How Did Suicide Actions Get Their Social Significance (1919-1928)

How is suicide action endowed with social meaning?This is a fairly interesting but rarely-studied sociological question.Here we take our examples mostly from Chinese patriotic movements in 1919-1928.lt was an age when the whole socity were aroused by an indignant emotion. Some patriotics took their own lives wrathfully, trying to alert their compatriots and spur a shared feeling of solidification,resistance,and struggle. They held that their self-sacrifice were more praiseworthy than lives. Coincedently, modern China media appered. They reported these suicide actions zealously,strengthened and magnified their social meaning, endued them with lofty social values. In order to mobilise the people, solemn memorial meetings were always held. By honorring the traditional idea of fedelity and the modern patriotism,the memorial meetings bore the function of mobilisation. The patriotics themselves longed that the society would acknowledge their actions'public values of "sacrificing for motherland" and alerting compatriots, whereras the memorial meetings accepted and magnified these values. Different kinds of mourning rites affirmed their reputation of "martyrs". Although the practice of taking one'own life was not encouraged,the moral and social values of the suicides were accepted. Media reports,memorial meetings,the comfort and compensation to the bereaved family, and public funerals became a successive series in social mobilization and in driving the remonstrative movement further more. This explains from one side of the problem why the May Fourth movement could develop into an extensive patriotic movement with a mass character and even triumphed.The process that suicide actions were endowed with social significance which was greatly magnified bore the characteristics of social construction. Suicide action was a special protesting strategy and way of dedicating themselves to motherland;the media shouldered the responsibility of social mobilization actively; the memorial meetings honorred the suicides as "martyrs";the scholars'comment expressed their opinions about the future of human civilization, the tragedy of human being,and social reform Through the construction of these four stages, the social significance of suicide actions was realized.The paper devotes to open out the above-mentioned construction process by these four stages. As the question lies in somewhere between the subjects of history and sociology, we do hope our research would make some contribution to the new branch of learning,sociological history...