Citation

Staples J, Widger T. Cult. Med. Psychiatry 2012; 36(2): 183-203.

Affiliation

Brunel University, London, UK, james.staples@brunel.ac.uk.

Copyright

(Copyright © 2012, Holtzbrinck Springer Nature Publishing Group)

DOI

10.1007/s11013-012-9255-1

PMID

22395948

Abstract

More than a century after Durkheim's sociological classic placed the subject of suicide as a concern at the heart of social science, ethnographic, cross-cultural analyses of what lie behind people's attempts to take their own lives remain few in number. But by highlighting how the ethnographic method privileges a certain view of suicidal behaviour, we can go beyond the limited sociological and psychological approaches that define the field of 'suicidology' in terms of social and psychological 'pathology' to engage with suicide from our informants' own points of view-and in so doing cast the problem in a new light and new terms. In particular, suicide can be understood as a kind of sociality, as a special kind of social relationship, through which people create meaning in their own lives. In this introductory essay we offer an overview of the papers that make up this special issue and map out the theoretical opportunities and challenges they present.

Language: en