Sociology, biology and mechanisms in urban mental health

Abstract

This paper examines the way in which sociology and biology continue to struggle to understand why urban life creates high levels of mental disorder. The movement of the world population to be majority urban in recent years adds urgency to this issue. The paper addresses ways in which sociological analysis and biological analysis might work together through the identification of mechanisms, imagined and confirmed through data, of the way in which urban life gets ‘under the skin’. The argument moves from the use of mechanisms in scientific explanation, to the shortcomings of epidemiology, and the possibility of a new ‘mechanism-rich’ epidemiology. It then discusses seven examples of work that might contribute to this effort, concluding that more careful ethnography is required.