Abstract
Suicidology has long been medicalized with suicide viewed as a symptom of mental illness or perhaps a mental disorder in itself (APA, 2013), occurring as a function of psychological and psychiatric risk factors within an individual, and with research framed in quantitative and positivist terms. Culture has largely been excluded from current conceptions of suicide. However, researchers and clinicians are increasingly dissatisfied about this approach and alternative views of suicide and suicide prevention are emerging. This book joins other recent publications offering a fresh look at suicide, including books on culture and suicide (Colucci & Lester, 2013), anthropology and suicide (Broz & Münster, in press), and critical suicidology (White, Marsh, Kral, & Morris, in press) as well as a special issue in Culture, Medicine and Psychiatry (Staples & Widger, 2012).
Current views of suicide are somewhat deterministic: suicide as caused by mental illness. Yet where is free will? In the Introduction, the editors assume agency and volition in suicide, as do many of the authors in this volume, reflecting what Münster and Broz (in press) call the “tension of agency” in the understanding of suicide. The editors acknowledge the important question in suicide of free will and determinism, which is also central to a historical understanding of suicide. They do not see suicide in medicalized terms as pathological. Their view of “the internal approach” to suicide is psychoanalytic, which they claim has been the dominant view, however the internal factors studied by psychology and psychiatry are anything but that. Suicide in the book is seen as a moral question.
The chapter by Macdonald and Naudin looks at suicide correlates with “transcultural validity,” namely melancholia, intentionality, and a socially constructed identity they call “co-entanglement in others’ (hi)stories.” María Cátedra writes about the Vaqueiros, a cattle-raising population in northern Spain, where suicide is common. She finds that suicide is part of the local belief system, something traditional and familiar. Vaqueiros have no explanation for the suicides other than the person was suffering or that it is a form of divine punishment for sins. Young women have a high suicide rate and are marginalized, which has been seen in the high suicide rate of women in China (Meng, 2002; Phillips, Li, & Zhang, 2002).
The chapters on ancient and medieval suicide that follow, include a look at Socrates’s death and justifiable suicide, Stoic “neutral” and agentic suicide, suicide in the Middle Ages and the role of religious condemnation. Contemporary suicides are covered in chapters on female suicide bombers and Islam, contexts in which suicides are rare, and the ambiguous reactions they receive, and suicide in Finland, which has high rate, with a review of male suicide notes and the role of social failure. An Afterword by Arthur Kleinman shows the complexity of understanding suicide. He asks about the moral responsibility of social science and humanities scholars toward intervention and prevention and notes that the topics covered in the book will remain unsettled for a long time.
The book argues for the study of cultural contexts and systems of meaning in suicide, and the role of agency. Although histories and philosophies are presented, what is needed is a cultural theory of suicide. Anthropology should be able to contribute to this. Agency has an ambivalent position in the study of suicide, and Münster and Broz (in press) provide agency, personhood, and power as important anthropological concepts in suicide. This book is a valuable addition to the growing body of knowledge on the anthropology of suicide.