has with herself, and the subjective values and shared beliefs that motivate or inhibit health-seeking behaviours.

In my analysis of mindfulness and the prevention of depression, I developed a both/and analysis as a way of bridging a common gap in scholarship between psychological and cultural knowledge. I argue that, in response to changing nosologies of depression and therapeutic intervention, psychological and cultural practices are braided together. I highlight that in the prevention of depressive relapse, depression is understood both as a clinical diagnosis and as something that can be addressed through ongoing training. That seems really important to me – that experiences of mental illness and healthcare are affected by beliefs, practices and expectations embedded in interactive relationships – but I am by no means the first person to say this. Scholars like Julia Cassaniti, Randall Horton, Laurence Kirmayer, Usha Menon and others have made important contributions to this discussion before me. I hope that my analysis contributes to a growing body of scholarship that examines the interrelationship of culture and mind.

Thank you very much for such thoughtful and thought-provoking questions. It’s been a pleasure to engage with them.