ABSTRACT
This chapter provides the everyday relational conflicts that generate representations not only of suicide but also of kinship in Madampe in its entirety. Passing into the relational worlds of suicide, people come to consider the processual socialities of suicidal practice that generate representations of suicidal thought. Descriptions of suicide are often concerned with relational conflicts and the on-going processes of claim and counter-claim of truth, lies and challenges to power and status that affect people's lives. In Madampe, suicide representations cluster around problems of kinship and the attainment of 'good family lives': the stresses and strains of families struggling in the current economic moment, and the specific issue of overseas labour migration. The chapter describes the relationship between suicide, gender, generation and violence 'in and of' the family. Children's and teenager's formative experiences of suicidal practice, developed through processes of imitation and innovation, may be understood as establishing the suicide causal frameworks deployed, changed and contested throughout life.
