Durkheim’s primary interest was what happened as societies began to modernise, due to industrialisation and labour specialisation. A new form of solidarity, which is called organic solidarity, develops here. Individuals no longer perform the same tasks, have the same interests, nor, necessarily, share the same perspective on life. However, this does not cause a society to fall or disintegrate.
Modern society seems to contain, according to Durkheim, the potentials for individualism within social regulation. It is this, the relation of the actor in his society, based on the degrees of imbalance of the social forces of integration and moral regulation, that lead him to distinguish between types of suicide.
Types Of Suicide
Emile Durkheim defined suicide as “every cause of death which results directly or indirectly, from a positive or negative act, accomplished by the victim himself, which he knows must produce this result.” (Durkheim, 1897, Suicide: A Study In Sociology. In Marshall (1998) pg. 652.) Controversially, however, he did not require that the death must be intentional, arguing that intentions are hard to identify. Consequently, he extended the definition, including, for example, heroic military deaths, where there is no chance of survival, but no specific intention to kill oneself.
Durkheim used this definition to separate true suicides from accidental deaths. He chose to study the national suicide rate statistics for a number of European countries. He regarded these statistics as social facts, and so could be used to find sociological causes of suicide rates. “The suicide rate is, therefore, a factual order, unified and definite, as is shown by both its permanence and its variability.” (Durkheim, 1897, Suicide: A Study In Sociology. In Haralambos et al (1997) pg.818.) Thus, a collective tendency towards suicide was discovered.
Correlations, using the comparative method, between suicide and other sets of social facts, were then established by Durkheim.
He found that suicide rates were higher in predominantly Protestant countries, than Catholic ones. Jews had an even lower rate. Generally, married people were more prone to suicide than those who were single, although married women who remained childless for a number of years, ended up with a high suicide rate. Durkheim also found that a low suicide rate was associated with political upheaval. For example, the suicide rate in France fell after the Coup D’Etat of Louis Bonaparte. War also reduced the suicide rate. After war broke out in 1866, between Austria and Italy, the suicide rate fell by 14 per cent in both countries.
Having established these correlations, Durkheim used multi-variant analysis to isolate the most important variables, and to determine whether these were genuine relations between interpersonal forces controlling human behaviour and suicide. For example, Durkheim recognised the possibility that it might be the national culture rather than the main religion of particular countries that accounted for their suicide rate. In order to test whether this was the case he checked on differences within the population of particular countries to see whether these differences supported his view on the importance of religion. For example, Bararia, the area of Germany with the highest number of Roman Catholics, also had the lowest suicide rate. This was, presumably, because of higher levels of collective worship and social integration associated with Catholicism.
Durkheim also checked the relative importance of difference factors. He found that high suicide rates were correlated with high levels of education. However, he established that religion was more important than levels of education, because, for example, Jews had a low suicide rate despite having a high level of education.
From his analysis of the relationship between suicide rates and a range of social facts, Durkheim began to distinguish types of suicide.
Egoistic suicide resulted from too little social integration. An example, Durkheim discovered, was that unmarried individuals, particularly men, with less binding connections to stable social norms and goals, committed suicide at rates higher than married people, especially those with children.
The second type, altruistic suicide, occurred at the opposite end of the integration scale to egoistic suicide. Self-sacrifice in the interests of the group was a defining trait, with members of the military having the most common cases. Hence, it was a result of too much integration.
Durkheim’s discussion of altruistic suicide lead to him being accused of having an overtly anti-individualistic philosophy, one that is mainly concerned with the taming of individual impulses to harness collective energies for the purposes of society. Aware of the break down of interpersonal forces, Durkheim also realised that total control of component social actors by society would be as detrimental as anomie and de-regulation. Hence, he attempted to establish a balance between societal and individual claims of free will and determinism.
Moral regulation, the second scale, consists of two forms of suicide, one of which is anomic suicide. When normative regulations, that surround an individual, are relaxed, no controls to human behaviour are present. Hence, men become susceptible to this form of suicide because of low regulation. An prime example of which is the higher suicide rate among widows, and their inability to adapt to a sudden change. Also increased rates among the wealthy, as opposed to the less economically advantaged, as industrial goals, property and capital, are insufficient to provide happiness.
The final type of suicide is fatalistic suicide. This type, Durkheim only briefly describes, seeing it as a rare phenomena in the real world. It results from the high extreme of regulation. Examples include, childless married woman and young husbands.
Durkheim argues that the relation of suicide rates to social regulation is curvilinear, high rates being associated with both excess individuation and excessive regulation.
Evaluation
Taylor (1990) argues that many of Durkheim’s concepts are not testable, he seems to posit invisible interpersonal (moral) forces that shape human behaviour (egoism and altruism.) Hence, Durkheim is, therefore, not scientific and so cannot be describes as a traditional positivist. He can, rather, be seen as a realist. He also notes that Durkheim’s work does not explain why some people commit suicide rather than become mentally ill..
