Culture, Suicide, and the Human Condition

Suicide is a puzzling phenomenon. Not only is its demarcation problematic but it also eludes simple explanation. The cultures in which suicide mortality is high do not necessarily have much else in common, and neither is a single mental illness such as depression sufficient to lead a person to suicide. In a word, despite its statistical regularity, suicide is unpredictable on the individual level. The main argument emerging from this collection is that suicide should not be understood as a separate realm of pathological behavior but as a form of human action. As such it is always dependent on the decision that the individual makes in a cultural, ethical and socio-economic context, but the context never completely determines the decision. It also argues that cultural narratives concerning suicide have a problematic double function: in addition to enabling the community to make sense of self-inflicted death, they also constitute a blueprint depicting suicide as a solution to common human problems.

Marja-Liisa Honkasalo is Professor of Culture and Health at the University of Turku, Finland. She has worked as Academy of Finland Research Fellow at the University of Helsinki, at the Helsinki Collegium for Advanced Study and as Professor in Medical Anthropology at the University of Linkoping, Sweden. She has been a visiting scholar at Harvard University and at La Sapienza, Rome. She has published monographs, edited volumes and numerous articles in international series on illness and death and has been awarded The Steve Polgar Professional Prize for the best article published in 2009 by the Society of Medical Anthropology of the American Anthropological Association (AAA).