Karlijn Liselore Anne Roex
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
INTERNATIONAL MAX PLANCK RESEARCH SCHOOL on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy Köln, Germany Karlijn Liselore Anne Roex Anomie, Shame, and Resistance The Impact of the Economy on Suicide Studies on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy Karlijn Liselore Anne Roex Anomie, Shame, and Resistance The Impact of the Economy on Suicide © Karlijn Liselore Anne Roex Published by IMPRS-SPCE International Max Planck Research School on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy, Cologne http://imprs.mpifg.de ISBN: 978-3-946416-19-7 DOI: 10.17617/2.3014948 Studies on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy are published online on http://imprs.mpifg.de. Go to Dissertation Series. Studies on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy Abstract This project builds on Durkheim’s sociological tradition to identify factors external to the individual that contribute to suicide rates. The theories central to this work imply that marketization plays a key role. Marketiza- tion here means economic deregulation policies and the overall “rescript- ing” of citizens as “consumers” (Monahan 2008). The main question of this project was: How is suicide influenced by unemployment, and how does this influence depend on the societal context of (increasing) marketi- zation? Do dominant institutions only restrict suicidality, or can they also increase it? The project consisted of two parts. The first, based on the diffusion and industrial relations literatures, examined the cross-national diffusion of marketization processes. The second examined the impact on suicide rates of these processes and the extent to which people attempt to resist them. This part of the project derives from Durkheim’s (1897) classical in- tegration theory and institutional anomie theory (Messner and Rosenfeld 1994). Popular resistance against marketization was shown to have an important protective impact on the population and unemployed men in particular. About the author Karlijn Roex was a doctoral researcher at the IMPRS-SPCE from 2014 to 2018. Email: [email protected] Studies on the Social and Political Constitution of the Economy Anomie, Shame, and Resistance: The Impact of the Economy on Suicide Inauguraldissertation zur Erlangung des Doktorgrades der Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Universität zu Köln 2018 vorgelegt von MSc Karlijn Liselore Anne Roex aus Châtenay-Malabry, Frankreich 0 Referent: Prof. Dr. Mark Lutter und Prof. Dr. Clemens Kroneberg Korreferent: Associate Prof. Dr. Aaron Reeves Tag der Promotion: 16.10.2018 1 Table of Contents 1. Introduction Part 1: Marketization and suicide: a glance on the macro-level 2. Marketization and its Transnational Diffusion 3. Unemployment, Marketization and Suicide Part 2: Mechanisms 4. Anomie and Shame: Driving the Effects of Marketization and Unemployment? Part 3: Conclusion 5. Conclusion For Omid1 1 refugee that committed suicide 29 April 2016 in Nauru, an Australia offshore detention center. 2 Foreword and Acknowledgements First of all I want to thank my supervisors for their valuable feedback and time: professor Dr. Mark Lutter and professor Dr. Aaron Reeves. I have received their feedback with great interest. I also want to thank the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies for facilitating my research and making everything go as smoothly as possible. In particular I want to thank the coordinators Ursula Trappe, Susanne Berger and Alex Spielau. I also want to thank some colleagues for their valuable support and advice: Annette Michaela Hübschle, Dennis Mwaura, Guus Dix, Lea Elsässer and Alina Marktanner. Without them it would not have been possible to find the courage to continue. Moreover, I want to thank my parents for having allowed me to focus more fully on my doctoral work by taking care of some of very demanding aspects of my private life. Moreover, they were often a vital personal support that encouraged me to pursue the PhD, and often a safe, trusted home to return to when I needed some rest. Moreover, I want to thank some very good friends for providing stimulating intellectual conversations that inspired me and also for their understanding that a PhD can sometimes take over your social life. At other times, they were there to help me find a healthier work-life balance. These friends are Joeri, Pieter, Caroline, Baukje, Charlotte, Inge and many others. This project was a deep search. It was part of a journey, a PhD trajectory, in which I more clearly found my position as a sociologist, whereas I started as a blank, new PhD student who had no idea where she stood. In some respects, I have ended at an opposite end from where I have started – having learnt so many new things