Durkheim said 'explain one social fact by another'. Did he in his study of suicide?

Having removed the possibility that suicide can be explained by non-sociological means he set to "determine the nature of the social causes" 9 for suicide and also, the way in which they produce their effects and their relations to those individual conditions normally associated with the different kinds of suicide.

At this point Durkheim considered that their "may not be one 'single, indestructible' suicidal tendency but rather several"10. Given the absence of sufficiently objective evidence as to, the state of individuals prior to them committing suicide he was forced to operate in a more "morphological system of classification." This required him to find the causes of suicides and from this establish the different types or classification necessary to explain suicide. This of course assumes there were as many causes of suicide as 'types' or 'species'. He proposes to do this by "first seeking the social conditions responsible for different types of suicide; [we will] then group these conditions in a number of separate classes by their resemblances and differences, and we shall be sure that a specific type of suicide will correspond to each of these classes."11

Durkheim attempts to uncover the causes of suicide via evaluating what he calls the "states of the various social environment". In this he means that to explain the causes of suicide you must evaluate "religious confessions, familial and political society and occupational groups" 12 because variations in suicide rates occur amongst these social groups. Seeing these factors as the most likely place where he will be able to decipher causes of suicide and subsequently he can build classifications of different types of suicide from this.

Durkheim finds in the case of Religion that Protestants are more likely to committee suicide than Catholics. He investigates why this could be via a process of deduction where all other possibilities are eliminated for example he discredits the idea that one religion has a different rule to the other by saying that both denounce suicide therefore concluding another factor must be involved. He believes "the only essential difference between Catholicism and Protestantism... is that the latter permits free inquiry to a greater degree than the former."13 He explains why there is a link between suicide and free inquiry. "Reflection develops only if its development becomes imperative, that is, if certain ideas and instinctive sentiments which have hitherto adequately guided conduct are found to have lost their efficacy." 14Protestantism allowed free thought according to Durkheim due to its own failure to provide "commonly accepted beliefs and practices" In contrast the Catholic Church has high levels of social integration and "collective conscience". He also finds that higher education leads to greater levels of "free enquiry and skepticism;" which results in a decline in their integration into the "values and traditional symbols of society". 15Repeating the same test upon Marriage finding the divorced and single people are disposed towards suicide than the married as well as those with small families opposed to larger ones, the argument being that these groups are all less socially integrated. Finally he looks at the political nature of society. Showing how in conception a society shows low suicide rates but as it develops and becomes less integrated the rate of suicide goes up.

Durkheim sees Suicide as being "related inversely with the degree of integration of the religious, domestic, and political groups" by this he means as society becomes less integrated individuals have a greater dependency upon themselves rather than society and "recognizes no rules of conduct beyond those based upon private interests16." Durkheim sees this as a state of "excessive individualism" as the cause of suicide in these cases he calls this "egoistic suicide."

He explains this type of suicide as a human desire for an object transcending the individual, seeing this object as the base of our morality. The absence of this object therefore undermines morality, an individual becomes totally disintegrated and subsequently free from society "ironically... the individual submits to the influence of society at the very moment that he frees himself from it:" Thus reinforcing Durkheim's idea that "however isolated a man may be; there is always something collective remaining -- the very depression and melancholy resulting from this same exaggerated individualism."17 Here we can see where Durkheim applies the principle 'explain one social fact by another' in that the absence of social integration leads us to discover an explanation of suicide rates.

He next goes on to argue the opposite that if level of social integration are too high it can produce a high level of suicide. Focusing upon primitive societies he finds that low levels of individual expression can lead to high levels of suicide. He used the examples of older men and women no longer able to contribute to that society that would kill themselves in order to not be a burden. He talks of women that would committee suicide through loyalty to their husband and followers or servants upon the deaths of their chief may kill themselves. Durkheim see this as socially imposed suicide and calls this dutiful form of suicide "obligatory altruistic suicide" Here suicide, the social fact, can be explained, by the social fact of, excessive levels of social integration.

