From Public Culture to Personal Worth: A Sociological Inquiry into the Cultural Roots of Suicide

Introduction

While global suicide rates have dropped over the last 20 years, with many continents observing quite significant decreases (World Health Organization, 2022), this decline falls considerably short of the 33% global reduction target for 2030. Worse still, some countries have witnessed noticeable increases in their national suicide mortality. For instance, in the United States, suicide rates have risen most years since 2001 (Garnett and Curtin, 2023). Similarly, in 2019, England and Wales reported their highest suicide rates since 2000 for men and 2004 for women (Iacobucci, 2020). In Spain, the death rate due to suicide in 2022 was the most elevated since the Great Recession, with numbers rising for at least the past four years (Instituto Nacional de Estadística, 2023). Thus, despite efforts to predict and prevent suicide, it remains a cause for concern – and more so if suicide attempts, estimated at over 20 for every suicide death (World Health Organization, 2022), and the suffering of the bereaved are taken into consideration.

Although the phenomenon of suicide made an immense contribution to the development of sociology as a discipline thanks to Durkheim’s (2002 [1897]) study, contemporary sociology – with some exceptions (e.g. Abrutyn and Mueller, 2014, 2018; Chandler, 2019; Mills, 2022; Mueller and Abrutyn, 2016) – has mostly ignored this issue (Chandler, 2020; Mueller et al., 2021). However, sociology has the potential to contribute to research and practice by contextualising culturally and structurally the risk factors identified by other disciplines, such as psychology or psychiatry. This contextualisation can help explain why certain groups and settings are more prone to suicide than others. In other words, while medical disciplines are undoubtedly essential to alleviating suicidal distress for individuals who seek help, sociological research can focus upon the generative mechanisms driving said risk factors or cultural beliefs of when and for whom suicide may become an option (Abrutyn and Mueller, 2021; Chandler, 2020; Mueller et al., 2021). A deeper comprehension of both could reveal possibilities for transforming the cultural or structural milieu that renders suicide a possibility.

Thus, the present article contributes to the gradually growing body of sociological theory on suicide by discussing the role of culture in making some individuals vulnerable to suicide, a topic that has been relatively under-theorised thus far (Abrutyn and Mueller, 2018; Mueller et al., 2021). I draw upon the sociology of valuation (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Krüger and Reinhart, 2017; Lamont, 2000, 2012, 2018, 2019; Thévenot, 2014) that ‘documents patterns of inclusion/exclusion based on various bases of societal segmentation’ (Lamont, 2000: 241). Such sociology, in conjunction with other sources of cultural sociology (Bourdieu, 2000; Lizardo, 2004, 2017), facilitates a better understanding of the ties between macro-level public culture – embedded in and (re)produced through social relations and institutions – and micro-level personal culture embodied by individuals, and particularly, the circumstances under which the relationship between the two may lead to experiences of worthlessness and suicidal distress.

The insights outlined herein can also complement some of psychological theories concerning suicide. O’Connor and Kirtley (2018), for example, stress the importance of feeling worthless or humiliated/defeated, in which individuals find themselves entrapped with no perceived escape. Nevertheless, my focus on how social inequalities with their cultural and resource-based dimensions (Ridgeway, 2014) may shape these feelings, pushes their work forward and adds to our understanding of why people die by suicide. Similarly, Baumeister (1990) views suicide as a form of escape from self, wherein individuals perceive themselves as inadequate and guilty due to the disparity between their expectations and their actual outcomes. In this process, the individual becomes unable to envision a happy future, which ‘causes a reluctance to contemplate any future’ (Baumeister, 1990: 100). Although this perspective shares some similarities with the argument presented in this article, there are also some important differences.

In particular, I think through the gap between how an individual aspires to see oneself/be perceived by others, which is rooted in public notions of valuation, and their experiential reality of whether those aspirations are achievable, where the mismatch between the two may give rise to feelings of shame, anger and hopelessness. While the psychological theories mentioned earlier primarily focus on intra-individual processes, this article aims to explore inter- and supra-individual ones. Specifically, on the one hand, it analyses the role of public culture and institutions in shaping individuals’ aspirations and their outcomes – that is, whether they succeed or fail to meet their expectations – and on the other hand, analyses how the mismatch between the two may lead to suicidal distress. Although the focus of this article is on suicide, its implications extend to broader debates and concerns within the sociology of mental health.

In brief, in what follows, I examine the interplay between public and personal culture, focusing on how different orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, 2006) – such as domestic, industrial, or market, among others – influence individuals’ sense of purpose and shape their agency and future orientation (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Mische, 2009). I argue that these cultural frames, internalised through public culture, guide individuals’ aspirations and actions. By sacrifice and effort, individuals strive to achieve worthiness within these orders, consequently aligning their declarative aspirations (‘know-that’) with their nondeclarative dispositions (‘know-how’) (Lizardo, 2017). However, there is a possibility of an uncoupling between their declarative and nondeclarative personal culture – that is, between internalised cultural ideals and lived experiences – leading to a state of perceived unworthiness. This dissonance can progress into the hysteresis effect (Bourdieu, 2000; Doblytė, 2022; Strand and Lizardo, 2017; and see Note 1 of this article), where individuals lose their interest in the social world, and ultimately, belief in a meaningful future. As a result, feelings of shame, anger, or sadness may arise, making suicide seem like a possible escape from a seemingly eternal present devoid of future prospects. I conclude the article by discussing the significance of this argument for suicide prevention.

