ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the appropriation of psychiatric discourse on depression in a South Indian state. It analyses the conceptual and ontological movement of depression, in particular how it comes to be rooted, fabricated and translated in Kerala while at the same time attending to the ways depression is integrated into and shaped by various global and local webs of meaning and practice. The chapter examines depression and its treatment in practice, and the ways related institutions and materialities are appropriated, adapted and reconfigured in response. It explores local engagement with discourses and practices around depression by linking together several levels of analysis. The chapter demonstrates that depression is co-constituted on four closely interrelated, parallel levels: materiality or Dinglichkeit; institutions; ideologies and ideas; and practices. It also analyses local engagement with depression framed through the key concepts of globalization and appropriation.
