Who minus who": suicide in Boston's Ethiopian community

Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine

From the Latin American modernity/coloniality project, we address the inhospitality of the modern/colonial and globally designed world-system in relation to suicidality. In our vernacular Spanglish, guided by epistemological disobedience, and responding to epistemicide, we interpellate ourselves to unmask the hidden colonial structures of power of modernity’s global design on suicide knowledge. Our intent is to argue, specifically from the perspective of coloniality and our racialized, gendered, and monetized bodies, that suicide is rather an extension of modernity’s colonial genocide. From the decolonial geo and body-politics of knowledge, our discussion on modernity’s Eurocentric rhetoric on suicide departs from the materialization of suicidality in our flesh. We story experiences of our bodies with life and pleas of death, within the context of our immigrant backgrounds, and as family therapists in the United States (U.S.). We adopt autopsy as an analogy from where to advance suc...

2021

2023

In contemporary African society, the rate at which people commit suicide increases daily. Committing suicide is one thing, and the purpose for committing suicide is another. In contemporary African settings, suicide has become a problematic phenomenon. Even more so because it does not fit into our value system. In order to solve the problem of suicide in contemporary African society, there is a great need to revisit our roots and trace our view on suicide, the value of life, the purpose of existence and respect for the human body. We would analyze how suicide can be minimized from an ethical perspective. To achieve our aim, it will adopt philosophical argumentation, use of texts and prescriptive methods of philosophical inquiry. We are going to do conceptual clarification on the concept of suicide from the western and African purview. We will also do a comparative analysis of both the western and African concepts of suicide. There is a necessity for us also to adopt the critical appraisal of the concept of suicide. We are also going to employ the prescriptive methodology during this research.

Families in Society: The Journal of Contemporary Social Services, 2011

There are a growing number of Somali refugees resettling in the United States. Frequently these immigrants have experienced significant stress both in their home country premigration and during the resettlement process. Best practices require that practitioners engage in culturally responsive ways to deal with cultural differences; social workers should strive toward building a practice that is culturally informed.

In most parts of In Western and Western influenced culture(s), the discourse on suicide - and suicide bereavement as subjoiners- is dominated by the field of health care, mental health care in particular. This fusion is simultaneously a mechanism for identifying and ‘legitimizing’ the ‘problem’ of suicide as such with assumed solubility; resulting in corresponding suicide prevention policies. This is, as I argue, part of Foucault´s notion of ‘biopolitics’, i.e. discipline of the body and population regulation; as well as an issue of power structures. Suicide is associated with different forms of stigma and myths with partly devastating consequences for the bereaved. It has also been noticed that due to the effects of this mode of death and assumptions about it, suicidally bereaved may be at higher risk of difficult grief and even self-stigmatization. Suicide survivors, too, are subject to the mental health discourse of ‘authorities’, which is problematic insofar that not all suicides can be lumped together under the same gigantic hat of ‘mental illness’. A clear recognition of the diversity of underlying causes resulting in the suicide within the public discourse could be supportive in survivors’ perception of suicide bereavement as well as the mourning and recovery process.

In Suicide and Agency: Anthropological perspectives on self-destruction, personhood and power., 2015

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Suicidology Online, 2019

International Criminal Justice Review, 2013

This qualitative research turns to 24 male members of the Ethiopian Jewish community living in Israel to probe their feelings and thoughts concerning the changes that have occurred to their traditions and community postmigration, and gain insight into the disproportionate rise in domestic murder and subsequent suicide committed by males in their community. During semistructured interviews conducted in Amharit, the interviewees opposed the dominant discourse that cast murder and suicide as pathologies resulting from Ethiopian males’ failure to assimilate. In a resistant discourse, they revealed the oppression and destruction of a cultural heritage and identity and their struggles to regain their family and community. Paradoxically, these men perceived the Israeli democratic system of law and order as discriminating against men, and as depriving the Ethiopian community of the basic right to choose its own traditions and spiritual leaders ( Kessim and Shmagaleh) who helped resolving ma...

Illness, Crisis, & Loss, 2008

Based on clinical experience with Ethiopian patients referred to a Mental Health Center the authors observed a “double” cultural discrepancy: On one hand discrepancy between cultural and mourning practices as practiced by Jews in Ethiopia and Israel, and on the other between the professional team and their Ethiopian patients. The article discusses social displacement related to death, mourning customs and rituals as experienced by Ethiopian Jewish immigrants. A number of culturally sensitive elements pertinent to professionals intervening with displaced and bereaved individuals and families are identified and elaborated. Mourning rituals and customs as practiced by the Jewish community in Ethiopia, in particular, breaking bad news and purity customs are compared with those practiced in Israel which often appear to be different, and at times exemplify cultural insensitivity. Case vignettes describing the Ethiopian community in Israel are presented to illustrate complications resultin...

Death Studies

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