Public and Personal Culture: Categorisation, Valuation, and Worthiness

In social theory, culture is a concept of considerable ambiguity. It can be seen as ‘a delimited topic of analysis’ or as ‘a general resource for explanation’ (Lizardo, 2017: 88). In this article, culture is understood both as a system of symbols and as a practice, where each presupposes the other (Sewell, 1999). On the one hand, culture provides us with shared and relatively stable symbols and meanings about the world, which contribute to our feelings of continuity and coherence by enabling our engagement in social practice. On the other hand, this system of symbols and meanings ‘has no existence apart from the succession of practices that instantiate, reproduce, or [. . .] transform it’ (Sewell, 1999: 47). Given that human practices shape and are shaped by not only meanings but also by resource and power distributions, among others, any understanding of culture should always be probabilistic and relational, where the interaction between culture and social structure constrains or enables human agency, as well as cultural and structural change (Patterson, 2014; Sewell, 1999).

Implicit in this definition is that culture can be public, as in shared, enacted, and reproduced through social relations and institutions, on the one hand, and individual or personal, as in embodied and individualised cultural values, orientations, dispositions or associations, on the other (Lizardo, 2017). Such personal culture is acquired via the process of enculturation or experiential learning where, as Bourdieu (1990) argues, early experiences carry more weight. During the course of direct and indirect interactions with(in) social institutions in public and private spheres, as well as the consumption of public discourses, myths and symbols, cultural meanings are deeply and durably – yet dynamically – encoded and internalised/stored in our memory systems, and in turn become ‘a (relatively) enduring part of a person’s knowledge repertoire’ (Lizardo, 2017: 91).

Part of the learning process is our ability not only to establish uniformity, but also to differentiate and categorise people or objects (Sewell, 1999), ‘through which individuals perceive and make sense of their environment’ (Lamont et al., 2014: 583). These shared categorisations tend to be ordinal rather than nominal implying valuations that are internalised as abstract ideals of the valuable or desirable (Patterson, 2014) and that are then applied situationally to rank or evaluate one’s own or others’ behaviours, actions, and, in broader terms, lives. Thus the valuations ‘have political and ethical implications by defining how objects, practices, and people ought to be understood and valorised’ (Krüger and Reinhart, 2017: 277). Such categorisations and valuations are underpinned by hierarchies or orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, 2006; Lamont, 2019), which are plural, and may co-exist, conflict, or reinforce one another, and result in some being deemed ‘winners’, while others are ‘losers’.

Orders of worth can be viewed as overarching frames within public culture, which are then internalised as cultural orientations that guide our practices and perceptions (Lizardo, 2017). By establishing people’s worth, they justify and, in turn, provide stability and legitimation for social inequalities that go beyond material and non-material resources (Lamont, 2012; Lamont et al., 2014; Ridgeway, 2014). That is, whilst the accumulation of power and resources is crucial for rankings, this alone does not cement social inequalities. In order for racial, gender, or lifestyle inequalities to persist, with some categories recognised as ‘better’ or more worthy than others, the cultural element is key (Ridgeway, 2014). For example, certain occupations and lifestyles (such as academics) continue to enjoy a relatively high state of worth and recognition, despite their diminishing economic power in recent years. Similarly, even the most successful women (in politics, for example) may receive valuations that downplay their worth.

Given the shared and durable nature of culture, orders of worth are maintained and justified not only by the dominant, but also by the dominated (Lamont et al., 2014). This inculcation of largely taken-for-granted cultural frames – symbolic power, as Bourdieu (1990, 2000) names it – ultimately leads to their widespread acceptance, regardless of individuals’ resources, that is, their positions in the social structure. Higher states of worth are linked to higher investment or sacrifice: more continuous effort, more worth. This continuity of investment, and thus, fragility of worth, or thereupon deficiency, are critical to society accepting unequal states of worth as just (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Thévenot, 2014). In addition to the increased degree of happiness and well-being associated with higher worth, these states are also claimed to bolster the common good and therefore nurture the well-being of all, including the unworthy, thus further demonstrating the worth of the more valued categorisations.

Finally, whilst personally embodied and relationally enacted (consciously or not), systems of worth operate within the public culture and thus are supported and enabled by the aforementioned cultural channels, including institutions (Patterson, 2014). Although the first institution to powerfully shape one’s learning processes is the family, the state – through its redistributive policies and regulatory practices that control the definitions and functioning of the family, school, economy, and more – is likely to be the most significant influence. Not only does it impact individuals’ material and non-material resources; it also ‘wields immense power in shaping and legitimising systems of categorisation’ (Lamont et al., 2014: 585).

All of this, in turn, serves to justify some individuals’ higher positions in the orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Everyone desires to be worthy, but not everyone manages to reach such a valuation due to their lower effort or willingness to sacrifice for higher positions. Nevertheless, the formula does not always function as intended, giving rise to feelings of injustice (Thévenot, 2014), which, as will be discussed later, can enhance our understanding of the suffering experienced by those deemed unworthy. Before exploring this further, however, it is necessary to first address what or who is considered desirable or worthy.

Orders of Worth: What Matters Most for Ordinary People

Individuals have access to various dynamic states of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999, 2006), but not all of them are equally important in every context and situation. Multiple worlds of worth exist, each with its own rankings or orderings, which imply different degrees of worth and which emerge to varying extents across cultural settings. The most salient are at the same time those subject to the harshest surveillance by other group members, and that may entail the highest tolls in the case of failure. While we could argue for one universal principle of worthiness or, conversely, enumerate a lengthy list of forms of valuation, limiting this plurality to a few may enable us to ‘escape from the alternative between formal universalism and unlimited pluralism’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999: 365). This, however, does not deny the existence or emergence of other worlds of worth.

