Emile Durkheim, is the founder of sociology who conceived many theories, in the concept of suicide and its relationship with society. Durkheim’s book “Suicide” makes a distinction between suicide and suicide rate in relation with society. Durkheim conducted his research in a longitudinal study from various countries. He studied the suicide number and compared the mortality rate of different regions. His case study of suicide, explored the differences of suicide rates between social, economic and religious groups. He found people felt intertwine of social surrounding of social factors that produce suicide and, different social classes emerged from the discovery. Durkheim research emerged different typology in theories of suicide. Altruistic …show more content…
Theories of suicide have contributed to understand the stress of social issues than on biological factors like psychological for the cause of suicide. He found suicide is the results of social disorganization and the lack of social integration. Durkheim found and theories different types of suicide. Anomic suicide, enforces society standards that causes a person to feel lost or alone. With a lack of social directions and restrains social ethics contributes to the isolations felt. Egoistic suicide is the consequences of social bonds and linked to anomic disappointment. Egoistic suicide, a person feels detached from society by roles, family dynamics and relationships. Egoistic see no goal to accomplish therefore, feels useless and without purpose. The isolation felt because a person does not belong to a group for support and therefore, commit suicide. Egoistic and altruistic suicide, is the consequences of integration within the society Altruist, commits beyond the World and the obstacles and burden. Fatalistic suicide block and passion oppressive and makes, a person feel like an indentured servant. The customs and traditions of society is instrumental in death and the mode of suicidal act. Each theories work to clarify the social context when the problems occurred. Durkheim, believed there is a relationship between society and the contribution to the spread of suicide. The low value placed on human life and lifestyles contributes to the spread of suicide among different societies. People who are unable to achieve economic growth and security, decide to end their issues with suicide. Economic constraints contributed to inequalities, decrease in economic stability and hopelessness among people spread of suicide. A sense of detachment from society due to thoughts and actions leads to high suicide
Durkheim’s concept of social integration refers to social groups with well-defined values, traditions, norms, and goals. These groups will differ in the degree to which individuals are part of the collective body, also to the extent to which the group is emphasized over the individual, and lastly the level to which the group is unified versus fragmented. Durkheim believed that two types of suicide, Egoistic and Altruistic, could stem from social integration. Egoistic suicide resulted from too little social integration. Those people who were not sufficiently bound to a social group would be left with little or no social support in times of crisis. This caused them to commit suicide more often. An example Durkheim discovered was that of unmarried people, especially males, who, with less to connect them to stable social groups, committed suicide at higher rates than married people. Altruistic suicide is a result of too much integration. It occurs at the opposite end of the social integration scale as egoistic suicide. Self sacrifice appears to be the driving force, where people are so involved with a social group that they lose sight of themselves and become more willing to take one for the team, even if this causes them to die. The most common cases of altruistic suicide occur to soldiers during times of war. Religious cults have also been a major source of altruistic suicide.
According to Durkheim, two types of suicide arise from the different levels social integration. One cause of suicide is extremely low social integration, which is referred to as egoistic suicide. Durkheim argues that this is the case because others give the individual’s life meaning, so without this support from the group the person may feel hopeless (Conley 188). The other type of suicide, altruistic suicide, reflects the opposite situation: when an individual is too socially integrated (Conley 189). This type of suicide occurs when members of a group or community become so totally engrossed by the group tha...
Kuhl wrote about how Emile Durkheims idea’s about suicide is connected with social intergation. The authors argue that individual factors may play in for youth sucide as well as the social intergation.
According to Durkheim, studying individual reasons for an action is psychology’s concern, not sociology (Durkheim, Suicide, 35). Weber would argue that the individuals are what make up a society, and thus, they should be the ones to be studied since their meaningful social actions are the ones that impact the society as a whole. Weber states, “Action in the sense of subjectively understandable orientation of behavior exists only as the behavior of one or more individual human beings” (Weber, Basic Sociological Terms, 3). In the case of suicide, Weber would argue that we must take the generalities within Durkheim’s theory into consideration, but then go beyond that. It would be more thorough to analyze the individual cases within different societies to derive a clear understanding of the motives people have behind the act of suicide. Weber would also utilize his concept of verstehen, to gain an explanatory understanding of the subjective
In a study released by Brown University, their psychology department shed some light on common myths and facts surrounded suicide. These m...