Interpretivist sociologists saw Durkheim’s explanation as inadequate, since he had taken as his basis of analysis the officially produced statistics of suicide. Atkinson (1978) presents a phenomenological critique. He argues that statistics are open to interpretation and, therefore, relatively arbitrary in their nature. Hence, it is necessary to discover how the label ‘suicide’ is attached to the act. Atkinson examines the way coroners make their judgements, and concluded that they are not a valid way of measuring the amount of suicide that occurs. Coroners were found to be using subjective interpretation to make sense of the acts. They came to a verdict on sudden deaths from sense-making assumptions based on their previous experience of similar deaths and the nature of the particular death itself. These may also vary from one society to another.
As Phillipson observes, the positivist methodology employed by Durkheim, “rides roughshod over the very social reality they are trying to comprehend.” (Phillipson (1972), Theory, Methodology And Conceptualisation. In Haralambos et al. (1997) pg. 823.)
Halbwachs carried out a review of Durkheim’s work, in an attempt to refine the statistical analysis used with the aid of more recent suicide rates. He concluded that Durkheim had been able to provide, “a fully comprehensive treatment of the phenomenon of suicide, which could be modified and added too, but which in principle seems unassailable.” (Halbwachs (1930), Les Causes De Suicide. In Haralambos et al. (1997) pg. 821.) Hence, Durkheim’s work provided a valuable sociological tool for the analysis of social facts. However, Halbwachs did feel that Durkheim had overestimated the importance of religion in determining suicide rates. Baechler (1979), also, claimed that Durkheim attached to much significance to the external forces when explaining suicide, at the expense of individual, personal factors.
Gibbs and Martin (1967) suggested that Durkheim failed to adequately define the term ’integration’ . Hence, it was difficult to rigorously test the theory for lack of a precise and measurable definition of a key concept.
One of the most fiercest of interpretive critics of Durkheim’s work is Douglas (1967). His argues that the use of official statistics, in which subjective bias may enter the process of reaching a decision on a suicide classification of a sudden death, make the reading of such statistics questionable. This bias, Douglas suggests, may explain Durkheim’s findings as representing little more than a result of negotiations between the different parties involved. His second main argument against Durkheim, is the way in which he treated the act of suicide as the same type of act, without investigating the meaning attached to the act in individual cases, especially concerning cross-cultural variations in meaning.
Conclusion
Durkheim’s theory has some advantages over other theories on the role of interpersonal forces controlling human behaviour, as Suicide was the first systematic application of the sociological method to a social phenomenon. While attacked by interpretists for the unreliability of official statistics on suicide, few have substantially attacked his theoretical conclusions. Hence, Durkheim’s work provides a valuable tool to the better understanding of the mechanisms, both personal and societal, behind human behaviour.
Word Count: 1998. (This word count does not include the reference list.)
References
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Atkinson, J. (1978) ‘Societal Reactions To Suicide’ in Cohen, Discovering Suicide (Macmillan, London.) Cited in Selfe, P. (1993) Work Out Sociology. The Macmillan Press Ltd.
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Douglas, J.D. (1967) The Social Meaning Of Suicide. Princeton. Cited in Haralambas, M. and Holborn, M. (1997) Sociology: Themes And Perspectives. (Fourth Ed.) Harper Collins Publishers.
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Durkheim, E. (1947, first published 1893) The Division Of Labour In Society. New York: Macmillan/Free Press. Cited in Selfe, P (1993) Work Out Sociology The Macmillan Press Ltd.
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Durkheim, E. (1982, first published 1895) The Rules Of The Sociological Method, New York: Free Press. Cited in Jones, M. (1998) Suicide Revisited, Sociology Review, September 1998.
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Durkheim, E. (1951, first published 1897) Suicide: A Study In Sociology New York: Free Press. Cited in Brinkerhoff, D.B and White, L.K. (1991) Sociology ( Third Edition.) West Publishing Company.
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Durkheim, E. (1951, first published 1897) Suicide: A Study In Sociology New York: Free Press. Cited in Hughes, J.A., Martin, P.J. and Sharrock, W.W. (1999) Understanding Classical Sociology. Sage Publications.
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Durkheim, E. (1951, first published 1897) Suicide: A Study In Sociology New York: Free Press. Cited in Marshall, G. (1998) Sociology Oxford University Press.
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Gibbs, J. and Martin, W. (1967) Status Integration And Suicide. University Of Oregon Press. Cited in Haralambas, M. and Holborn, M. (1997) Sociology: Themes And Perspectives. (Fourth Ed.) Harper Collins Publishers.
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Halbwachs, M. (1930) Les Causes De Suicide. Alcan, Paris. Cited in Haralambas, M. and Holborn, M. (1997) Sociology: Themes And Perspectives. (Fourth Ed.) Harper Collins Publishers.
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Phillipson, M. (1972) Theory, Methodology And Conceptualisation, in Filmer, Phillipson, Silverman and Walsh. Cited in Haralambas, M. and Holborn, M. (1997) Sociology: Themes And Perspectives. (Fourth Ed.) Harper Collins Publishers.
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Taylor, S. (1990) Beyond Durkheim: Sociology And Suicide, Social Science Review, November 1990.Vol. 6, No. 2. Cited in Selfe, P (1993) Work Out Sociology The Macmillan Press Ltd.