Firstly, interpersonal relations are the most valuable in the domestic world (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). The valuations herein entail a hierarchy of positions by which personal dependence/connectedness and tradition are maintained. Certain markers of masculinity – a father, a husband, a provider for and protector of the family – and femininity – a mother, a wife – distinguish those who are worthy in the domestic world. The more worthy sacrifice their own interests to bear the responsibility of maintaining the order and tradition (i.e. biological and social reproduction of the domestic world). Hence, those who do not make such an investment are less worthy (e.g. the childless).

While not exploring in depth, yet showing how some individuals struggling to achieve worthiness become vulnerable to suicide, we can consider several examples herein. An extreme yet culturally normative one is the custom of ritualised suicides by recently widowed women in India (becoming a sati). This act is perceived as the only way for these women to maintain their worthiness by remaining their husbands’ wives, even if in death, rather than living as a widow, which is a path to enduring shame and humiliation (Barbagli, 2015). We might also ask whether unmarried men die by suicide more frequently than married men, particularly those with children, due to weak social integration and, in Durkheim’s words (2002), excessive individualism – reflecting structural factors – or because they perceive themselves as unworthy men who fail to fulfil their roles of husband and father – indicating cultural ones. Alternatively, it could be that their (self-)perception of unworthiness leads to their exclusion, either by themselves or by others, thereby weakening social integration, which could hypothetically suggest the generative capacity of cultural forces over structural ones.

Here, Lamont’s (2000) analysis of how some blue-collar male workers put domestic worth above other sources of worth such as work demonstrates the centrality of the domestic world amidst these men’s weaker and more fragile worth as workers. Nevertheless, work or professional life ‘cannot be separated from family life’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 175), given that providing for the family is directly related to reaching a certain worth in this realm, or in other words, the industrial world. In this world, human worth is based on paid work, performance and productivity. And vice versa: a state of unworthiness or deficiency emerges from doing nothing useful, being unproductive, inactive or unemployed. Conditions that undermine individuals’ industrial worth – such as job loss or long-term unemployment (Classen and Dunn, 2012; Milner et al., 2014) – and, consequently, result in the state of unworthiness have been associated with an increased risk of death by suicide.

The ordering of worthiness in the industrial world – that is, the distinction between the more and less worthy – is based upon their control and responsibility over production and, in turn, over the future and its prediction (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). In other words, it may be argued that the ranking of beings in the industrial world is subject to the meaningfulness of their work (Laaser and Karlsson, 2022), which is not exclusive to highly skilled occupations but rather requires work relations that promote workers’ autonomy, dignity and recognition. Indeed, Cherlin (2019: 748) states that ‘the declining self-worth among the group we might call the working class’ is linked to ‘decreasing opportunity for stable, secure middle-skilled employment’. That is, the industrial worth of humanity ‘is threatened by the treatment of people as things’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 211) through, for example, poor work conditions, high employment insecurity, a lack of appreciation by others, or abusive treatment of workers. Through their analysis of employee suicides in the UK, Waters and Palmer (2021) highlight that work conditions (rather than the activity–inactivity opposition) such as unmanageable workloads or workplace bullying may impel people toward suicide as an alternative to their exhaustion, the latter resulting from their fragility of worth.

Besides the industrial world, the sphere of economic relations features another order of worth – market worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006), which, according to Lamont (2012, 2018, 2019), has outweighed other orders of worth under neoliberalism. This world is driven by individuals’ desires to compete/win and possess different objects, that is, by material success and consumption. Market worth, in turn, is measured by wealth and the possession of desirable and hence valuable items or lifestyles, which may include anything from houses and cars to luxury vacations and diplomas from particular institutions. The more one possesses, the more worthy a life one lives. The unworthy are thus those who fail to accumulate wealth and goods: ‘[l]acking any means of buying or selling, poor persons come close [. . .] to being deprived of the dignity of human beings in this world’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 197).

Mueller and Abrutyn’s (2016) empirical analysis of suicidal distress amongst middle-class adolescents in the USA may illustrate the weight of this world of worth. While adolescents’ and their parents’ expectations of academic achievements align with the logic of industrial worth, the strong emphasis on perfection – measured through particular markers of achievement such as admission to top universities – reveals the role of market worth. In such a context of self-reliance and individual success, ‘youths who are struggling to make it sometimes see suicide as their only escape’ (Mueller and Abrutyn, 2016: 893).

Similarly, Chua (2014) highlights how, under neoliberalism, the life projects of young, educated but lower-class Indians become strongly guided by aspirations of attaining material success and reaching standards of middle-class consumption (by going into debt if necessary), which can engender suicidal distress in many of these young people. These aspirations are reinforced by stories of success promoted in the public discourse. Yet, their own experiences of unemployment, economic instability, and isolation drastically contrast with such stories, leading to feelings of deficiency and inadequacy. As Lamont (2019: 674) states, ‘[t]o measure oneself everyday by the standards of middle-class consumption can only lead to self-destruction if the means of accessing this status are unattainable’.

The final three realms of worth – the world of inspiration, the world of fame/renown and the civic world – analysed by Boltanski and Thévenot (1999, 2006) appear to be less prevalent but nonetheless remain relevant. When they do emerge in the context of suicide, they tend to attract substantial media and public attention. In the world of inspiration, one’s worthiness and deficiency are not contingent upon recognition by others, as in other worlds, but rather are rooted in artistic creativity and imagination. This is not to discount the role of financial or public recognition, and thus worthiness in these respective worlds, as seen, for example, among artists. However, artists typically do not ‘see in their success the very bases of their work’s value or of their own’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 1999: 370). The suicides of artists such as Vincent van Gogh or Virginia Woolf, among others, might be partly attributed to their self-doubt regarding their worthiness as creators.

