How successful was Durkheim in using the "Scientific method". In hindsight would you have conducted research on suicide in a different way?

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Sociology Inquiry 1

How successful was Durkheim in using the "Scientific method". In hindsight would you have conducted research on suicide in a different way?

In this essay I will discuss some of the approaches to the study of suicide and its social causes described by Durkheim. I will then present a few alternative theories or critiques of Durkheim; and finally conclude with a Personal reflection on Durkheim`s analysis.

Durkheim believed that society is a part of nature, and a science of society has to be based upon the same logical principles as those which obtain in natural science. Therefore Durkheim set out to prove that sociology was a science by applying his theory to the study of suicide.

The study of suicide is seen as particularly important because it illustrates the wider theoretical and methodological debates in sociology. The study of suicide, by Durkheim was based on using statistics from several countries and looked for causes of suicide. This illustrates the positive approach. Later studies such as those by Atkinson and Douglas use interpretative and phenomenological approaches, which question the value of statistics and the idea of causes and try instead to understand how meanings are attached to actions.

The positivist approach in sociology is based on using the methodology of the natural sciences as far as possible. This was part of an attempt to establish sociology as an important academic discipline, since science was seen as the highest form of knowledge. Durkheim wanted to counter the then current explanations of suicide, which were usually based on individuals, by showing that suicide could be explained at the level of society; he wanted to show that one of the most individual acts a person could perform was caused by social factors. He was impressed by the stability of suicide rates among different groups and in different places over time; if suicide was only about individual decisions, the pattern should be random (Discovering Suicide 1987 chapter 2 pg12). To prove his case, he collected statistics from several countries, and compared the incidence of suicide with the incidence of various social factors (this is known as a multivariate analysis). His explanation for variations in suicide rates was different levels of social integration. In some societies people are tied more closely to each other through organisations like the family and religion than in other societies. For example, Catholicism and strong family networks could explain the lower suicide rates in southern European countries. From this Durkheim suggested four types of social structure with different levels of integration leading to different rates and types of suicide. In egoistic structures, like modern western countries, integration is weak so suicide rates are high, although there will be differences between groups that are more or less integrated (for example, Durkheim suggests married people are more integrated than single people). At the other extreme, are altruistic social structures in which individuals are so well integrated that they value the group more than their individuality; here people may commit suicide because of peer pressure and the understanding of group dynamics and rules. For example, the old custom of suttee in India where a widow sacrifices herself by being burnt on her dead husbands funeral fire.
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In anomic social structures, the normal social controls have broken down because of rapid social changes and thus resulting in uncertainty and disruption due to the lack of control. People experiencing this lack of control can be led through circumstances to committing suicide. Finally, very oppressive societies such as one under Nazi Dictatorship in the early 20th Century had fatal consequences that caused people to take their own lives rather than live. This structure in which people chose to lose the will to live as a result of excessive social regulation. (O'Donnell page 314)

Durkheim's positivistic approach ...

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