Healing Rites of Passage: Salutogenesis in Serious Fun Camps (The Social Pathologies of Contemporary Civilization) - Softcover

Kearney, Peter James

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0367585073 ISBN 13: 9780367585075

Publisher: Routledge, 2020

Synopsis

This book examines how ‘Therapeutic Recreation’ transforms the social health of children enduring or recovering from life-threatening illnesses such as cancer and leukaemia. With studies drawn from ‘Serious Fun’ projects in the USA, the UK, France, Ireland and Israel, the author explores how camp experiences in convivial circumstances help to bring about healing. Employing central concepts from sociology and anthropology, such as 'liminality', 'mimesis' and 'salutogenesis', Healing Rites of Passage explains why a brief secluded holiday can reform the campers’ shared situation of life-threatening illnesses towards health and flourishing. The whole process can be understood in terms of a 'rite of passage', as structured camp experiences enable children to shed previous ‘sick roles’ and pass through a series of challenges in order to achieve social re-integration with a renewed zest for living. An empirically grounded study that reveals the analytic value of master concepts in the social sciences, this book will appeal to scholars in the fields of sociology, anthropology, paediatrics, social theory and the sociology of health, illness and medicine.

About this title

About the Author

Peter James Kearney is Emeritus Professor of Paediatrics and Occasional Lecturer in Sociology at University College Cork, Ireland.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 2020
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0367585073
• ISBN 13: 9780367585075
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 168