| Abstract: |
This paper, the one and only about despair and suicide among Orang Asli (indigenous) groups of peninsular malaysia, focuses on Sen(g)oi Semai, a Mon-Khmer-speaking group of about 30,000, famous for avoiding violence. The paper examines two empirical correlations, firstly, between suicide and "learned helplessness" and, secondly, between suicide and "modernization," especially in terms of increasing gender disjunction and familial patriarchy. Issues addressed include nonviolence, gender relations, learned helplessness, the case study method, the long-term effects of violence, the effects of modernization and development, the increase in morbidity of depression in the Western world and its supposed absence among "simpler" peoples.
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