Positive Approach To Suicide

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Asses the usefulness of the

Positivists approaches to suicide.

The Positivists approach to suicide is very useful, as it helps sociologists to understand why some people commit suicide and others do not. They group their results into categories, use quantitative data, which are official statistics and look at the wider factors of suicide. While on the other hand Interpretivists gives sociologists a different perspective of suicide, such as how each individual each sees suicide and how they each give their own meaning to it. Interpretivists show their results in a qualitative way, which is each person’s own account of it.

Durkheim, a positivist, believes that suicide is caused by society’s lack of or too much integration and regulation. He also believes that they can be categorised into four types, which are: Altruistic- suicide committed for selfless reasons, for example suicide bombers. This type of suicide is because of too much integration; in the way that everyone else would be relying on the suicide bomber to fulfil their task. Egoistic- This is dying for one’s self because of weakening of their ties in their present social lives, which is caused by a lack of integration. Fatalistic- This is where there is no other way out of that situation except for suicide such as slaves. This is caused by too much regulation and control.

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Statistics from coroner’s reports show that some social facts such as religion, family and marriage affect whether someone is likely prey for suicide. Unmarried people for example have the highest rate of suicide, followed by those married with kids. Durkheim believes that this is due to these groups having less social ties than those with kids and extended families. Durkheim asked the question: how many social ties does each random person chosen have and come up with the conclusion that the more social ties a person had the less likely they were to commit suicide. Evidence of this are periods ...

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