Nevertheless, the latter examples can also be discussed in the context of the world of fame or renown, where one’s worthiness depends on public recognition and esteem. Here, people are deemed worthy when they are famous and recognised. This recognition might be broad and popular, but also limited to a specific field. For instance, consider the case of Captain Ernie Blanchard’s suicide analysed by Lester (1997), where the public humiliation and the consequent risk of losing military reputation, coupled with threats to his industrial valuation, appear to have driven his decision.

Finally, in the civic world, worth is attached to collectives and human beings that belong to them. The worthy enjoy human dignity or ‘social value’, which is provided by civil rights and participation. In other words, the state of a full ‘serviceable citizen’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 80) is what distinguishes worthiness from deficiency. This classification can be related to ethnicity, gender, sexuality or disability, and as such, may open paths to worth in other orders by granting access to marriage for homosexual couples, to work for immigrants or for people with disabilities, amongst other avenues. Yet, social inclusion extends beyond mere legal rights by encompassing the broader societal and cultural acceptance of individuals who are respected as they are and can fully participate in social life. While rare in occurrence, self-immolation by political dissidents protesting against oppressive regimes in Socialist Europe (Swain, 2015) stand as stark examples of (un)worthiness within this civic world. Another instance of public self-immolation is described by Barbagli (2015), involving an Italian gay Catholic protesting against the Church’s homophobia. In such cases of death – whether public or private – civic unworthiness, where a particular social group is deprived of ‘social value’ and basic human dignity, both reinforces and is reinforced by deficiencies in the domestic world.

The latter case also points to the complexity and plurality of worlds where ‘human beings, unlike objects, can manifest themselves’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 215) and aim for worthiness. While feeling worthy or deficient in one order of worth does not necessarily directly dictate one’s worth in another order, transporting worth or deficiency from one world to another does frequently occur. This can provoke feelings of injustice among those who witness others benefiting from an undeserved ‘privilege’ or among those who experience an undeserved disadvantage in a certain world. This experience of unwarranted deficiency illustrates a mismatch between one’s expectations or striving for worthiness and one’s experiences or abilities to achieve the desired worthiness, which may generate suffering. However, as previous examples have already signalled, this discontinuity or mismatch may occur across a broader range of situations, the mechanism of which is theorised in the following section.

The Role of Personal Culture Duality in Individual Suffering

In order to understand how orders of worth may engender individual suffering, let us return to the concept of personal culture and its two ‘empirically and analytically distinct forms’ (Lizardo, 2017: 91). On the one hand, orders of worth as public culture, which is embedded, (re)produced and reinforced by institutions such as mass and social media, school, family, economy, or the state, are acquired/learnt by individuals and become part of individuals’ declarative personal culture – values, orientations, or worldviews. It is declarative in terms of its form and inculcation process: learnt through spoken and written language, as well as other symbolic systems (e.g. non-linguistic rituals or iconic symbols), stored in semantic memory, and generally consisting of impersonal ‘know-that’ propositions (Lizardo, 2017). For example, I know that hard work and effort lead to material and professional success (the veracity of this meritocratic worldview is beyond the scope of this article). Declarative personal culture is evoked for categorisation, judgement, valuation and, hence, assigning worth to oneself or others.

On the other hand, cognitive, emotive and bodily skills, dispositions and associations ‘built from repeated long-term exposure to consistent patterns of experience’ (Lizardo, 2017: 92) form nondeclarative personal culture. It is implicit and experiential ‘know-how’. After recurrent exposures and experiences shaped by public culture and structuring contexts: I know (albeit imperfectly) how to ‘act’ in an academic world so that I am accepted as an insider. Using the Bourdieusian perspective (Bourdieu, 2000; Lizardo, 2004), the distinction between declarative and nondeclarative personal culture aligns with the difference between habitus as an embodied classifying structure and habitus as a practical sense of the game. While discursively learnt, the former, once inculcated, tends to operate semi-automatically, frequently evoking the categorisation and valuation of people and behaviours in an unquestioned manner. In contrast, the latter represents a deeper and more enduring layer of habitus, capturing the experiential ‘internalisation of externality’ (the embodiment of ‘know-how’ as dispositions) and the ‘externalisation of internality’ (manifested through individual practices and actions) (Wacquant, 2016).

The implication of conceptualising personal culture as dual in nature is that the two formats ‘are partially (and in many cases completely) dissociable’ (Lizardo, 2017: 99). Generally, there is a stronger or weaker intraindividual harmonisation or coupling between them: between individuals’ expectations and aspirations encoded as declarative culture and their repeated experiences that form nondeclarative dispositions (Bourdieu, 1990, 2000; Lizardo, 2017). Some blips or misfires regularly occur (Bourdieu, 1990, 2000; Strand and Lizardo, 2017), but they usually do not impede ‘the production of a common-sense world, whose immediate self-evidence is accompanied by the objectivity provided by consensus on the meaning of practices and the world’ (Bourdieu, 1990: 58). That is, the coupling between declarative and nondeclarative personal culture is reinforced by public culture and structuring contexts that shape an individual’s space of possibilities (Bourdieu, 2000; Doblytė, 2022; Strand and Lizardo, 2017).

Nevertheless, dissociability between the two types of personal culture also implies the possibility of their misalignment. Individuals may durably and experientially embody nondeclarative dispositions and skills that are structured by their environments but that clash harshly with their learnt declarative propositions. And thus the gap or disjuncture between their expectations and experiences becomes evident. Depending on ‘the extent of this gap and the significance attributed to it’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 149), such a mismatch may deepen into the state of hysteresis, ¹ which prompts a sense of indifference towards the social world, perceiving it as lacking interest and meaning. Some gaps or mismatches may be temporary and volatile, allowing individuals to adjust their expectations or find importance in other realms of life. However, it is when such a disjuncture is critical to one’s self-perception and becomes enduring, when it produces such friction that causes the social world to feel painful, that we term it hysteresis.

