The social autopsy takes the death of a set of individuals as its starting point and then critically and systematically examines social and political conditions to explain these deaths and generate awareness and policy change. After distinguishing the social autopsy from other means to explain excess and premature deaths, we delineate three core methodological principles of the social autopsy: social relevance as a guiding criterion to sample the deaths to be autopsied, embedding the patterning of deaths in social worlds, and a focus on contextual causality and social mechanisms. We provide three contemporary examples of excess deaths calling out for social autopsies: school shootings, Black deaths at the hands of police, and migrant border deaths.

社会尸检以一组人的死亡为出发点，然后批判性地、系统地检查社会和政治条件，以解释这些死亡并产生意识和政策变化。在将社会尸检与其他解释过度死亡和过早死亡的方法区分开来之后，我们描绘了社会尸检的三个核心方法论原则：社会相关性作为对尸检死亡进行抽样的指导标准，将死亡模式嵌入到社会世界中，以及关注背景因果关系和社会机制。我们提供了三个需要社会解剖的过度死亡的当代例子：学校枪击事件、警察手中的黑人死亡和移民边境死亡。