Ethnographic research amongst Sinhala Buddhists in community and clinical settings in
the Madampe Division, northwest Sri Lanka, suggests that local understandings and
practices of suicidal behaviour reflect the kinship structure. In particular, acts of selfharm
and self-inflicted death arise in response to the breaking of core kinship rights,
duties, and obligations, or as a challenge to inflexibility or contradictions within the
system. In either case, the morality of kinship is closely associated with the causes of
suicidal behaviour, as the ‘inevitability’ or ‘evitability’ of kin relationships is negotiated
and lived in practice. This article analyses how local political economies give rise to
particular kinship and moral conditions, with special attention paid to those between
household (ge) members and brothers-in-law (massina)