The suicide niche: Accounting for self-harm in a South Indian leprosy colony

Abstract

This article analyses the circumstances under which attempted suicide became an increasingly common possibility of thought and action among the young, healthy generation of people who had grown up in the South Indian leprosy community where I conducted long-term fieldwork, despite suicide remaining relatively uncommon amongst their leprosy-affected, and often physically disabled, parents and grandparents. Alert to the pitfalls of analytical approaches that either privilege over-arching structural explanations—like those favoured by Durkheim—or, conversely, give too much credence to individual agency and psychology, my analysis here attempts to chart a course through these polarities. It does so by drawing both on Ian Hacking’s ‘ecological niche’ metaphor—to explore how particular configurations of events and circumstances, at different times, might render suicide related behaviour more or less likely among different groups; and on Pierre Bourdieu’s notion of the ‘habitus’—to consider how particular sets of bodily dispositions might generate certain styles of attempted suicide and self-harm.

Examining the Interplay Among Family, Culture, and Latina Teen Suicidal Behavior

“…Future research is needed that includes girl and boy participants to assess the gender dynamics that shape suicidal behavior. Current research in this area suggests that gender affects the modality by which attempted suicide occurs and the reasons for choosing to end one’s life (Niehaus, 2012; Owens & Lambert, 2012; Staples, 2012), although such conclusions generally come from studies of adult populations. Research with teens across genders would contribute to our understanding of the gendered, developmental, and social dimensions of suicidal behavior.…”

Gendered Endings: Narratives of Male and Female Suicides in the South African Lowveld

“…Narratives of suicide foreground concerns about the precarious future of young men. Very much as the situation in Western Samoa (C. and L. MacPherson 1987) and in India (Staples 2012), there was a widening gap in South Africa between young men's expectations and opportunities. Given the inadequate schooling facilities, few youth had realistic hopes for advanced education.…”

Suicides, poisons and the materially possible: The positive ambivalence of means restriction and critical–critical global health

“…Poison is thus an ever-present danger in social life and the risk of being poisoned may come from either the actions of others or oneself. Drawing from his Telugu (south Indian) ethnography, Staples (2012) argues that the coalescence of motives and means in this way can be understood as giving rise to a suicide ‘niche’, within which suicidal practices become almost inevitable and can appear at epidemic proportions as people become part of, and are shaped to respond in certain ways due to, the niche. I push Staples’ argument further, to suggest that suicide becomes possible as a social practice only when the material conditions of poison (that is – poison across social, moral, and chemical registers) configure in specific kinds of ways, during moments of relational crisis (Widger, 2015b).…”