New Books in Psychology Nikita Kaur Simpson, "Tension: Mental Distress and Embodied Inequality in the Western Himalayas" (Duke UP, 2026)
Mar 29, 2026
Nikita Kaur Simpson, a medical anthropologist at SOAS who studies structural dimensions of mental distress, discusses the Gaddi peoples' concept of “tension.” Short scenes explore how tension shows in bodies and homes, how women disproportionately absorb it, sensory methods for studying it, and how rivalry, land loss, and modern change shape everyday distress.
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Tension As A Polysemic Social Thermometer
- Tension is a polysemic everyday term that links bodily and mental complaints to broader social change.
- Gaddi people use tension to theorize how land loss, livelihoods, and intimate life sediment into bodies and atmospheres.
Learning To Sense Tension With A Local Collaborator
- Simpson learned to notice tension by doing embodied fieldwork with a Gaddi collaborator who signaled subtle atmospheric shifts.
- They tracked changes in gesture, pauses, sighs, and ritual settings to interpret episodes beyond spoken words.
Follow The Case Not A Single Cause
- Simpson pushes beyond 'idiom of distress' to trace how tension maps relationally across households and neighborhoods.
- She follows singular cases (e.g., gharaki tension) to show non-linear, overlapping causes rather than single etiologies.
