Queensland Aborigines,Multiple Realities and the Social Sources of Suffering Part 2 Suicide,Spirits and Symbolism

ABSTRACT This is the second part of a paper that explores a range of magico‐religious experiences such as immaterial voices and visions, in terms of local cultural, moral and socio‐political circumstances in an Aboriginal town in rural Queensland. This part of the paper explores the political and cultural symbolism and meaning of suicide. It charts the saliency of suicide amongst two groups of kin and cohorts and the social meaningfulness and problematic of the voices and visions in relation to suicide, to identity and family forms and to funerals and a heavily drinking lifestyle. I argue that voices and visions are used to reinterpret social experience and to establish meaning and that tragically suicide evokes connectivity rather than anomie and here cannot be understood merely as an individualistic act or evidence of individual pathology. Rather it is about transformation and crossing a threshold to join an enduring domain of Aboriginality. In this life world, where family is the highest social value and where a relational view of persons holds sway, the individualistic practice of psychiatric and other helping professions, is a considerable problem.     

史料所见的日本切腹式自杀

切腹自杀是日本人的特殊自杀方式。在死亡模式中,自杀问题尤为学者关注,而日本人所追求的死亡方式,是理解日本历史及日本人性格的一把钥匙。大量史书及文学作品的描述,无疑也证实了这种死亡方式在日本影响深远。     

《被偷换的孩子》的人物与主题

日本作家大江健三郎的近作《被偷换的孩子》,是一部因自杀的友人而完成、揭示日本现行社会精神危机的作品。忧心忡忡的大江健三郎通过changeling这个形象警示人们,在这个世界上越来越多的人内心里美好的东西正在被戈布林们盗走,有形无形的暴力正威胁着现今的世界和平与文明模式。     

爱国运动中的自杀事件报道与社会动员:1919-1928年

现代中国的爱国运动能发展为大规模的群众性运动,与媒体参与的社会动员密切相关。1919—1928年爱国运动中,一些爱国者为了抗议外侮、动员民众,愤极自杀。在一些爱国运动组织者的呼吁下,媒体对自杀事件的信息有选择地报道,彰显自杀行动的社会动员价值,向民众传播爱国运动的思想和主张,引导社会舆论的走向,并将公众注意力吸引到运动中最需要解决的问题之上,以此增强民众对团结御侮、一致对外的认同感,进而推动爱国运动向良性的、纵深的方向发展。通过媒体报道,自杀事件成了爱国运动中的公共事件。媒体对自杀事件的报道,也逐渐成为现代意义上爱国运动的有机组成部分。     

Killing Us Slowly: Pre‐Empting Suicide at a Women’s Hostel in Chennai

This paper draws on ethnographic research in Chennai to unpack the pre‐emptive logic that shapes anti‐suicide interventions at hostels—dormitories—for college‐going women in this city. Its central contention is that a concern for the production of a presumed future becomes, in hostels, a governmental technology that is used to limit young women’s lifeworlds in the present. These regimes of intervention reinforce the unliveability of attachments, intimacies and affects that popular discourse and scaled‐up demographic narrative associate with the potential for suicide. Building from this, the paper also shows that such regimes engender feelings of suffocation and attrition among the young women who live in hostels. “Being slowly killed”, as they call it, draws attention to suicide not as a spectacular event but as a site where the terms of everyday life are remade.     

A case for Sherlock Holmes: forensic investigation of a gunshot wound to the head dating from Victorian London

This is an investigation of a fatal gunshot wound that occurred over a century ago, in Victorian England. Records dating from 1900 show that it was regarded as suicide by officials of the time. Forensic, palaeopathological, and historical techniques are applied in order to determine whether the manner of death was suicide, murder, or accident. Comparison of the projectile trajectory with modern forensic series suggests that this case is statistically more likely to have been a murder than a suicide. This raises the possibility that a killer successfully staged events to appear as if a suicide had taken place. A summary is given of the important points to consider when interpreting gunshot trauma to the head in skeletal remains. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Explaining Gun Deaths: Gun Control,Mental Illness,and Policymaking in the American States

Seeking to test two commonly proposed solutions to gun deaths in the United States, we examine the extent to which (1) tougher gun control laws, (2) greater access to mental health services, and (3) a combination of both approaches affect the rate of gun deaths in American states. We find that tougher gun control laws, as well as a combination of both approaches, are associated with a lower overall rate of gun deaths, and with a lower rate of nonsuicide gun deaths, while only tougher gun control laws are significantly associated with a reduction in the rate of gun-related suicides. Our findings serve as an initial guide to policymakers seeking to reduce the rate of gun deaths in their states.