Firstly egotistic suicide is due to a low integration in society. This is when an individual is secluded from the outside world. Where the individual has lost or broken their ties with society. Durkheim believed this was why more Protestants committed suicide than Catholics. He believed Catholics integrated their members more strongly than Protestants. Durkheim concluded that the ‘higher rate of suicide associated with Protestantism results from it being a less strongly integrated church than the Catholic Church’.
Anomic suicide is caused by a lack of social regulation. This occurred when traditional norms and values were disrupted by rapid social change that produced uncertainty in the minds of individuals, as society’s guidelines for behavior became increasingly unclear.
Altruistic suicide is when a person is over integrated into society. This is where an individual would value a society more than themselves. An example of this would be a kamikaze pilot.
The final type of suicide is fatalistic suicide. This is when an individual is over regulated by society because society has restricted the individual too much. For example slaves, as they had no futures to look forward too.
Of course as with all sociological theories nothing is assumed to be true and the same goes for Durkheims analysis of suicide. Problems have been raise about his use of official statistics, his dismissal of non social influences on suicide, and his insistence of classifying all types of suicide together.
For Durkheim sociology was a science. It is to be questioned whether science can explain suicide. The reason for this question is because we are studying human social life, which is ever changing, and humans are self-aware.
Science is the use of exact methods of experimental investigation. Science analysis data, and is logical in its assessments of arguments. It develops from this a true body of knowledge on a particular subject matter. According to this theory of science, sociology is a science.
Studying a human being however is completely different from studying the physical world, sociology should not been seen in the same light as the natural sciences. To describe social life accurately you need to grasp the behavior of human beings. So to describe suicide you need to know if the individual was thinking about committing the act.
Durkheim found a correlation between rates of suicide and the seasons of the year. “Correlation means the existence of a regular relationship between two sets of occurrences or variables”. Just because two variables are closely correlated, one variable is often not the cause of the other. There are many cases were a correlation is observed and is hard to deny that it does not imply a causal relationship. This can lead to a false conclusion and the conclusion is easily questionable.
Durkheim found that levels of suicide increased progressively from January to around June or July. After that they began to decline. It is not conclusive here as to whether a causal relationship exists. It is called a spurious correlation this is an relationship between two variables that appears to be to be true but is caused by other factors.
If you look into the affect of the temperature or climate on suicide, you could see a pattern. In summer people generally have a more active social life. Individuals who feel isolated feel more so during the period of summer. Therefore suicide tended to be higher in the summer than in the winter when social activity declined.
Positivists such as Maurice Halbwachs have carried out a review of his work. Halbwachs did not challenge Durkheim’s scientific method. Halbwachs carried out a review of Durkheim’s work. He claimed that Durkheim had carried out a ‘a fully comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of suicide, which could be modified and added to, but which in principle seems unassailable’.
Two other positivists Jack P. Gibbs and Walter T. Martin agreed with Durkheim and Halbwachs that suicide should be studied using scientific methods and statistical data. But they believed that Durkheim had failed to use rigorous enough methods and so they set out to rectify the flaw in Durkheim’s study. They said that status integration could be used as an indicator of social integration. They concluded that the greater the degree of status integration in a population the lower the suicide rate would be.
Interpretive sociologists acknowledge the possibility of explaining suicide but they reject Durkheim’s basic principles of his work. J.D. Douglas critisised Durkheims use of statistics. Douglas believes that the decision corners make as to whether it is a suicide or not is influenced by family and friends. Therefor Durkheim’s theory on suicide is based on coroner’s verdicts on suicide.
Jean Baechler classifies suicides according to their meanings. He sees suicide as a way of responding to and a way of solving a problem. Suicide is adopted when there seems to be no alternative solution. According to this perspective Baechler classifies suicide according to the type of solution it offers, and the type of situation they are doing it into response to.
Baechler does not believe suicide can be explained in external factors alone. He says ‘whatever the external factor considered, it always happenes that the number of those who do not commit suicide is infinetley greater than the number of those who do’. Therefore he believed that suicide had to be explained through personal factors that are particular to an individual.
