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ETHNOGRAPHIES OF SUICIDE
More than a century after Durkheim penned his classic study, Suicide (1897), ethnographic analyses of what lie behind people’s attempts to take their own lives remain relatively few in number. Existing explanations for suicide rates—in some parts of the world, such as South India, at an all time high—also tend to be overly reductive, citing economic hardship and/or associated depression as causes of what is, perhaps, a more complex social phenomenon. So while Durkheim was predominantly interested in variations in the rates of suicide, the aim of this workshop will be to draw out some of the more nuanced research being undertaken on the contexts and meanings of suicide across the globe. Questions to be addressed include, but are not limited to, the following:
1) Are there particular ways in which suicide is constituted, understood and performed in different cultural milieu?
2) What are the particular forms that suicide takes and why?
3) How do family members and—when they survive—those attempting suicide make sense of and respond to their actions?
4) What, if any, are the connections between people’s understandings of death more generally—or, indeed, other social institutions and other factors, such as gender—and suicide?
5) What are the broader socio-political and historical factors that shape the form suicide attempts take?
Studies from a broad range of contexts are encouraged, including, for example, work that considers the notion of the ‘suicide bomber’ and ritualised forms of suicide, as well as research that considers why more conventional forms of suicide are more prevalent among particular groups than others at particular points in history.
If you are potentially interested in taking part in the workshop—to take place sometime in June 2008 at Brunel University, West London—please email an expression of interest to [log in to unmask] The initial deadline for submission of abstracts is 30 November 2007.
It is hoped that the workshop will lead to the publication of either an edited book or a special journal issue.
Dr James Staples
Lecturer in Social Anthropology
School of Social Sciences
Brunel University
Uxbridge UB8 3PH
Tel: +44 (0) 1895 267412
Email: [log in to unmask]
Web: http://www.brunel.ac.uk/about/acad/sssl/ssslstaff/anth_staff/jamesstaples
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