If we consider the embodiment of nondeclarative culture through the imagery of ‘when two neurons (or neuronal systems) fire together they wire together, and the more often they fire together the stronger the link becomes’ (Lizardo, 2017: 93), we can see how the learnt orders of worth with their ‘know-that’ may lead to chronic feelings of injustice and worthlessness. If one fails repeatedly, notwithstanding one’s effort or investment, the link between effort and failure becomes stronger and stronger. Yet, one has learnt through exposure to the world and a range of public examples that effort equals success, which may, in turn, lead to a self-perception of inadequacy and deficiency within a particular order of worth. The structural and institutional constraints that shape one’s nondeclarative dispositions relevant to the order of worth and, thus, objective chances of achieving worth usually escape discursive learning.

As Lamont (2018: 424) narrates, neoliberal scripts of the self (‘vocabularies’ encompassing shared world-images and ideals that guide social interaction) associate worth with consumption patterns ‘that are now out of reach for a growing segment of the population’, which, in turn, ‘condemn many to perceive themselves, and to be perceived by others, as “losers”’. In other words, for some individuals achieving a state of worth in a particular world is encoded in both declarative ‘know-that’ and nondeclarative ‘know-how’, whereas for others – usually occupying the dominated positions in social space as a whole (the macrocosm) or in a particular field (the microcosm) – such orders of worth form part of their ‘know-that’ cultural knowledge, but not of nondeclarative skills and dispositions (Lizardo, 2017). While they may ‘orient themselves to the objective existence of this culture (e.g. they know that it exists, they orient their strategies of action around this knowledge, and they even might know that other persons can use this culture proficiently)’ (Lizardo, 2017: 100), these individuals themselves continuously fail to fit the criteria of worth.

Such horizontal disjunctures (Decoteau, 2016) between the two forms of personal culture and the subsequent suffering may originate not only from the inaccessibility of worth in one or more order(s) of worth but also from the fragility of one’s worthiness (continuous need to reaffirm and secure one’s worth) and contradictory positions or demands between different orders of worth (apparently successful individuals in one sphere may also experience hysteresis due to their deficiencies in other orders of worth). Although positional suffering, as in the latter instances, may appear relative and less painful than the misery of condition or material deprivation, ‘using material poverty as the sole measure of all suffering keeps us from seeing [. . .] an unprecedented development of all kinds of ordinary suffering’ (Bourdieu, 1999: 4). That is, it is a question of one’s expected position and investment made in achieving it.

This situation exemplifies fatalistic suicide, arising from excessive regulation, which Durkheim (2002) considered as rare in contemporary society and hence dedicated only a footnote in his entire book. However, Bearman (1991) or Abrutyn and Mueller (2014, 2018) argue that it may be more common than its author anticipated. It is the suffering endured by those striving to be part of a group but whose ‘efforts succeed only in enslaving themselves to a normative ideal that is [. . .] fictive, because it is not sustained by an actual social relation’ (Bearman, 1991: 521). In the context of this article, worthiness or positive valuation is what enables feelings of belonging to a desirable group.

Finally, public culture may experience deep transformations because of sudden socioeconomic or political changes. Whilst individuals will readjust their discursive ‘know-that’ relatively quickly, requiring a rather small number of exposures, the transformation of nondeclarative culture is a longer-term process (Lizardo, 2017). That is, there is a lag between declarative and nondeclarative personal cultures. The depth and strength of this Don Quixote effect (Bourdieu, 2000) or vertical disjunctures (Decoteau, 2016) depends not only upon the force of external crises but also upon the individual’s initial position in their social world. Such transformative circumstances are frequently mentioned in the context of immense mortality due to suicide during the transition to democracy in the countries of the former USSR (Barbagli, 2015; Doblytė, 2022). Personal intra- or inter-individual crises – for example, bodily (illness) or relational (loss of social ties) – may also have similar effects and generate hysteresis.

Durkheim (2002) suggests that amidst these painful crises or abrupt transitions in society or one’s personal life individuals find themselves in a state of moral deregulation or anomie, understood as normlessness, where ‘the limits are unknown between the possible and the impossible, what is just and what is unjust, legitimate claims and hopes and those which are immoderate’ (2002: 213). This ‘liminal position between their memberships in the old world (which provide moral guidance) and the new (with a competing set of norms)’ (Bearman, 1991: 517) endangers feelings of uncertainty, disillusionment, and inadequacy. Abrutyn (2019), however, argues that anomie arises from disruptions – whether economic, political, relational or individual – and the subsequent disintegration of social bonds rather than deregulation. In other words, despite the transformations in one’s social world, cultural valuations – a form of moral regulation – remain as guiding principles of these social bonds.

Thus, the insights outlined herein add to the structural fatalism/anomie approach by emphasising the role of valuations and thus focusing on what disrupts social relationships, which is ‘equally as important as the process of disintegration itself’ (Abrutyn, 2019: 131). Analytically, the distinction between two personal cultures and the possibility of horizontal/spatial and vertical/temporal decoupling between them allows for the interplay where multiple disjunctures reinforce one another. While it is difficult to envision Durkheimian fatalistic suicide caused by excessive regulation, and anomic suicide resulting from deregulation, occurring simultaneously, considering them in terms of horizontal and vertical disjunctures or hysteresis makes such co-existence possible. All of this, nonetheless, raises the final question to be addressed in this article – why such a mismatch between declarative and nondeclarative personal culture might render individuals vulnerable to suicide.

