Protest Suicide Research Articles

Protest suicide: considerations for psychiatrists and psychologists.

OPINION article Front. Psychiatry, 15 June 2023Sec. Public Mental Health Volume 14 - 2023 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2023.1213420

Korean Suicide Protest as Anomic Response to Labour Disempowerment

The article argues that the growth of worker protest suicide in the 2000s in South Korea is relatedto current neo-liberal political-economic conditions in Korea, including: 1) the growing crisis facingincreasingly irregular and part-time workers, and 2) the construction of an anti-labour legal regimegiving Korean workers few legal options for collective engagement in workplace actions. Legalobstacles facing labour activists include both business and state actors increasingly usingcompensation lawsuits and provisional seizure tactics to seize the assets of unions and strikingworkers. As the Korean labour movement finds itself increasingly marginalised by the cripplinganti-labour legal innovations of the last two decades, labour resistance has increasingly manifestedin extreme forms of individualistic protests, such as worker suicide. Though products of anomicdespair, these suicides retain the capacity to inspire collective labour action and to leverage change.KEYWORDS: labour movement; protest suicide; provisional seizure; neo-liberalism; Korea

The Trajectory of Protest Suicide in South Korea, 1970–2015

ABSTRACT Widely recognised as an indispensable element in South Korea’s political democratisation, protest suicide has conjured up an image of insurmountable spirit and steely resolve by heroic fighters challenging the powerful authoritarian state. Based on a systematic examination of 125 cases of protest suicide from 1970 to 2015, this article exposes the deficiencies in previous accounts and contends that protest suicide is not a uniform practice but an evolving political form that reflects changes in the broader political environment. Calling into question the conventional account that attributes protest suicide to severe state oppression, the article shows how protest suicide became most prominent in the late 1980s in the context of expanding political space, not in the earlier periods when the political climate was most adverse. The article also traces the gradual change of protest suicide from an aggressive political weapon meant to spur mass protest towards a more defensive act by workers who use death to communicate frustration, weariness and despair as they protest injustice. These findings suggest the need to embrace a more nuanced understanding of protest suicide and reflect on the nature of political democracy in the age of neo-liberalism.

The Intersections of Protest Suicides, Oppression and Social Justice

This paper focuses on protest suicides that highlight oppression and influence collective action for social justice and change. A few cases and contexts of protest suicides from the 1960s onwards are used to demonstrate this intersectionality. I address two types of protest suicides: first, the protest public suicide that is predominantly enacted in the public space and draws attention to the suicide victim and the oppression that the suicide victim represents or is alleged to represent. Second, the cumulative suicide where individuals commit suicide privately but because of the sheer cumulative number of those who do so due to a shared grievance, society is obliged to take notice. I examine the cultural, social, economic and political underpinnings of a society in determining the propensity to commit such an act and also in shaping societies reaction. The paper concludes by indicating the need for further comparative research on these complex intersection s Keywords: Public protest suicide. Cumulative suicide. Self-immolation. Oppression. Social justice. Intersectionality

Protest Suicide: A Systematic Model with Heuristic Archetypes

Suicide as a form of political protest is a little studied social phenomenon that cannot be dismissed simply as being irrational or patholognomic. We consider protest suicide to be a meaningful social action as purposive political act intended to change oppressive policies or practices. This paper synthesizes theoretical propositions associated with suicide in general, and protest suicide in particular, so as to construct a general explanatory model of protest suicide as a social phenomenon. Then, it analyzes protest suicide as a meaningful social action. People considering protest suicide have to discern the logic of the situation in which such action is to take place. This involves answering two fundamental questions: Is suicide an acceptable course of social action? Is the envisaged protest suicide likely to achieve their hopes, aspirations and goals? How these questions are answered gives rise to a set of protest suicide archetypes. Our analysis generates a more sophisticated understanding of the potential reasons for, and motivations behind, protest suicide as a social phenomenon.

Protest Suicide among Korean Students and Laborers: A Study of Suicide Notes

Suicide notes from two groups of protest suicides in South Korea during the period 1975-2003 were compared: suicide notes from students (n =16) and suicide notes from workers (n = 15). The students appeared to be acting upon abstract ideals, including the oppression of the masses by the government and the American forces in Korea, and they typically urged the reunification of Korea. The workers were acting upon more local concerns, such as the oppression of their union by the government and the companies and the policies of their specific companies.

How do American Undergraduates View Suicide Bombers?

