With a focus on Sri Lanka, a country that for several decades has reported 'epidemic' levels of suicidal behaviour, this book develops a unique perspective, linking the causes and meanings of suicidal practices to social processes across moments, lifetimes, and history. Extending anthropological approaches to practice, learning, and agency, the author draws from long-term fieldwork in a Sinhala Buddhist community to develop an ethnographic theory of suicide that foregrounds local knowledge and sets out a charter for prevention.

Tom Widger has conducted ethnographic fieldwork on suicide in Sri Lanka for more than ten years. He received a PhD in anthropology from the London School of Economics, UK in 2009. He has since held positions at Brunel University, UK, the University of Sussex, UK, the University of Colombo, Sri Lanka, and Durham University, UK.

1. The Anthropology of Suicide 2. Of Villages, Courts, and Clinics 3. Suicide There, Suicide Here 4. Relational Flows 5. Suffering, Frustration, Anger 6. One Life, One Love 7. The Black Demon 8. The Search for Compassion 9. The Suicide Process