Resource Tag: SOCIAL MEANINGS

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This article examines medico-legal & popular interpretations of suicide in early twentieth-century Lima. In this period, physicians & lawyers interpreted suicide though the lens of modern scientific & legal thought & came to challenge the traditional interpretations of the Church, which insisted that suicide was a voluntary act. For ordinary people, medico-legal discourse on suicide […]

Suicide has traditionally been viewed as a deviant act because it contributes to a climate in which individual life is devalued. Yet, as the author argues in this chapter, the line between suicide that is viewed as being justified (e.g. a person with a terminal illness) & suicide that is for the wrong reasons (e.g. […]

Drawing on 2 years of fieldwork at psychiatric institutions around Tokyo, the author examines how psychiatrists try to persuade patients of the pathological nature of their suicidal intentions & how patients respond to such medicalization. Psychiatrists’ ambivalent attitudes toward pathologizing suicide & how they limit their biomedical jurisdiction by treating only what they regard as […]

The author begins this study by examining the recent rise in suicide in Japan & the most common public explanations given for this. Cases of Internet suicide pacts are then examined, placing them within the context of suicide in Japan in general, & providing a representative selection of ethnographic findings from Japanese suicide-related websites. Findings […]

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The number of suicides in Japan in 2007 is expected to exceed 30,000 for the tenth year in a row. This article cites critics who say this figure is proof that national efforts to prevent suicide are not working. These experts are urging the government to adopt better prevention measures but concede there are factors […]

This edited book explores suicide in early modern Europe. 10 papers from a variety of perspectives are presented, including: the judicial treatment of suicide in Amsterdam; suicide & the Vicar General in London; controlling the body of the suicide in Saxony; the suicidal mind & body: examples from northern Germany, suicidal murders in Stockholm; ambivalence […]

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This book addresses the author’s belief in the wilfulness suicide entails. She argues suicide is a meaningful gesture holding more than private significance, it is a public statement of autonomy. The first 3 essays survey cultural, intellectual, & historical attitudes that have deprived the act of suicide of its significance. Other essays explore the political […]

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The author discusses suicides which occurred in Germany at the end of World War II. He states the motivations of individuals dying by suicide were various & multi-faceted but what they had in common was a general feeling of insecurity & the lack of a future perspective. This article focuses on contemporary representations of suicide […]

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Please see SIEC #2007-0117 for the reference to Watt’s book.

This paper investigates philosophically the Japanese samurai notion & activity of seppuku, the traditional method of suicide among the warrior class. Seppuku follows prolonged physical, mental & social preparation, a period the author equates to physical training. The suicide of Yukio Mishima is discussed in this context. (10 refs.)

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