Suicide in the Micronesian Family
Hezel, Francis X. (1989). "Suicide in the Micronesian Family". Contemporary Pacific. 1 (1/2): 43–74.
- Has attachment: File:DCIKTK7N.pdf
Abstract: For more than a decade a few of us have been keeping a constant but helpless watch as the suicide rates in Micronesia have risen to what appear to be unprecedented heights. We have tried to identify all suicides in the area since 1960, gathered from a variety of sources case data on the victims, and established a computerized file that has been regularly updated. We have also participated in perhaps a dozen full-fledged conferences and innumerable informal sessions on the problem, always in the hope of finding some viable explanation for the mysterious and tragic social phenomenon that has afflicted Micronesia of late. Such a striking social phenomenon as this, we felt, cries out for a sociological explanation of some sort. To provide a sharper focus for our research, which we knew would have to take full account of the cultural features related to suicide, we decided to concentrate for a time on Truk, an island group in the geographical center of Micronesia with a population of 50,000 and one of the highest rates in the area. My principal colleague, Donald Rubinstein, a cultural anthropologist who was until recently based in Hawaii, carried on a three-year ethnographic study that issued in several papers on the subject (Rubinstein 1981, 1982, 1983, 1984, 1985, 1987). The results of his work, which I have incorporated into two summary articles (Hezel 1984b, 1987), lays bare the tight cultural patterning of Trukese suicides and gives what we regard as a plausible hypothesis as to the social changes that have given rise to the suicide epidemic of the past twenty years. In this article I hope to apply and extend, even while allowing for real cultural differences, an findings on Truk to the whole of Micronesia. This, then, is our attempt to provide that elusive sociological explanation for the suicide phenomenon of late.
Extra details:
MAG: 320618010 CorpusID: 141794068 OpenAlex: W320618010
