In Pursuit of the Good Life: Aspiration and Suicide in Globalizing South India
Jocelyn Lim Chua
Language: English
Pages: 256
ISBN: 0520281160
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
In the long shadow of fear and uncertainty that suicide casts in Kerala, living acquires new meaning and contours. In this powerful ethnography, Jocelyn Chua draws on years of fieldwork to broaden the field of vision beyond suicide as the termination of life, considering how suicide generates new ways of living in these anxious times.
Objects and Others: Essays on Museums and Material Culture (History of Anthropology, Volume 3)
The Idea of a Town: The Anthropology of Urban Form in Rome, Italy and the Ancient World
Cannibals and Kings: Origins of Cultures
are shaped by moments of lived, situated interaction, moments that are often improvisational and shift precipitously in the resource and time-strapped institutional settings of mental health care in Kerala.8 If in editorializing registers clinicians like Dr. Cheeran make broad statements about the unrealistic ambitions of Malayalis today, at the level of therapeutic practice they assess and manage the aspirational lives of clients in ways that prove far more complex and uneven. THE MAKING OF A
examples of what can go wrong at a time when gains and losses are steep. Stories and rumors of suicide judged the living, too. More than cautioning against the perilous investments of the departed alone, suicide commentaries spun outward to implicate the deceased person’s social web. They often served as broader accusations about deficient love, poor care, and negligence that blamed inattentive parents, callous daughters-in-law, scornful lovers, and failed families. In this sense at least, the
The lack of closure around Biju’s death had led family to send Ajith to Thiruvananthapuram to collect more information from friends and mental health professionals willing to help. To facilitate the effort, Ajith had collaborated with two other relatives to produce a carefully crafted memo that summarized the case evidence, a copy of which he produced from his back pocket that morning for us to look over. Although Ajith sought new leads not yet pursued, the memo remained faithful to the police
however, Lata also threatened to destroy it by her own hand, announcing in front of her parents that she, too, would kill herself if forced to marry another. But unlike her mother’s, Lata had warned, her intentions would be sincere enough to succeed.28 Kinship relations are not fixed entities afforded transcendence through biology. Far from being a static and completed project as the anthropologist’s webbed charts of squares and circles might suggest, kinship relations require ongoing
spirituality.” Perfectly coiffed in a carefully starched cotton sari, Dr. Sharmila invited me to stand with her in the doorway to chat as the children went through their stretches. Our conversation would unfold entirely in English. While an advocate for the reform of parenting, Dr. Sharmila offered critical reflections on “parenting today” that reveal the polarizing pulls of the multiple positions she inhabits as practicing psychologist, public figure, wife, and mother. Articulate and poised, she