The Loss of Belief in the Future and Suicide

Against the backdrop of discontinuity between declarative and nondeclarative personal culture brought about by inaccessibility or fragility of worth, some individuals may redefine their worth employing alternative definitions of worth. In such cases certain institutions grounded in religion, morality or local communities, for example, can play a key role. Meanwhile, others may simply exclude themselves from the inaccessible worlds of worth and, thus, from the social game itself, which is ‘social death and therefore an unthinkable option’ if one intends to be part of the social world, Bourdieu (2000: 153) argues. Yet, reverting from the dominant orders of worth in today’s society and seeking alternatives may empower one to discover a substitute sociality, to a greater or lesser extent. I argue, however, that in the most severe cases of hysteresis the projective dimension of agency is lost, rendering neither of these resolutions – an alternative definition of worth or exclusion of oneself from the social game itself – necessarily effective, and making suicide a possibility. To further elaborate on this argument, it is first essential to consider the role of temporal dimension in understanding human agency.

Human agency as a culturally and ‘temporally embedded process of social engagement’ is informed by and oriented to the past (through habit and routines), the present (through practical evaluation of situations and contexts), and the future (through future projects and imaginaries) (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998: 963). All of these dimensions are typically active in any instance of action, though their influence and the degree of reflexivity involved may vary. Nevertheless, the orientation towards the future – encompassing its anticipation and active planning – can be argued to have become compulsory for full participation in contemporary society (Cantó-Milà and Seebach, 2024). This element of agency, although seemingly speculative, does impact individuals’ practices and their perceptions of the world’s responsiveness to their actions, particularly in conflicting and uncertain situations. In other words, regardless of their accuracy, future projections have consequences in the present (Adams et al., 2009; Cantó-Milà and Seebach, 2024; Mische, 2009). This dimension reveals itself in our aspirations, plans, hopes, fears or desires, in other words, via declarative personal culture (Lizardo, 2017) and differs from the assessment of and choosing between directly available alternatives:

The locus of agency here lies in the hypothesisation of the future [. . .] Immersed in a temporal flow, they move ‘beyond themselves’ into the future and construct changing images of where they think they are going, where they want to go, and how they can get there from where they are at present. (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998: 984)

Projectivity, in turn, is intrinsic to maintaining and nurturing an interest or belief in the social world, which is ‘what gives “sense” (both meaning and direction) to existence by leading one to invest in a game and in its forth-coming [son à venir]’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 207). The less conflictual the experiences are compared to expectations (that is, the more certain one’s existence and worth appear), the stronger the belief and the greater ‘the degree of detail and clarity with which the future is imagined’ tend to be (Mische, 2009: 700). Yet, if investment (repeatedly) fails to give individuals access to the desirable (worthiness), future projections and forthcomings may appear contracting and even ‘approaching closure’ (Mische, 2009: 700). The loss of the future results in the loss of interest in the game. It is ‘an extreme form of alienation from oneself and the world’ (Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019: 121), which may affect people not only in the dominated positions but also those in relatively secure and privileged ones since the desirable is contingent upon expectations learnt via exposures to the public culture and filtered by structuring contexts.

Through stories of white men who resorted to violence against themselves or others, Chandler (2019), indeed, reveals how their expectations and anticipations of domestic (a husband, a father) or industrial (stable employment) worth clashed with their experiences, which rendered such states of worth inaccessible and this was ‘particularly difficult to bear for men – white men, in mid-life, in the UK – who, because of historical, structural conditions of patriarchy and colonialism might otherwise expect to have achieved (have felt entitled to) certain markers of status’ (Chandler, 2019: 1358). This research demonstrates how individuals in relatively privileged positions – in terms of gender and race – may experience existential marginalisation, that is, ‘movements towards isolation and away from the future’ (Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019: 124).

Without any future orientation, the present can seem eternal, and thus, feelings of unworthiness and of living an unliveable life become unbearably painful. Imagine, if you will, a different situation: a professional woman experiencing motherhood for the first time. Amidst the sleep deprivation and constant demands on her time, she finds herself struggling to excel as both a mother and a high-achieving professional. The professional recognition and future success she once anticipated now seem to be slipping away, while motherhood does not provide the fulfilment she expected. While feeling an obligation to love her new role as a mother, she is overwhelmed by shame, anger and sadness, blaming herself for her choices and failures. As the future she envisioned slips further from her reach, she feels a profound sense of closure and despair, unable to reconcile her aspirations with her current reality.

A study by Marzetti et al. (2022) provides another illustration of this temporal dimension by analysing experiences of suicidal distress among young LGBT+ individuals. The researchers demonstrate how such distress may be fomented by the unattainability of domestic worth as a daughter, a son or a friend. The interiorisation of public culture as declarative expectations mismatches individuals’ nondeclarative dispositions, and a critical dissonance arises: they ‘know that’ they should fit in, but they do not ‘know how’ to do that. The inability to reconcile these internalised cultural expectations with their lived realities results in ‘feelings of isolation, rejection, being unwanted and not belonging’ (Marzetti et al., 2022: 7), ultimately eroding these young individuals’ belief in a viable future.

Orders of worth are, therefore, frames ‘through which we view and interpret what is yet to come’ (Cantó-Milà and Seebach, 2024: 305). They enable us to live together and strive for greater well-being, but ‘specifying the value that one ascribes to life involves marking the limits beyond which life would be meaningless, hence delimiting and binding life’s value’ as well (Livne, 2021: 897). Under circumstances wherein belief in the future through projective agency vanishes, emotions such as entrapment, hopelessness, shame, anger or deep sadness surface. Individuals experience existential marginalisation (Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019), which, I argue, may render suicide a possibility. Whilst the cultural scripts of suicide – its acceptability/permissibility, meanings and methods – vary across contexts (Doblytė, 2022; Kral, 2020), the idea itself, to a greater or lesser degree, exists and is transmitted culturally almost universally.

