Durkheim continued to theory to say that the suicide rate were dependent upon a degree of social integration and the degree to which society regulated and individual’s behaviour. So too much or too little of either dependable could result in suicide. Evidence of this is when suicide is committed in prisons as a result of strict regulations and routines, also when someone is isolated and has no friends, resulting in in little social integration is likely to consider suicide. Durkheim managed to categorised suicide and proposed there were four types:
Altruistic suicide; too much social integration because of becoming very involved in a certain group and develops a strong sense of loyalty and duty. Ie. suicide bombers and most recently the pilots who flew the planes in 9/11.
Egotistic suicide; too little social integration where the individual is often very stressed and has little sense of community. For instance Judaism has low levels of suicide as a result of strong community, where Protestantism has a high level of suicide because of not much group/community activity, but emphasis on individual ie. very self interested people with no regard for others left behind.
Anomic suicide; confusion over societies norms and values. So when there is rapid social; change such as rapid changes in the economy. When something big changes in society and confusion sets in because of social rules are slow to adjust and keep up with the changes. Ie. the Wall Street crashed, when millionaires became poor, too much change drives individuals to become suicidal. This highlights how modern societies are very dependent on economy.
Fatalistic suicide: too much regulation when people are controlled too much such as slaves and in concentration camps, they stop caring whether they live or die.
Durkehim study of suicide is very through. However Durkehim is looking from a positivistic perspective which is objective. It measures at the macro level and fails to acknowledge an individual free will. As a result og the view that individuals actions are predicatable and deterministic because they have all been socialise in the same way. The positivistic view highlights the fact and trends of suicide. This allows generalisation to be made but fails to look at individual cases and give a subjective view, which can often be more insightful and important when studying the subjects such as suicide.
In 1967 Jack Douglas, from interpretivistic perspective said that we needed to consider why people commit suicide and the social meaning of this. He highlighted the important of those determining whether or not a death was a suicide, the coroners and police would have a great deal of influence over the statistics. Douglas pointed out how we needed to consider the process of which coroners g through to arrive at the decision that a death is a suicide, this is extremely subjective and relies on one person’s decision and interpretation. Douglas who was a social active theorist helped Maxwell Atkinson high light how suicide statistics were then not social facts and in fact were human artefacts. In 1978 Maxwell Atkinson said that as a result of people making the decision that the death was a suicide meant that now we needed to look at cultural difference in different societies. Atkinson discovered there were legal differences which changes how coroners looked at death. For instance Danish coroners were more likely to give a verdict of suicide than British. Because of English Law which says victim has to have shown intention to kill themselves such as a suicide note for it to be an official suicide, which greatly effects the way statistics for suicide are looked at. They are therefore socially constructive and not objective as Durkehim claimed. This made other positivistics theorists criticise Durkehim as he did not operationalise his concept as a true scientist would. He did break down suicide to an extent but did not clearly state how to measure levels of integration and regulation.
The work of Douglas, a Neo-weberanist an interpretivistic theorist warned and showed us how statistic can be misleading and should be used with caution. Linked with Maxwell Atkinson’s views we were shown how statistic were not actual social facts. Atkinson was phenomonologist, which studies how people understand things, he believed that the key to understanding suicide would be to look at the individual, as opposed to looking at society as a whole.
In conclusion the statement that “suicide statistics are social fact” from an interpretivistic perspective was rejected and corrected to show that they were in fact “social artefacts” as a result of them being subjective. We see how they are socially constructed and as a result of a coroners decision and not as Durkheim suggested deterministic. This theory is not entirely wrong but when statistics are used to back up theories of suicide we can not rely entirely on them for evidence, as they can be misleading and not as reliable as they first seemed.