Anomic suicide refers to suicides committed due to "low social integration owing to a

lack of social regulation."18 Here O'Donnell sees "rapid social or economic change leading to moral and normative confusion."19 Durkheim uses the example of economic crisis and shows the impact this has upon suicide rate and on suicidal tendency. He again uses elimination to infer his conclusion. He starts by saying that suicide rates do not go down when comfort increases. Using Ireland, Spain and France, all nations that were experiencing poverty as examples of how there isn't a necessary correlation between poverty and suicide as these nations all had low suicide rates and poverty. Although egotistical suicide may be a factor here due to the fact that these are predominantly Catholic nations. Instead Durkheim argues people come to rely and depend upon the moral and political restriction upon their being. When this reality becomes disturbed by an abrupt transition in society it becomes "reclassified accordingly; in the ensuing period of dis-equilibrium"20 society finds it impossible to exert its force of the individuals within it and subsequently a "lack of constraint imposed on human aspiration makes happiness impossible." 21

Durkheim's argument moves logically to conclude that "the numerical equality of annual contingents... can only be due to the permanent action of some impersonal cause which transcends all individual cases.... The proof that the reality of collective tendencies is no less than that of cosmic forces is that this reality is demonstrated in the same way, by the uniformity of effects"22 Suicide is therefore a social fact that exist external of any individuals will, Social integration therefore has an inverse relationship with Suicide and Durkheim has create a model that uses "one social fact to explain another".

The statistics used by Durkheim are often viewed are invalid as indicators of levels of suicide. Douglas and Atkinson Argue and provided evidence implying different coroners assess what constitutes a suicide in different ways. `Donnell looks at the example of Durkheim's argument about Protestantism and Catholicism. He argues that Catholicism denounces suicide to a greater extent than Protestantism. Therefore in a Catholic nation there is a greater inclination not to find a person to have committed suicide as the repercussions are more serious. O`Donnell says that Durkheim is methodology unsound to be uncritical of the official statistic he evaluates in this study.

Atkinson said that each case of suicide is unique and both believed in treating individual cases. Durkheim's use of categories was although perhaps a good idea lacking in the depth necessary for such a complex thing as suicide. The categories missed some key types of suicide which can occur O'donnel uses the example of "revenge" that suicide could be an attempt to punish those left behind.

Douglas suggests Durkheim used a high level of subjectivity in his work to explain "social facts". Douglas argued that Durkheim used "stereotypical images of social groups in order to back up his arguments." 23Therefore he cannot claims his social facts to be objective. Perhaps where this is most obvious is when Durkheim insists that "fewer divorced women kill themselves than divorced men because the traumatic effect of sexual deprivation is reduced by their relative lack of intellect."24 He suggest this is objective where as in reality is more an idea.

The fundamental basis of Durkheim's analysis is that via the means of deduction we are able to conclude social facts. Durkheim's attempts to quantify deductive or eliminatory methodologies, regarding suicide are sociologically naive. In reality the window of plausibility is too vast to obtain any meaningful conclusions from such methods. For example when he uses "argument by elimination,"25 to systematically reject of any definition or explanation of a social fact, other than his own he didn't do so objectively nor did he look at all possible definitions as there are endless numbers. Such methods become inextricable subjective and as such his arguments lose their basic claims of objectivity. Without objectivity Durkheim's theories become simply ideas and therefore cannot provide a base from which we can move forward with certainty, in other words We cannot conclude one social fact from another if the original social fact is subjective and therefore potentially invalid.

Sociology cannot be scientific due to the inherently subjectivity of social interaction and realities. We can never measure society, as if it were void of the interpretation of humans as it is those humans which construct and live out that society. Durkheim uses rationality to prove his argument yet this rationality is itself ideological and as such we must see all his work as subjective. I must concur with his critiques on the subject that speak quite convincingly of this weakness.

In conclusion, Durkheim's inability to provide us with objective "social facts" fundamentally undermines his ability to 'explain one social fact by another' because no primary objective social facts exist to be analyzed. Instead Durkheim's work should be seen as providing one reasonable valid idea of society that is useful for the formulation of other "reasonably valid" ideas.

http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/summaries/pgfId=3112#pgfId=3112

2 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/summaries/pgfId=3112#pgfId=3112

3 http://www.warwick.ac.uk/~sysaj/lectures.shtml#2

4 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/summaries/pgfId=3112#pgfId=3112

5 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

6 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

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8 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

9 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

0 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

1 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

2 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

3 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

4 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

5 http://www1.york.ac.uk/student/su/essaybank/sociology/durkheim_and_suicide.html

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8 http://www1.york.ac.uk/student/su/essaybank/sociology/durkheim_and_suicide.html

9 http://www1.york.ac.uk/student/su/essaybank/sociology/durkheim_and_suicide.html

20 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

21 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

22 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

23 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

24 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html

25 http://www.relst.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/suicide.html