Critically examine the contribution of studies of suicide to a sociological understanding of deviance in society. Suicide is known to be the ultimate deviant act, as the act

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Critically examine the contribution of studies of suicide to a sociological understanding of deviance in society.

Suicide is known to be the ultimate deviant act, as the act destroys the most important element of society- the people on it. Without members a society would collapse. Until fairly recently in the UK suicide was illegal, and those who made attempts to kill themselves were arrested in their hospital beds.  This may sound a bit peculiar but from a society’s view, which wants to keep its members and wants them to continue fulfilling their social roles, the death of a person as a result of suicide is seen as similar to one of murder.

Yet suicide was understudied by sociologists until the 1960s. This is due to one major piece of work, by Durkheim in 1897, it had conquered sociological thought and it was believed that there wasn’t much more to say about it.

Nevertheless the interpretive sociologists had several arguments against Durkheim’s work as they prefer to explore the way society is constructed through people’s interactions. However, is not really suicide itself that is the real centre of the debate but the methodological issues that surround it.

        To begin, a functionalist’s analysis of deviance, such as Durkheims, begins with society as a whole. They look for the cause of deviance in the nature of society instead of the biological or psychological nature of the individual. He believed that that crime is a basic part of healthy society because some crime helps social unity and brings about social change but nevertheless he admits too much crime is dysfunctional as society may collapse and can have damaging effects.

On the other hand, we have the phenomenological approach (interpretive sociologists) and in contrast they stress the creation of the world through interaction. They examine aspects of deviance which have been largely ignored by other approaches. They look at the interaction between deviants and those who define them as deviant. In other words, they examine how and why a particular group is defined as deviant and the effects of the definition has upon their future.

To look closely at the differences of these two approaches, Durkheim’s study on suicide gives a good example of the differences between the positivist and phenomenological approaches.  

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Durkheim chose to study suicide in an attempt to prove an explanation for an act which seemed to be the very opposite of what could be considered as “social”.  

By providing this it meant sociology had something constructive to say in explaining suicide. Durkheim hoped to secure the status of sociology amongst the newly rising sciences. This attempt to locate sociology as a science, with its loyalty to “positivistic” methods of research, is vital in understanding how Durkheim tackled the topic.

Durkheims chosen method was called “multivariate analysis” that consisted in comparing the incidence of various social factors ...

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