69 American undergraduates (M(age) = 22.1 yr., SD = 5.9) viewed suicide bombers and guerilla fighters who kill civilians more negatively than they view protest suicide and guerilla fighters who kill soldiers.

THE ITALIAN VERSION OF THE JUNIOR EYSENCK PERSONALITY QUESTIONNAIRE: A CONFIRMATORY FACTOR ANALYSIS1

69 American undergraduates (M(age) = 22.1 yr., SD = 5.9) viewed suicide bombers and guerilla fighters who kill civilians more negatively than they view protest suicide and guerilla fighters who kill soldiers.

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

754 Many thanks to Dipesh Chakrabarty, Geoff Eley, Dana Luciano, Nasser Hussain, Roger Rouse, Adam Thurschwell, and Martha Umphrey for their meticulous engagements, as well as to audiences at Amherst, Johns Hopkins, the University of Wisconsin, the University of Chicago, American Political Science Association, American Studies Association, and Cleveland State. Special nostalgic thanks to Virginia Chang, my original collaborator in the Obesity and Poverty conference (2002). 1. See David Harvey, “The Body as Accumulation Strategy,” Spaces of Hope (Berkeley, 2000), pp. 97–116. To call Harvey polemical is not to devalue his profound contributions to understanding the productive destructiveness of capital; in his work, a polemic is a call for precision, not a way of drowning it out. Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

Slow Death (Sovereignty, Obesity, Lateral Agency)

The Twice‐Killed: Imagining Protest Suicide

The inspiration I take from J. M. Coetzee's book Elizabeth Costello (2003) is his advocacy of imagining as an alternative to rational thought. Imagining, as I understand him, is mindwork that engages the body as an experiential and metaphorical site. I apply this notion of imagining to suicides conducted in the service of political protest: The fatal hunger strike of ten prisoners in Northern Ireland in 1981 and Jan Palach's self‐immolation in Prague in 1969. Three questions direct the exploration of their trajectories: What feeds the hope for the effectiveness of protest suicides? How do they use the body as a performance site? Do such suicides call for an ethics of attentiveness?

Suicide and the Chinese Cultural Revolution

ABSTRACT This Commentary explores the impact of the Cultural Revolution instigated by Mao Zedong in Communist China from the year of 1966 to 1976 on suicidal behavior. Cases of individuals who completed suicide are presented, together with examples of the suicide notes they left. The lack of protest suicide is noted.

“Toys of desperation” suicide as protest rhetoric

This paper examines the act of protest suicide as a form of rhetoric. Three representative cases of protest suicide, those of Emily Wilding Davison, Terence James MacSwiney, and Norman Morrison/Roger LaPorte, are studied for insight into the following unanswered questions concerning this act. What blend of emotional expression and movement goals motivates the actor? In a free society with other avenues of dissent open, why choose an act as extreme and irrevocable as protest suicide? What is the act's impact on those within and those outside the movement? By viewing protest suicide as a form of “symbolic inducement,” this method of dissent may be seen as a rhetorical act whose motivation, form and impact can be better understood.

The Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle.Charles Tilly

Previous articleNext article No AccessBook ReviewsThe Contentious French: Four Centuries of Popular Struggle. Charles Tilly Arthur L. StinchcombeArthur L. Stinchcombe Search for more articles by this author PDFPDF PLUS Add to favoritesDownload CitationTrack CitationsPermissionsReprints Share onFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail SectionsMoreDetailsFiguresReferencesCited by American Journal of Sociology Volume 92, Number 5Mar., 1987 Article DOIhttps://doi.org/10.1086/228649 Views: 1Total views on this site Citations: 3Citations are reported from Crossref Copyright 1987 The University of ChicagoPDF download Crossref reports the following articles citing this article:Sun-Chul Kim The Trajectory of Protest Suicide in South Korea, 1970–2015, Journal of Contemporary Asia 51, no.11 (Jul 2019): 38–63.https://doi.org/10.1080/00472336.2019.1607889Dingxin Zhao Theorizing the Role of Culture in Social Movements: Illustrated by Protests and Contentions in Modern China, Social Movement Studies 9, no.11 (Jan 2010): 33–50.https://doi.org/10.1080/14742830903442493Sidney Tarrow Cycles of Collective Action: Between Moments of Madness and the Repertoire of Contention, Social Science History 17, no.22 (Jan 2016): 281–307.https://doi.org/10.1017/S0145553200016850