Suicide in Late Colonial Africa: The Evidence of Inquests from Nyasaland
TL;DR: The intellectual history of suicide in Africa can shed light on the issue, as can some evidence from the British colony of Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the late colonial period.
Abstract: IN THE EXTENSIVE LITERATURE on the history of suicide, the societies of the African continent barely feature, except in brief discussions of folk beliefs and practices.1 A simple explanation for the relative lack of attention given to this issue is that historically African societies have been assumed to have very low rates of suicide. But that assumption itself needs historicizing. The statistical evidence for suicide in most African countries is extremely weak, and longitudinal data is almost nonexistent, so while there are reasons to suggest the need for a reevaluation of suicide rates in Africa, it is not currently possible to provide one. However, the intellectual history of suicide in Africa can shed light on the issue, as can some evidence from the British colony of Nyasaland (now Malawi) in the late colonial period. In contemporary southern and eastern Africa, concerns over apparently rising suicide rates are being expressed both by mental health professionals and in the popular press. It is tempting to argue that these parts of Africa are experiencing the equivalent of the intensification of anxiety about suicide that surfaced periodically in early modern and nineteenth-century Europe—a kind of “moral panic.”2 As in
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TL;DR: A systemic coordinated program should address current inaccuracies, and social stigma about suicide and self‐harm must be tackled if widespread underreporting is to stop.
Abstract: • Suicide and intentional self-harm are issues of major importance in public health and public policy, with rates widely used as progress indicators in these areas.
127 citations
Journal Article•
TL;DR: Although several countries and jurisdictions across the globe have repealed their legal statutes criminalizing suicide attempts (or nonfatal suicidal behavior), suicide attempt remains a crime in several African countries In these countries, a suicide attempt puts the suicide attempt survivor at risk for criminal apprehension, prosecution and penalization as mentioned in this paper.
Abstract: Although several countries and jurisdictions across the globe have repealed their legal statutes criminalizing suicide attempts (or nonfatal suicidal behavior), suicide attempt remains a crime in several African countries In these countries, a suicide attempt puts the suicide attempt survivor at risk for criminal apprehension, prosecution and penalization The current article provides an overview of anti-suicide laws in nine selected African countries In addition, it presents the results of a brief survey of the popular electronic and print media conducted to discover evidence of legal prosecution and penalization of suicide attempt survivors in the selected countries The data show that criminal prosecution of suicide attempt survivors occurs in all but one of the societies where suicide attempt is criminalized The article concludes with a brief overview of the arguments for penalization and depenalization of suicide attempts Advocates of decriminalization argue that suicidal behavior is a symptom of a medical or psychological problem; therefore, suicidal persons need medical, psychological or psychiatric services, not judicial penalties Opponents of decriminalization contend that suicide is inherently evil, immoral, or sinful; therefore, continued legal prohibition and judicial sanctions are defensible
20 citations
Cites background from "Suicide in Late Colonial Africa: Th..."
...…suicide rates, including ubiquitous antisuicide religious beliefs and mortuary practices that discourage self-inflicted deaths (Adinkrah, 2015; Vaughan, 2010), availability of social support to despairing individuals, limited access to potentially lethal methods of suicide such as firearms,…...
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...Existing data suggest that for most African countries, other factors may be important in explaining low suicide mortality and attempted suicide rates, including ubiquitous antisuicide religious beliefs and mortuary practices that discourage self-inflicted deaths (Adinkrah, 2015; Vaughan, 2010), availability of social support to despairing individuals, limited access to potentially lethal methods of suicide such as firearms, sleeping pills, etc....
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TL;DR: The results of a small-scale study of attitudes to suicide in Malawi are reported in this article, showing that suicide is invested with a variety of meanings across the two regions.
Abstract: Historically African societies have been assumed to have low suicide rates, though there is little conclusive evidence to support this assertion and it is informed by dubious colonial assumptions about the nature of African subjectivity. In particular, longitudinal evidence is lacking. In recent years suicide has begun to attract the attention of psychiatry professionals in Eastern and Southern Africa and of the media. It is now widely argued that suicide rates are increasing, and in some places concern around suicide has taken the appearance of a ‘moral panic’. Suicide is invested with a variety of meanings across the two regions. The results of a small-scale study of attitudes to suicide in Malawi are reported.
16 citations
Cites background from "Suicide in Late Colonial Africa: Th..."
...…neglected in Africa due to a combination of (essentially racist) misconceptions and culturally inappropriate diagnostic tools.2 The study of suicide, then, might be viewed as opening a window onto an aspect of African subjectivities denied by a long history of racist thinking (Vaughan 2010)....
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...One of the issues that had come to the fore in my analysis of inquest records from the late colonial period (and which has been noted by historians working on very different times and places) was the impact of a state-run inquisitorial system on the ways in which communities understood and interpreted suicide cases (Vaughan 2010)....