Figure 1 presents this causal chain progressing from conflicting declarative and nondeclarative personal cultures to the consideration of suicide as a possibility, though the model still requires further refinement. For instance, the direction of the relationship between the negative affect and the closure of possible futures remains a question that will need empirical validation in the future. Similarly, the relationship between hysteresis and the state of unworthiness may not be strictly unidirectional; hysteresis could deepen one’s position and experience of unworthiness.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

The progression from cultural valuation to suicide.

Among the aforementioned emotions, shame emerges as particularly powerful, involving feelings of inadequacy, failure or embarrassment/humiliation for not meeting expectations (Abrutyn, 2019; Abrutyn and Mueller, 2014; Mokros, 1995) and engendering ‘a desire to hide, disappear, or die’ (Lester, 1997: 352). Consisting of sadness about self, anger at self, and fear about/anticipation of the consequences to self, this emotion is so painful that it is frequently repressed, only to manifest as intense sadness, anger and even violence (Turner, 2010). Kalafat and Lester (2000), for example, examine the case of a recently widowed woman’s suicide attempt, emphasising how her feelings of betrayal and unworthiness as a wife and a community member led to pervasive sense of inadequacy and shame. This profound emotional turmoil ultimately drove her to consider suicide as an escape from a painful present devoid of a hopeful/valuable future. The higher an individual’s expectations for success or worthiness across different worlds of worth, the stronger the shame and its accompanying feelings when failing to achieve or maintain such worthiness.

Since ‘shamed and humiliated people will not have the confidence to secure other resources’ (Turner, 2010: 189) that could ensure their value in other orders of worth, the vicious cycle is created, reinforcing negative and painful emotions. Therefore, in order to maintain one’s belief and interest in the game through one’s future orientation and projections, ‘the agent has to have chances of winning which are neither nil (losing on every throw) nor total (winning on every throw)’ (Bourdieu, 2000: 213). In the worlds of worth, this means that everyone should have the chance to access different states of worth, which must not be permanently assigned to particular people or groups – hence, the principle of common dignity (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Such status, however, is frequently unattainable to individuals in certain positions.

In sum, hysteresis – a mismatch between aspirations to reach a desired state of worth and experiences of failing to get there – may gradually erode projective agency and, consequently, the future. The loss of future entails a decay of interest in the social world. This is how suicide may enter the space of possibilities. Through an analysis of this loss and of existential marginalisation that arises instead of it, I have therefore delved into the question of ‘how people experience their lives as possibilities in light of death’ (Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019: 129), wherein under certain circumstances death may become a more attainable option than a liveable life.

On Prevention

Approaching the topic of suicide as an option made possible by orders of worth, which are inculcated as declarative personal culture and whose attainability is contingent upon the culturally laden institutional structures, facilitates a better understanding of suicide across the plurality of contexts by analysing how people perceive (self-)worth. Rather than focusing on the individual as the exclusive locus of suicide, exploring cultural mechanisms and structural constraints ‘enable[s] other possibilities for understanding and responding to suicide’ (Bryant and Garnham, 2015: 69). This may result in contextualised preventive strategies that focus on the link between the individual and the social rather than individualising suicide through the discourse of mental illness (Mills, 2022). I propose that this can be accomplished by diversifying orders of worth so that more individuals can feel valuable (declarative ‘know-that’), as well as by providing objective opportunities to achieve worthiness across the existing orders (nondeclarative ‘know-how’). Both courses of action could contribute to the preservation of projective agency, and therefore, an interest or belief in the social world as well.

Expanding the avenues for attaining worthiness could reinforce the principle of common dignity, that is, supposing investment or effort, every human being should have access to a state of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006). Diversification of criteria of worth may be achieved via cultural scripts fostering new narratives about possible selves and transmitted through different channels of public culture (written and spoken stories, among others) (Lamont, 2019). Alternative definitions of worth ‘such as those grounded in group identity, morality, religion, aesthetic performance, or self-actualisation’ (Lamont, 2012: 211) would then become part of declarative personal culture and, in turn, facilitate alignment between aspirations and nondeclarative dispositions. Expanded orders of worth may thus enable individuals to see their worth beyond production, consumption or traditionally understood ‘success’ in personal relationships.

Deeply cultural, institutions contribute to such diversification of worth. By means of public policies and law, institutions can objectively alleviate suffering generated by material deprivation, unfair work conditions, meaninglessness of work or other causes. That is, they may expand or contract individuals’ objective chances and, thus, possibilities to achieve worth. Direct social transfers, for example, alleviate material suffering and empower individuals to provide for their families, incrementing/securing their positions in the domestic world. Through such interventions, institutions also ‘send messages about who belongs, who matters and who is worthy’ (Lamont, 2019: 663). Thus, public policies and law contribute to both sides of the equation – expectations and experiences – enhancing complicity between them and diminishing the possibility of severe hysteresis. Hence, they may provide hope for the future and, as such, protect projective agency.

One such powerful instance, which demonstrates the possible effects of public and legal policies, is demonstrated by the study of Raifman et al. (2017) in the USA. The authors find an association between the legalisation of same-sex marriage at the state level and reductions in adolescent suicide attempts – decreases that were primarily concentrated amongst high-school students self-identifying as LGBT+. Given that the legalisation by itself would hardly have a direct effect on adolescent lives (it is unlikely that such young people would marry immediately as a result of it), this example of ‘destigmatising the stigmatised’ (Lamont, 2019) illustrates how public interventions may expand who is valued by means of increasing visibility and re-qualifying as relevant and worthy a certain social group (i.e. granting civic worth in this case).

