Paper short abstract:

Recent results in psychiatry, neurosciences and genetics, have shown the existence of a genetic predisposition to suicidal behaviour. How can this fact be accommodated within a social-anthropological approach to suicide?

Paper long abstract:

Recent results in psychiatry, neurosciences, and genetics, have shown the existence of a genetic predisposition to suicidal behaviour. How can this fact be accommodated within a social-anthropological approach to suicide? Based on a critical review of anthropological theories of suicide, on cross-cultural data, and on direct observations spanning more than twenty years of fieldwork amongst a suicide-prone community located in Palawan island, Philippines, I will discuss a new hypothesis accounting for this phenomenon taking into consideration genetic as well as non-genetic factors. This study may lead to reassess the object of anthropological studies and the very notion of culture.