In 1897, Emile Durkheim (1997) showed that the suicide – perhaps the most personal of all decisions – could be analysed through the conceptual lenses of sociology.
The first type of suicide that can be correlated with abortion is egoistic. Durkheim labels egoism as the low end of the integration scale (Coser), for instance unmarried people. Egoistic or individualistic suicide transpires when conscience is weak, few common principles and sentiments are present, interaction is limited, detached from society, and commitment is to self-interests rather than to those of the collectivity (Coser). For example, an 18 year old is in her first trimester of pregnancy, the father has alienated himself from the equation, her peer group are continuing on with life without her and in her cognizance the only choice is to terminate the pregnancy and her standard way of living will again become normal. For some that may be of certainty, but for others not so.
Emile Durkheim is a French sociologist who investigated suicide and the connection to society using the functionalist perspective. He talks about solidarity being a component of suicide. The less people that an individual has a connection to the more likely they are to consider taking their own life. Belonging to a social group can increase the sense of belonging that people have in their everyday life. Social stratification is a factor of whether someone feels like they belong in a group or not.
When Durkheim conducted his research on suicide he did it with the intention of establishing Sociology as a science and as a result almost validate the worth and power of sociology. Before Durkheim’s study, suicide was considered only as the act of an individual however Durkheim’s theory was that suicide tied in with social structures and even though he believed that suicide is ‘the most personal act anyone can undertake’ (Durkheim, 1897), he also believed it was accredited to social causes.
There are two main threads of suicide. The social or institutional suicide and individual or
A Study of Suicide: An overview of the famous work by Emile Durkheim, Ashley Crossman, 2009, http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/Suicide.htm, 25/12/2013
Durkheim was a functionalist, and theorised that a holistic social narrative could be identified which would explain individual behaviour. He argued that, whilst society was made up of its members, it was greater than the sum of its parts, and was an external pressure that determined the behaviour of the individuals within it. At that time, suicide rates in Europe were rising, and so the causes of suicide were on the agenda. Since suicide is seen as an intrinsically personal and individual action, establishing it as having societal causes would be a strong defence for Durkheim’s functionalist perspective. Durkheim used the comparative method to study the official suicide rates of various European countries. While he was not the first to notice the patterns and proportional changes of suicide rates between different groups in European societies, it was this fact that was the foundation of his theory – why did some groups consistently have much higher rates than others? This supports the idea that it was the external pressures placed on certain groups within society that induced higher rates of suicide, and is the basis of Durkheim’s work.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. (J. A. Spaulding, & G. Simpson, Trans.)
Although sociologists like J.D. Douglas would question the reliability of the statistics, due to the coroners decision being final, most sociologists would agree that Durkheim's study into suicide was successful, and indeed many have tried to develop and improve on his theory. Overall, this essay has shown that one type of methodology may not always be suitable for the particular research carried out. Both Interpretative sociology and the Positivist approach equally show that they are valid methods for carrying out research, but like everything, nothing is one hundred percent accurate. Therefore, there is always room for flaw, but in the study of Sociology, there is always room for more ways of obtaining and interpreting data.
Suicide has become a critical, national problem and the extent of this is mind-boggling. Suicides have been proven to be one of the leading causes of death among college students. According to Webters dictionary “suicide is the act killing oneself on purpose”. It derived from the Latin sui, meaning “self”, and caedere, which means “to kill”. But this is just a definition, because an actual suicide holds different meanings to people such as tragic, shocking, a relief, a cry for help, a shame, heroic, the right choice, punishment, revenge, protest, anger, a mistake, desperate, hurtful and many more. But why do people, like college students who have their entire future ahead of them, simply give up hope and turn their heads away from life and commit suicide. There are several causes of suicide, recent incidents of suicide on college campuses, warning signs from a suicidal. I blame the Constitution and the United States law for not taking any hard initiative on the subject of suicide. I also impose the choice of the media, which is reflecting and portraying suicide towards a wrong direction. However most important questions remain: can the growing epidemic of suicide be solved, what are communities doing about it and what can they do to help?