Why does an estimated 5% of the general population intentionally and repeatedly hurt themselves? What are the reasons certain people resort to self-injury as a way to manage their daily lives? In Why Do We Hurt Ourselves, sociologist Baptiste Brossard draws on a five-year survey of self-injurers and suggests that the answers can be traced to social, more than personal, causes. Self-injury is not a matter of disturbed individuals resorting to hurting themselves in the face of individual weaknesses and difficulties. Rather, self-injury is the reaction of individuals to the tensions that compose, day after day, the tumultuousness of their social life and position. Self-harm is a practice that people use to self-control and maintain order—to calm down, or to avoid ‘going haywire’ or ‘breaking everything.’ More broadly, through this research Brossard works to develop a perspective on the contemporary social world at large, exploring quests for self-control in modern Western societies.
Table of Content
Introduction
Part One: A Practice of Self-Control
Introduction
1. The First Time
2. Towards a Feeling of Dependence
3. Talking about Self-Injury?
4. Quitting
5. Self-Injury on a Regular Basis
6. On the Manners to Self-Injure
Conclusion: Maintaining the Order
Part Two: A Social Positioning Practice
Introduction
7. The Staging of Discretion
8. At the Origin of ‘Relational Problems’
9. The Existential Crisis
10. What Gender Represents
11. What Some Events Imply
Conclusion: A Relational Map of Self-Injury
Conclusion: A Self-Controlled Youth
Endnotes
Index
About the author
Baptiste Brossard, a French sociologist, is Lecturer at the Australian National University.
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