Shared Death

Self, Sociality and Internet Group Suicide in Japan

Datos Bibliográficos

ID2394780
AutoresC Ozawa-De Silva (0000-0003-3068-1938, Emory University, autor de correspondencia)
Año2010
Volumen47
Número3
Páginas392-418
Fecha de publicación2010-07-01
Peer ReviewedSí
Open AccessSí
TipoARTICLE
RevistaTranscultural Psychiatry (JOURNAL)
Identificadores de la revistaISSN: 1363-4615 • E-ISSN: 1461-7471
EditorialSAGE Publications Inc (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1177/1363461510370239
PMID20688797
OpenAlexW2110130658
IdiomaEN
Citas recibidas18
Referencias citadas27

Existing models for understanding suicide fail to account for the distinctiveness of Internet group suicide, a recent phenomenon in Japan. Drawing from an ethnography of Internet suicide websites, two social commentaries in Japanese popular culture, and the work of developmental psychologist Philippe Rochat, I argue that participation in Internet suicide forums and even the act of Internet group suicide result from both a need for social connectedness and the fear of social rejection and isolation that this need engenders. These needs and fears are especially strong in the case of Japan, where the dominant cultural rhetoric ties selfhood closely to the social self that is the object of perception and experience by others. I show how such an understanding of Internet group suicide helps us to understand some of its basic characteristics, which are otherwise difficult to explain and which have puzzled the Japanese media and popular accounts: the "ordinariness" or casual nature of Internet group suicide, the wish for an easy or comfortable death, the wish to die with others, and the wish to "vanish." Internet group suicide sheds light on questions of Japanese selfhood in modernity and expands our understanding of suicide in Japan in general

Casual · Feeling · Optimal distinctiveness theory · Poison control · Political science · Sociality · Sociology · Suicide and the Internet · Suicide prevention · The Internet · Wish · Anthropology · Grief, Bereavement, and Mental Health · Homicide, Infanticide, and Child Abuse · Medicine · Psychology · Social Psychology · Suicide and Self-Harm Studies