By leveraging the case of Hindu sati, this paper elucidates the ways in which structure and culture condition suicidal behavior by way of social psychological and emotional dynamics. Conventionally, sati falls under Durkheim's discussion of altruistic suicides, or the self-sacrifice of underindividuated or excessively integrated peoples like widows in traditional societies. In light of the fact that Durkheim's interpretation was based on uneven data, nineteenth century Eurocentric beliefs, and a theoretical framework that can no longer resist modification and elaboration, by (...) reconsidering sati it is possible to sketch a new model that strengthens Durkheim's theory by making it more robust and generalizable. The following model is built on five principles. First, integration and regulation are not distinct causal forces, but overlapping contextual conditions. Second, to better explain the variation in suicidality across time and space, we must also pay attention to culture as it provides the underlying meanings of suicide that can increase the odds a person or class of persons become suicidal or are protected against suicidality. Third, structure still matters, but in many cases, the role power and power-differentials play must be considered. Fourth, understanding why and how people choose suicide depends on incorporating identity and status processes. Fifth, because the expression of social emotions like shame are patterned by structural and cultural conditions, to understand how suicidality is socioculturally patterned we must further explore the link between identity/status, social emotions, and structure and culture. (shrink)

Drawing on diverse theoretical and textual sources, The Gender of Suicide presents a critical study of the ways in which contemporary society understands suicide, exploring suicide across a range of key expert bodies of knowledge. With attention to Durkheim's founding study of suicide, as well as discourses within sociology, law, medicine, psy-knowledge and newsprint media, this book demonstrates that suicide cannot be understood without understanding how gender shapes it, and without giving explicit attention to the manner in which prevailing claims (...) privilege some interpretations and experiences of suicide above others. (shrink)

We live, according to some, in the century of biology, where we now understand ourselves in radically new ways as the insights of genomics and neuroscience have opened up the workings of our bodies and our minds to new kinds of knowledge and intervention. Is a new figure of the human, and of the social, taking shape in the 21st century? With what consequences for the politics of life today? And with what implications, if any, for the social, cultural and (...) human sciences? These are the issues that are discussed in this article, which argues that a new relation is requred with the life sciences, beyond commentary and critique, if the social and human sciences are to revitalize themselves for the 21st century. (shrink)

This article focuses upon the disagreement between Nancy Fraser and Axel Honneth about how to characterize the relation between social suffering and recognition struggles. For Honneth, social and political conflicts have their source in the "moral" wounds that arise from the myriad ways in which the basic human need for recognition is disregarded in unequal societies. Fraser criticizes Honneth for the uncritical subjectivism of his account of social suffering that reduces social oppression to psychic harm. Fraser therefore redefines misrecognition not (...) as a psychological injury but as "status subordination" understood as institutionalized patterns of discrimination and value inequality. My central argument is that while Fraser's critique of Honneth's subjectivist construal of recognition is largely justified, she falls into a counterveiling objectivism that prevents her from developing some of the central insights of her own paradigm. Her "non-identarian" rendering of recognition leads her to abandon an experiential or interpretative perspective that is associated with the idea of identity and, as a result, she cannot explain certain crucial aspects of political agency. Pierre Bourdieu's notion of habitus is used to indicate a way beyond the naturalization of the cluster of emotions associated with social suffering that seems to be the inevitable consequence of Honneth's "ontology" of recognition. At the same time, the experiential emphasis of habitus mitigates the objectivism of Fraser's dualist paradigm showing how some of its central insights can be taken further through a materialist redefinition of identity and agency. (shrink)

In an original and provocative study of suicide, Ian Marsh examines the historical and cultural forces that have influenced contemporary thought, practices and policy in relation to this serious public health problem. Drawing on the work of French philosopher Michel Foucault, the book tells the story of how suicide has come to be seen as first and foremost a matter of psychiatric concern. Marsh sets out to challenge the assumptions and certainties embedded in our beliefs, attitudes and practices concerning suicide (...) and the suicidal, and the resulting account unsettles and informs in equal measure. The book will be of particular interest to researchers, professionals and students in psychology, history, sociology and the health sciences. (shrink)

Suicide has long been the subject of philosophical, literary, theological and cultural–historical inquiry. But despite the diversity of disciplinary and methodological approaches that have been brought to bear in the study of suicide, we argue that the formal study of suicide, that is, suicidology, is characterized by intellectual, organizational and professional values that distinguish it from other ways of thinking and knowing. Further, we suggest that considering suicidology as a “social practice” offers ways to usefully conceptualize its epistemological, philosophical and (...) practical norms. This study develops the idea of suicidology as a social practice and considers the implications for research, practice and public discourse. (shrink)

This collection of essays and reviews represents the most significant and comprehensive writing on Shakespeare's A Comedy of Errors. Miola's edited work also features a comprehensive critical history, coupled with a full bibliography and photographs of major productions of the play from around the world. In the collection, there are five previously unpublished essays. The topics covered in these new essays are women in the play, the play's debt to contemporary theater, its critical and performance histories in Germany and Japan, (...) the metrical variety of the play, and the distinctly modern perspective on the play as containing dark and disturbing elements. To compliment these new essays, the collection features significant scholarship and commentary on The Comedy of Errors that is published in obscure and difficulty accessible journals, newspapers, and other sources. This collection brings together these essays for the first time. (shrink)

In his classical paper C. Wright Mills suggests a novel view of the motives within the framework of sociology of knowledge. Contrasting an approach of sociology of knowledge to subjectivistic understanding of the motives as outer manifestation of the inner elements, Mills locates a particular types of action within typical frames of normative actions and socially situated clusters of motive. Motives is something that is imputed and avowed by actors, therefore it is necessary to consider, first, how different motives are (...) assigned by different actors to themselves and others in certain social and historical situations, and second, how different vocabularies of motive conflict with each other and replace each other over time. In this case motives are not a manifestations of some inner impulses but a justifications of the behavior. (shrink)