Similarly, there is evidence indicating that economic policies such as increases in the minimum wage can play a role in preventing suicide among adults with lower educational levels (Gertner et al., 2019; Kaufman et al., 2020). That is, by improving individuals’ work conditions, or more specifically, work dignity (Laaser and Karlsson, 2022) through fairer pay, such policies not only improve the material conditions of workers’ lives but also make them feel more worthy. In contrast, an analysis by Mills (2022) highlights a different dynamic, where the welfare state’s discourse of burden may reinforce feelings of unworthiness, particularly among those who are unemployed (i.e. inactive, unproductive), and as such, contribute to an increased risk of suicidality.

Institutions may also correct effects caused by the transport of deficiency: when struggling to achieve worth in one order becomes a hindrance in another order of worth, making it less attainable notwithstanding nondeclarative skills and investment. Policies should therefore aim ‘to neutralise the effects of the burden by a compensatory move that takes the handicap into account’ (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006: 222). Well-designed work–family reconciliation policies exemplify such institutional efforts. They enable parents, and particularly mothers, who otherwise struggle to achieve work–family balance thereby endangering their worthiness in both worlds, to maintain their well-being and worthiness within the family without abandoning the industrial world. By means of such policies, institutions (the state or companies) also acknowledge individuals’ worth as caregivers/family members (Lamont, 2019) – a world that frequently loses its value in the light of market or industrial worth.

In sum, the perspective presented herein does not argue against suicide per se. It is a respectable and dignified way of dying under circumstances that an individual considers unliveable. That is, both ‘pro-life’ and ‘pro-choice’ voices should be accepted as legitimate and afforded due attention (Marsh et al., 2022). Yet, making more lives worthy of living, which must be informed by lived experiences as a form of knowledge (Marsh et al., 2022; Mills, 2022), is a valuable objective. To this end, I suggest that cultural and institutional approaches go hand in hand. They can be designed to avoid suicidal distress rather than identify individuals already at risk of suicide, and thus, should complement preventive strategies in healthcare.

Conclusion

This study connects public and personal culture (Lizardo, 2017; Patterson, 2014) and argues that orders of worth (Boltanski and Thévenot, 2006; Lamont, 2012, 2019) – domestic, industrial, market, civic and others – dominant within public culture and learnt by individuals, influence human agency, and specifically, projectivity. By making an investment through effort and sacrifice, individuals strive to achieve worthiness in such orders and to secure greater well-being and happiness than those who invest less and, as such, are deficient in worthiness. That is, there is a harmonisation between declarative aspirations of worth and nondeclarative experiences/dispositions to act in determinate ways (Lizardo, 2017). Yet, some individuals – particularly in the dominated positions within social space as a whole or within certain fields – durably and experientially embody nondeclarative dispositions and associations that differ dramatically from their learnt discursive orders of worth. This dissonance, in turn, brings about the state of unworthiness, despite the efforts of these individuals.

This decoupling between the two personal cultures – declarative ‘know-that’ and nondeclarative ‘know-how’ – can lead to the hysteresis effect (Doblytė, 2022), where future-oriented agency based on future projections, imaginaries, and anticipations (Emirbayer and Mische, 1998; Mische, 2009; Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019) vanishes, and an interest or belief in the social world is lost. The state of unworthiness that individuals experience as permanent and/or undeserved, and consequently, of hysteresis fosters feelings of shame, anger, or sadness. In such a context, suicide may emerge as a possibility, as it seems to represent an escape from the seemingly eternal present without a future. This argument also demonstrates how individuals who may appear successful and dominant can also be vulnerable to suicide. Feeling worthy in one order of worth does not automatically translate to worth in other orders, nor does it mean that such positions are not fragile. Under such constant pressure, the belief in the future may fade.

Thus, while suicide is frequently defined as irrational and pathological, the present article argues that it is an agentic action to permanently and effectively change one’s reality and it should be understood as a culturally laden political issue rather than individual one (Mills, 2022). The argument herein may also inform suicide prevention that is more contextualised and better crafted to make more lives liveable rather than focusing exclusively on individuals and their pathology. Diversifying the narratives of worthiness in public culture, coupled with institutional approaches that may both expand orders of worth and provide individuals with the means to achieve such worthiness, are outlined as two possible directions for such preventive interventions.

While the proposed framework offers a nuanced perspective for interpreting suicide sociologically, it is not without its limitations. These gaps not only highlight the need for a more comprehensive understanding but also point to future research directions. First, a systematic analysis of the presented argument in relation to other sociological and psychological theories on suicide was beyond the scope of this article. However, such an examination could reveal how it complements or contrasts with existing theories, which may potentially suggest promising avenues for empirical research. The second point is closely related to the latter. The measurement of declarative and nondeclarative culture has been the subject of considerable debate (see more in Mohr et al., 2020). Declarative cultural ideals – including individuals’ aspirations, desires, and expectations – are inherently discursive and thus more easily captured through surveys and interviews, which can also explore individuals’ feelings and perceptions about possible futures. In the meantime, nondeclarative dispositions operate in more unconscious ways and are more challenging to measure. This highlights the need for further exploration regarding the operationalisation and validation of the framework.

To conclude, this article contributes to critical suicide research by proposing an aetiological account of suicide that situates its motives within culturally embedded social relations that shape an individual’s circumstances and experiences. It links public and personal culture and theorises how cultural practices, along with structural constraints and institutions that are thoroughly cultural, influence ‘orientations to the future as well as result in their unequal realisation’ (Nielsen and Skotnicki, 2019: 129). Given that sociology has been relatively silent on this matter (Chandler, 2020; Mueller et al., 2021), I also argue for the discipline’s relevance and potential for understanding, explaining and preventing suicide. The social world – with its meanings and symbols, as well as structural forces – matters to individual experiences of psychological pain, self-worth, and overall well-being.