ABSTRACT
This chapter presents a processual model of suicide that shows how practices give rise to representation and embeds structured and structuring in chains of action and consequence. When suicide events are described, it is through a process of post hoc recollecting and recalling in which the suicidal individual is cast as the lead player, and through which he or she responds to social or emotional stimuli. It must be recognised that suicide prevention becomes part of the process through which the possibilities of suicidality are structured into definitive kinds, and that these kinds may ultimately perpetuate the same inequalities, abuses and conflicts that give rise to suicidal practice in the first place. The chapter provides an anthropological analysis of suicide in Sri Lanka, a country where rates of suicide and self-harm have been among the highest in the world. Adopting an approach elaborated from practice theories of social life.