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...…the fore in my analysis of inquest records from the late colonial period (and which has been noted by historians working on very different times and places) was the impact of a state-run inquisitorial system on the ways in which communities understood and interpreted suicide cases (Vaughan 2010)....
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...Most studies ascribed suicide to supernatural forces, though interpreting such an ascription is far from straightforward (La Fontaine 1960; Vaughan 2010)....
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...The study of suicide, then, might be viewed as opening a window onto an aspect of African subjectivities denied by a long history of racist thinking (Vaughan 2010)....
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TL;DR: It is argued that situating suicide within a broader cultural framework that includes attitudes and practices surrounding other forms of death is essential to both aspects of anthropological-outsiders’ role and reliable statistical data are non-existent for these communities.
Abstract: We examine cultural understandings and practices surrounding suicide in Pokot, Samburu, and Turkana pastoralists in north-central Kenya—three geographically overlapping and mutually interacting pastoralist communities. We collected our data in the context of a study of poverty, violence, and distress. In all three communities, stigma associated with suicide circumscribed individual responses to the World Health Organization’s Self-Report Questionnaire, which led to an ethnographic sub-study of suicide building upon our long-standing research in East Africa on distress, violence, and death. As is true for most of sub-Saharan Africa, reliable statistical data are non-existent for these communities. Thus, we deliberately avoid making assertions about generalizable statistical trends. Rather, we take the position that ethnographically nuanced studies like the one we offer here provide a necessary basis for the respectful collection of accurate quantitative data on this important and troubling practice. Moreover, our central point in this paper is that positive transformational work relating to suicide is most likely when researcher outsiders practice ‘deep engagement’ while respectfully restricting their role to (1) iterative, community-driven approaches that contextualize suicide; and (2) sharing contextualized analyses with other practitioners. We contend that situating suicide within a broader cultural framework that includes attitudes and practices surrounding other forms of death is essential to both aspects of anthropological-outsiders’ role.
15 citations
TL;DR: In the early 19th century, social physicists identified and prioritized suicide as a moral affliction that was to be attended to not just by the police, but also by physicians and, subsequently, mental health care professionals as discussed by the authors.
Abstract: Historically, suicide is a Western neologism. Unknown to Greco-Roman civilization, suicidium might as well have meant “swine-slaying” to a Latin speaker. The warrior culture of Germanic successor states glorified heroic self-sacrifice, celebrated in medieval literature as chansons de geste. If St. Augustine condemned Donatism for actively promoting martyrdom during the persecutions, then in part for fear of its potential to rob the early Christian movement of much-needed membership. Medieval Christians unanimously reviled the desperate act of self-killing until Renaissance humanists and artists recalled the political defiance of Cato, Seneca and, most especially, Lucretia, the original struggle of republicanism with tyranny manifest in the dagger through her heart. With their novel emphasis on the modification of human behavior, religious reformers turned their attention to the human soul and the inner temptation to self-murder. It fell to the Enlightenment to turn the activity of self-killing into a subject for scientific analysis: Suicide. Suicide became a moral affliction that was to be attended to not just by the police, but also by physicians and, subsequently, mental health care professionals. As representatives of the state, they produced actionable bureaucratic data. In a scramble to establish its scientific credentials, the emergent discipline of social physics (later to become sociology) latched on to official reports as indicators of a modern social dilemma. Hence, suicidology was born. With the expressed goals of measuring human behavior and tackling practical social issues, the earliest practitioners of social physics identified and prioritized suicide as a dramatic, but potentially soluble public health problem. For social physicists, suicide manifested a moral malaise as sensational as perhaps no other human behavior. Aptly named, moral statistics became their primary analytical tool. Two pioneering criminologists, André-Michel Guerry (who analyzed criminal data for the Parisian justice administration) and the Belgian mathematician Adolphe Quételet laid the foundations for moral statistics by studying immoral behaviors in the 1820s, with suicide chief among them. Auguste Comte harnessed social physics into a strategic theory of historical development employed to ground notions of modernity. The translator of Comte's Positive Philosophy (London, 1853), Harriet Martineau, subsequently wed his scientific positivism with the
14 citations
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TL;DR: In this paper, the interrelationship of child rearing, social structure, and cultural values in light of a theory that stresses the "magical thinking" aspect of suicide offers an alternative explanation for cross-cultural variation.
Abstract: “Sociological” explanations of suicide have not been adequate to explain the varying forms and rates of suicide cross-culturally. Viewing the interrelationship of child rearing, social structure, and cultural values in light of a theory that stresses the “magical thinking” aspect of suicide offers an alternative explanation for cross-cultural variation.
11 citations