Max-Planck-Institut für ethnologische Forschung
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology
Workshop
Suicide and Agency
10 – 11 November 2011
Organisers:
Venue:
Ludek Broz and Daniel Münster
Max Planck Institute for Social Anthropology, Halle/Saale, Germany
OUTLINE
Suicide as a modern ‘social problem’ is a ubiquitous phenomenon. Ever since the invention of
population statistics in the late 18th century, self inflicted death is enumerated, its numbers
(rates) are being compared and accounted for. As far as explanations of suicide are concerned
most social scientists have leaned towards structural explanations and correlated suicide rates
with collective experience such as downward mobility or social anomie (Durkheim).
Durkheim’s understanding of suicide implies the notion of an agent – a subject capable of
intention and comprehension of results/outcomes of its own action. For Durkheim, suicide as
a phenomenon ontologically appears at the interface of action and intention. Unable to decide
whether animals could possibly fall within such category of an agent Durkheim limits the
concept of suicide to describe exclusively human actions which suggests an implicit theory of
agency, subjectivity and personhood. The modern human self as an atomised and discreet
subject of morality, politics, law and culture is a foundational category in social scientific
studies of suicide since Durkheim’s classical work. The study of suicide thus rests on 19th
century notions of agency, humanity and modernity. Socio-cultural anthropology has a long
record of demonstrating the limits of such Western notions for the study of cultural
phenomena in diverse socio-historical contexts. The notion of suicide and its relation to ideas
about agency, subjectivity, intentionality, individuality etc. has strangely escaped a thorough
anthropological scrutiny so far.
Questions of individual agency (and case studies approaches) have been almost exclusively
the domain of the medical sciences. In these ‘psy-discourses’ (Rose), however, agency yet
again became elusive, when subsumed into pathologizing, universalist explanations of
psychiatric disease. With our workshop and edited volume we want to foreground culturally
specific notions of agency in relation to suicide as opposed to (and articulated with) the
structural and the universal-pathological.
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Local perceptions, interpretations and evaluations of suicidal acts might reveal alternative
knowledge and about suicide that may differ from and be more complex than the free will of
the modern individual human agent or the determining force of neuro-chemical disorder.
Reconsidering the concept of agent/agency over the past decades, anthropologists have
encountered questions of personhood, individuality, subjectivity, consciousness, non humans
(be they representatives of other species or of ‘spiritual/occult’ realm), belief, ir/rationality
and so on. So far, the implications of these advances in cultural and social theories have not
been fully considered in suicide studies.
Agency becomes also central in all considerations of the political nature of suicide. Suicides
may well have a ‘message’ beyond individual misery. Here suicides stand for – or are made to
stand for an intention beyond the termination of one’s own life. The accusatory element in
most suicidal acts could vary from ‘revenge’ in kinship constellation to a clear-cut political
message and it hence constitutes another aspect of suicide and agency: social commentary on
the suicide of others seems to (re)interpret the agent/agency as a political/resistant one on one
hand or individual or ‘familial’ one on the other. Here then the other side of agency,
constraint, discourse and coercion (‘structure’ in Anthony Giddens’ sense), re-enters the
picture. What or who is to be accused in suicide? How is social meaning (often
posthumously) attributed to these acts? Suicides then become public events and are embedded
in discourses of justice, moral economy, state welfare and the good life. But this is true not
only in cases of overtly political suicides, such as hunger strikers or suicide bombers.
Statistical procedures and media attention may lift individual acts to new levels of meaning
where they are made to stand for social and cultural crisis. Such ascriptions of a resistant or
protesting subjectivity to the intentions of the suicidal subject make it desirable to reflect on
the themes of agency, intentionality, praxis, power and suicide in a general way.
We invite contributions that address the methodological, theoretical and conceptual problem
of suicide and agency. The workshop seeks to combine original ethnography with theoretical
insights in order to revive the anthropological study of suicide in the light of recent advances
in social and cultural theory. Contributions from all regions are welcome. Specific subthemes/questions for discussion may include, but are not limited to, the following:

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What could we learn about local conceptions of suicide when studying the local
understanding of agency and vice versa? Is the conceptual intertwining of the notion
of suicide and agency to be found everywhere or is it rather specific to the EuroAmerican/Western understandings in the psychological or sociological sciences? What
differences between situated social meanings of suicide and abstract analytical
meaning exist, and how do they matter?
What in various understandings of suicide is beyond agency, seen as fully depended
on other factors? What is the opposite of the notion of agency in the context of
understanding suicide? Are local notions of crisis, morality and political-economic
formations called upon as much and in the same way as in a social-scientific
framework? How do suicides and their local interpretations articulate with changing
aspirations and new horizons of expectation?
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
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What if the agency involved is not (only) the one of the suicidal subject? What do
theories of distributed personhood mean for suicide studies? Could animals (and/or
other non-humans) commit suicide?
Suicide, power, resistance: What are the extra-individual meanings of prominent or
spectacular suicide cases? How does the politicisation of suicide(s) unfold? What
happens to agency (intention) of the suicidal subject when the case is statistically
enumerated and/or politicised and/or mediatised? If suicide is often a blame, is it also
a claim? To who and on whose behalf?
Please send an abstract of your paper (200-300 words) no later than May 15th, 2011 to:
Ludek Broz, email: broz@eth.mpg.de and
Daniel Münster, email: daniel.muenster@ethnologie.uni-halle.de
Selection from responses will be made until June 15th, 2011.
Please note:
Participants are invited by the organisers. Participants are expected to hand in their draft paper
until October 23rd, 2011 to enable our commentators to give some response and enhance
lively discussions. We expect papers for publication within three months after the end of the
workshop.
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