Why Americans are Dying from Despair,” itself a summary of the 2020 book Deaths of Despair and the Future of Capitalism. Both describe a surprising and distressing trend in the United States: a skyrocketing death rate for middle-aged white Americans. One purpose of theory is to serve as a lens through which to understand “real world” events. Theories, many argue, are built to be “put on trial” against empirical evidence. For this paper, I’d like you to interpret the deaths of despairs using one or more of the theories we have learned this semester. Durkheim’s work on solidarity and suicide is an obvious place to start, and it is fine to use Durkheim’s theory alone. But Smith, Marx, Weber, and de Beauvoir all also have the potential to help illuminate what’s behind this disturbing trend. Your essay should be between 1000 and 1500 words. Report the word count. Your essay should contain at least three relevant quotations from the course readings. No external sources (e.g., Wikipedia or readings from other courses) are to be cited. For this reason, no bibliography is necessary. Just cite the name of the reading and the page number. For example,
Adam Smith (Wealth of Nations, p. 7)argues that unlike humans, dogs acquire what they want through “servile and fawning attention.”
In the Communist Manifesto(p. 62), Marx argues that the bourgeoisie class is not universal, but rather “the product of a long course of development, of a series of revolutions in the modes of production and of exchange.
Please pull quotes and information only from the attached readings. The Death’s of Despair reading is the main attachment.
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