Embodiment and space in understandings of suicide and self-harm

Abstract

In this chapter we draw on an ongoing ethnographic and interview-based study of suicide and culture in the Scotland, UK, to illustrate how the notion of ‘embodied space’ can help us to think critically about practices of suicide prevention that centre ‘locations of concern’. Our approach engages with suicide as an embodied social practice, one that takes place in and is shaped by spatial logics, cultural meanings and broader socio-political contexts. Considering three particular ‘locations of concern’: forests, bridges, and homes, we develop the novel concept of ‘suicidescapes’ in order to demonstrate how suicide can be situated within these multiple and intersecting lenses.