Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T20:41:51.486Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Ultimate Withdrawal: suicide among the Sara Nar

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Ellen Patterson Brown
Get access

Extract

Despite Durkheim's powerful argument that suicide is caused by social forces only (Durkheim 1966), recent studies have viewed suicide as resulting from a combination of psychological and environmental factors, as springing from the suicide's personality conjoined with his immediate social setting. ‘Suicide is both a personal and a social act’ (Reynolds and Farberow 1976: 33). Social forces alone cannot explain why only a few people commit suicide nor can psychological factors by themselves provide the necessary set of conditions for individual suicides. Certain syndromes are widespread: illness, loneliness, bereavement, shame lead to suicide in many parts of the world. But each society's structure and institutions determine the environmental setting and constellations involved in suicide. How does the society regard illness? Who will be lonely? In what relationships is loss most sharply felt? What constitutes shame? Social forces define the various trouble spots and categories and groups of people most at risk in the society. Their interplay with psychological factors outlines who will commit suicide.

Type
Comprendre Les Cas Extrêmes
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 22 , Issue 2 , December 1981 , pp. 198 - 228
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1981

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Angell, R. C. 1949, Moral integration and interpersonal integration, American Sociological Review, XIV, 245–251.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Aron, R. 1979, Foreward, in Baechleb, J., Les suicides2 (Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1981).Google Scholar
Baechlek, J. 1981, Les suicides, op. cit.Google Scholar
Berndt, R. 1962, Excess and Restraint: social control among a New Guinea mountain people (Chicago, University of Chicago Press).Google Scholar
Bohannan, P. 1960, African Homicide and Suicide (Princeton, Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Breed, W. 1963, Occupational mobility and suicide among white males, American Sociological Review, XXVIII, 179–88.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Cavan, R. S. 1965, Suicide (New York, Russell and Russell).Google Scholar
Devereux, G. 1961, Mohave Ethnopsychiatry and Suicide: the psychiatric knowledge and the psychiatric disturbances of an Indian tribe (Washington, Bureau Am. Eth.), Bulletin 175.Google Scholar
Douglas, J. 1967, The Social Meaning of Suicide (Princeton, Princeton University Press).Google Scholar
Durkheim, É. 1966, Suicide: a study in sociology (New York, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Elwin, V. 1950, Maria Murder and Suicide (Bombay, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Fallers, L. A. and M. C., . 1960, Homicide and suicide in Busoga, in Bohannan, P. (ed.), op. cit. pp. 65–93.Google Scholar
Farberow, N. 1975, Suicide in Different Cultures (Baltimore, University Park Press).Google Scholar
Faris, R. 1955, Social Disorganization (New York, Ronald Press).Google Scholar
Fortune, R. 1963, Sorcerers of Dobu (New York, E. P. Dutton & Co).Google Scholar
Gibbs, J. and Martin, W. 1964, Status Integration and Suicide: a sociological study (Eugene, University of Oregon Press).Google Scholar
Giddens, A. 1964, Suicide, attempted suicide, and the suicidal threat, Man 136–137, 115–6.Google Scholar
Ginsberg, R. B. 1966, Anomie and Aspirations: a reinterpretation of Durkheim's theory (Ph. D. Thesis, Columbia University, 1966), Diss. Abstracts 27 (A), p. 3945.Google Scholar
Henry, A. and Short, J. 1954, Suicide and Homicide: some economic, sociological and psychological aspects of agression (Glencoe, The Free Press).Google Scholar
Hoskin, J., Friedman, M. and Cawte, J. 1969, A high incidence of suicide in a preliterate-primitive society, Psychiatry, XXXII, 200–10.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Jeffreys, M. 1952, Samsonic suicide or suicide of revenge among Africans, African Studies, XI, 118–22.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Johnson, B. 1965, Durkheim's one cause of suicide, American Sociological Review, XXX, 875–86.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
La Fontaine, J. 1960, Homicide and suicide among the Gisu, in Bohannan, P. (ed.), op. cit. pp. 94–129.Google Scholar
La Fontaine, J. 1975, Anthropology, in Perlin, S. (ed.), op. cit. pp. 77–91.Google Scholar
Lester, D. and G., 1971, Suicide. The gamble with death (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice Hall).Google Scholar
Lester, D. 1972, Why People Kill Themselves (Springfield, Charles C. Thomas).Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1916, Baloma: the Spirits of the dead in the Trobriand islands, FRAI, XLVI, 353–450.Google Scholar
Malinowski, B. 1949, Crime and Custom in Savage Society (London, Routledge & Kegan Paul).Google Scholar
Maris, R. 1969, The Social Forces in Urban Suicide (Homewood, III., Dorsey Press).Google Scholar
Merton, R. K. 1938, Social Structure and Anomie, American Sociological Review, III, 672–82.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Patterson Brown, E. 1976, Family and Village Structure of the Sara Nar (Ph. D. Thesis, University of Cambridge).Google Scholar
Perlin, S. 1975, A Handbook for the Study of Suicide (New York, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Porterfield, A. L. 1949, Indices of suicide and homicide by states and cities, American Sociological Review, XIV, 481–490.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Powell, E. 1970, The Design of Discord: studies of anomie (New York, Oxford University Press).Google Scholar
Reynolds, D. and Farberow, N. 1976, Suicide Inside and Out (Berkeley, University of California Press).Google Scholar
Wilson, G. M. Homicide and suicide among the Joluo of Kenya, in Bohannan, P. (ed.), op. cit. pp. 179–213.Google Scholar