Modernization and Women’s Fatalistic Suicide in Post-Mao Rural China: A Critique of Durkheim

Abstract

Durkheim’s Suicide (1951 [1897]) has influenced social scientific perspectives on suicide for over a century. Based on his four-fold typology of suicide (egoistic, anomic, altruistic, and fatalistic), Durkheim argued that the process of modernization can engender an increase in egoistic and anomic types of suicide, which results from a lack of social integration and regulation. Comparatively, altruistic or fatalistic suicide, each of which is caused by excessive social integration or regulation, rarely occur in modern society and can be regarded as relics of a traditional, premodern world. Furthermore, Durkheim emphasized that in modern society suicide among urbanites and males is more frequent and scholarly significant because these populations are more exposed to the hazards of modernization. Rural residents and women are assumed to be protected from suicide due to their traditional roles and dispositions.

The research of this essay was supported in part by the Wenner-Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research, the National Science Foundation Doctoral Dissertation Grant, and the Lambda Alpha Graduate Research Grant. My special thanks go to Andrew Kipnis and Tamara Jacka for their generous invitation, sharing information and insightful comments on earlier versions of this essay. I also thank Rebecca Lester and the anonymous reviewers for their critical suggestions. Finally, I owe my deepest gratitude to Qianjiang villagers who willingly shared their experiences of life and death.