Suicides, poisons and the materially possible: The positive ambivalence of means restriction and critical–critical global health

Tom Widger

doi:10.1177/1359183518799525

Abstract

Developing an object-oriented perspective on suicide, in this article the author challenges critical global health scholarship and sociological theories of ambivalence by showing how a focus on ‘materially possible’ suicide prevention can offer culturally relevant solutions to a suicide epidemic in a resource-poor setting. Taking the example of pesticide regulation in Sri Lanka, he demonstrates why, in theoretical terms, banning toxic pesticides has coherence in a local poison complex that renders suicide available to people as a cultural practice. While writers in the field of critical global health have been suspicious of ‘magic-bullet’ interventions such as means restriction because such policies reportedly overlook the social complexity of problems such as suicide, the author argues that what is materially possible is often of merit because it renders graspable an otherwise deeply contingent and variegated problem. He further argues that critical global health can view the ambivalent costs and benefits of materially possible, magic-bullet interventions as a positive rather than negative offshoot of global health.

Highlights

Nets beneath bridges, high fences along overpasses, sales restrictions on medicines and bans placed on highly toxic agrochemicals – all are examples of ‘means restriction’ (MR), suicide prevention through the regulation of everyday places and objects
In pursuit of pragmatic responses to this challenge, I argue that MR programmes have redefined suicide as a behaviour involving a lapse of people acting ‘responsibly’ within their material culture – an approach with implications both for social theories of suicide and suicide prevention, and global health interventions more broadly
I explore the relationship between local practices of suicide and suicide prevention efforts in Sri Lanka – a country that has been the focus of large-scale MR programmes for several years

Summary

Introduction

High fences along overpasses, sales restrictions on medicines and bans placed on highly toxic agrochemicals – all are examples of ‘means restriction’ (MR), suicide prevention through the regulation of everyday places and objects. In pursuit of pragmatic responses to this challenge, I argue that MR programmes have redefined suicide as a behaviour involving a lapse of people acting ‘responsibly’ within their material culture – an approach with implications both for social theories of suicide and suicide prevention, and global health interventions more broadly.

Results

Conclusion