On Work and Suicide in Neoliberal France

This lecture, given by Professor Sarah Waters (University of Leeds, UK), will address the sharp rise in workplace suicides in France since the 1990s and examines some of the socio-historical causes of this rare phenomenon. Based on a research project conducted over 82 suicide cases that occurred across three French companies between 2005 and 2015, this presentation challenges the prevalence of the medical sciences in our understanding of suicide and draws instead on a rich sociological tradition to argue that workplace suicide is a social phenomenon that transcends the individual and reflects lived conditions of human labor following the transition to neoliberalism.