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Further reflections on Chandler: The politics of the link between culture and Indigenous youth suicide

17-Apr-11

Had another think about this and saw that I could be making the same mistake I sought to correct in Chandler.

My aim was to correct Chandler’s interpretation of the collective protective factors against suicide (i.e. culture) in order to account for the fuller implications of any political measures that could be based on them. By opening up Chandler’s study to the possibility that a measure of cultural change is implied in his markers of cultural continuity, I also wanted to recognise the difficult adjustments Indigenous communities have had to make in order to sustain some semblance of their way of life that is their right. In other words, as much as we seek to support cultural continuity, we need to be aware of any consequential cultural changes this implies. My point is that cultural preservation and rehabilitation in response to a rapidly changing and possibly threatening post-colonial context tends to involve some change in social organisation for which there are ‘cultural implications’ (i.e. some form of cultural change). So, I raised the question of whether or not cultural continuity is inherently valuable as a protective factor against suicidal behaviour. Instead I was suggesting that maybe it’s the type of social change and the quality of cultural adjustment this implies that is most important. What I’m afraid of is the argument that because Indigenous peoples are adaptable (and mostly quite adept at it), then they should adapt. This is quite contrary to the sorts of political implications I was thinking of and deserve some explanation.

Chandler’s study implies that the form of social change described as self-determination appears to support a certain quality of cultural continuity that acts as a protective factor against suicidal behaviour. Just because low levels of self-determination are present in a community does not necessarily mean that a certain form of cultural continuity is not observable. I say this because culture is not intrinsically dependent on self-determination, but self-determination can provide some defence against cultural disintegration.1 Methodologically speaking, rather than treating self-determination as though it automatically implies cultural continuity, it needs to be treated as an assumption to be tested. In other words, I think there’s better and worse versions of self-determination on the ground, but the principle of self-determination is politically and morally valid. So, I think Chandler’s study is only a starting point for a more qualitative model of research. Again, I believe that we can assume that cultural continuity plays a role in moderating suicide, but this entails a qualitative measurement that Chandler’s study can only at best imply.

UPDATE: I finally found an Australian who questions the interpretation of Chandler and Lalonde’s measures as I have:

However, the measures used (selfgovernment, land claims, health services, cultural facilities and police and fire services) are also powerful indicators of local social and political control. It may be the interaction of disruption/ discontinuity with lack/denial of control or autonomous action that is particularly invidious and more important than the simple presence or absence of cultural identification (Hunter and Harvey, 2002: 16).

Hunter, E. and D. Harvey (2002). “Indigenous suicide in Australia, New Zealand, Canada and the United States.” Emergency Medicine 14(1): 14-23.

  1. Read anything at all by Will Kymicka (or the secondary literature) and you will get the sense that this is his description of existing minority rights as well as his defence oftheir necessary extension – not for cultural preservation, but as protection against cultural deterioration. [↩]
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Indigenous suicide and the role of cultural continuity and/or change: Brief comments on the work of Michael J. Chandler

13-Apr-11

Michael Chandler, a Canadian research psychologist, has received a lot of attention for his work demonstrating how culture moderates the suicidal behaviour of First Nation Canadians. It’s been cited approvingly by many Australian academics examining the rate of suicide amongst Indigenous youth. In particular, Chandler and Lalonde’s 1998 article published in Transcultural Psychology highlights the findings of decades worth of research. I reproduce the abstract here for your benefit:

This research report examines self-continuity and its role as a protective factor against suicide. First, we review the notions of personal and cultural continuity and their relevance to understanding suicide among First Nations youth. The central theoretical idea developed here is that, because it is constitutive of what it means to have or be a self to somehow count oneself as continuous in time, anyone whose identity is undermined by radical personal and cultural change is put at special risk of suicide for the reason that they lose those future commitments that are necessary to guarantee appropriate care and concern for their own well-being. It is for just such reasons that adolescents and young adults – who are living through moments of especially dramatic change – constitute such a high-risk group. This generalized period of increased risk during adolescence can be made even more acute within communities that lack a concomitant sense of cultural continuity which might otherwise support the efforts of young persons to develop more adequate self-continuity-warranting practices. We present data to demonstrate that, while certain indigenous or First Nations groups do in fact suffer dramatically elevated suicide rates, such rates vary widely across British Columbia’s nearly 200 aboriginal groups: some communities show rates 800 times the national average, while in others suicide is essentially unknown. Finally, we demonstrate that these variable incidence rates are strongly associated with the degree to which British Columbia’s 196 bands are engaged in community practices that are employed as markers of a collective effort to rehabilitate and vouchsafe the cultural continuity of these groups. Communities that have taken active steps to preserve and rehabilitate their own cultures are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower [emphasis my own].

It’s a persuasive thesis and it has reaffirmed to me just how much sociologists could learn from psychologists of Chandler’s ilk. What I found especially insightful was the theoretical and empirical breadth and depth with which Chandler proposes his theory of the relationship between identity and suicide. Chandler has used his psychological theory of identity to demonstrate how suicidal behaviour is more of a risk when self-continuity is unstable. Given the disruptiveness of adolescence, Chandler and Lalonde use this theory of self-continuity to show why adolescent suicide is relatively high compared to other age groups. But when Chandler confronts the relatively high rates of suicide in Indigenous populations compared to non-Indigenous people he turns to an extension of his theory – his concept of cultural continuity -  to explain this difference. As compelling as this argument is, I want to point to some problematic sociological assumptions that, I believe, recommend a very different conclusion. What I want to suggest from Chandler and Lalonde’s work is that communities that have taken active steps to adapt and modify their own cultures (to some extent) are shown to be those in which youth suicide rates are dramatically lower.

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