and gained refreshing insights. During the process, I was disorientated many times. I felt my old assumptions and idea of sociology were no longer tenable, at least not to me. I am aware that I am making assumptions in this thesis on the very back of those who are in extreme distress (suicidal) or suffering from the large bulk of economic pressure, poverty, inequality and prestige culture (‘marketization’), without having talked to them for my research. In that instance, I am actually admittedly committing a ‘social science crime’ (Scott, 2012: xxiv2). However, I have talked too many of these people in real life, and my future work will aim to more closely represent their narratives. Meanwhile, using this ‘us and them’ language appears a bit odd, since we have almost all experienced extreme distress at some point and a large portion of us is suffering in marketizing societies. This dissertation, with all its limitations that I now acknowledge, is dedicated to all of us. Paradoxically, this PhD thesis focuses a bit on disorientation. Through the experience of doing a PhD project, which is in fact a phase in which you prepare for returning disorientation, I found out that this disorientation does not need to be a necessary ‘bad’ or harmful thing. In the end, I found out that we could have a more optimistic attitude towards phases of disorientation, also on the collective level. 2 Scott, J. (2012). Two Cheers for Anarchism. Six Easy Pieces on Autonomy, Dignity, and Meaningful Work and Play. Princeton/ Oxford: Princeton University Press. 3 One scholar that has especially helped me gaining this insight academically, was, unintendedly, Professor Dr. David Stark. I attended a course lectured by him while staying at Columbia University and read his book The Sense of Dissonance (2009). It was refreshing and resonated with many things that I was focusing on at that moment, finding myself in the midst of a disorientated city right after the Trump election in November 2016. About that period in New York, I also want to thank the many inspiring people I have met there: John (‘Jp’), Kassie, Jamell (‘Jay’), Adamma, Jonah, Marie, Rebecca, Kelly and Matthew. 4 Abbreviations and acronyms b-value: Estimated regression coefficient β: Standardized estimated regression coefficient EPL: Employment Protection Legislation FDI: Foreign Direct Investment regulation GDP: Gross Domestic Product IAT: Institutional Anomie Theory IMF: International Monetary Fund OECD: Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development p-value: level of statistical significance SE: Standard error VoC: Varieties of Capitalism 5 List of figures, graphs, maps and tables Chapter 1 Figure 1: Model of the project Figure 2: mean suicide rate in countries between 1960-2016 Figure 3a: trends in suicide rates in countries between 1980-2012, men Figure 3b: trends in suicide rates in countries between 1960-2016, women Figure 4a: trends in excess suicide unemployed in countries between 1980-2012, men Figure 4b: trends in excess suicide unemployed in countries between 1980-2012, women Chapter 2 Figure 1: Trends in union density in different countries Figure 2: Trends in wage-bargain coordination in different countries Figure 3: Trends in wage-bargain centralization in different countries Figure 4: Trends in governmental influence in bargaining. Figure 5: Trends in opening clauses in collective agreements. Figure 6: Trends in employment protection legislation strictness Figure 7: Trends in foreign direct investment policy strictness Figure 8: Trends at the negative marketization index Figure 9: Cross-national scatter plot of regression residuals, 1960-2016 Table 1: Factor analysis marketization and resistance against marketization indicators Table 2: Correlation matrix marketization and resistance against marketization indicators Table 3: Descriptive statistics over countries 6 Table 4: Regression analysis on (negative) marketization processes (1960-2016) Table 5: Regression analysis with interaction effect between recent (negative) marketization processes in leading economies and resistance on (negative) marketization processes in 33 OECD countries (1960-2016) Table 6: Regression analysis with interaction effect between recent (negative) marketization processes in leading economies and regime types on (negative) marketization processes in 33 OECD countries (1960-2016) Chapter 3 Figure 1a: Cross-national scatter plot of regression residuals for men, 1960-2016 Figure 1b: Cross-national scatter plot of regression residuals for women, 1960-2016. Figure 2a: Excess suicide rate of unemployed compared to employed men, 1980-2012 Figure 2b: Excess suicide rate of unemployed compared to employed women, 1980-2012 Figure 3: Resistance against marketization, 1980-2012 Figure 4: Annual unemployment growth, 1980-2012 Table