Unit 3 - Emile Durkheim

SUICIDE

Notes:

● Determine the order of suicide as social fact - variety of death, independent usage +
suicide as social fact : positive / negative act.
● When we talk about suicide we have to talk about acts that are intended to death
● Suicide - act not performed intentionally, the agent knows act will result in death.
● Suicide is applied to all kinds of death either directly/indirectly, either in positive
/negative way.
● “Degree of awareness” exist
● Inner and external social environment - sees suicide as an exaggerated form of common
practices - considers it like a crime
● Suicide studied as social fact - independent of its individual/social manifestations
● No of suicide/total population = rate of mortalility via suicide
● Every society haas certain aptitude for suicide - common for every suicide - it is more or
less permanent/ stable by given demographic factors - it is also variable upon the
integration/solidarity per each society
● Co-efficient preservation inversely proportional to rate of suicide
● Coefficient of preservation directly proportional to integration of the society

Types:

1. Egoistic - no integration in society (low), social regulation and social

integration - 2 factors that keep playing. Strong bond isolates, social
integration weakens and breaks

Eg: Protestants- low social integration low rates of suicide, war - high
social integration high rates of suicide.

2. Anomic - high social integration Ex: Ukrainian war

3. Altruistic - overly integrated - social bonds too strong, value society more
than themselves. Mechanical solidarity characterised as traditional society
because integration is more on a group/collective level than
individualistic.

Criticism - non social influenced suicide

4. Fatalistic - over regulation of society- expected from every individual, less

number of choices.
In general, an act cannot be defined by the end sought by the actor, for an identical system of
behaviour may be adjustable, to too many different ends without altering its nature.

Definition

the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or
negative act of the victim bimself, which he knows will produce this result, An attempt is an act
thus defined but falling short of actual death. This definition excludes from our study everything
related to the suicide of animals.

suicides do not form, as might be thought, a wholly distinct group, an isolated class of monstrous
phenomena, unrelated to other forms of conduct, but rather are related to them by a continuous
series of intermediate cases.

The social nature of suicide

instead of seeing in them only separate occurrences, unrelated and to be separately studied, the
suicides committed in a given society during a given period of time are taken as a whole, it
appears that this total is not simply a sum of independent units, a collective total, but is itself a
new fact sui generis, with its own unity, individuality and consequently its own nature a nature,
furthermore, dominantly social.

the evolution of suicide is composed of undulating movements, distinct and successive, which
occur spasmodically, develop for a time, and then stop only to begin again.

Aptitude of suicide

The relative intensity of this aptitude is measured by taking the proportion between the total
number of voluntary deaths and the population of every age and sex. We will call this numerical
datum the rate of mortality through suicide, characteristic of the society under consideration. It is
generally calculated in proportion to a million or a hundred thousand inhabitants.

from one year to its successor suicide is at least as stable, if not more so, than general mortality
taken only from period to period. The average rate of mortality. furthermore, achieves this
regularity only by being general and im personal, and can afford only a very imperfect
description of a given society.

to a much higher degree than the death-rate, it is peculiar to each social group where it can be
considered as a characteristic index.

Permanence and variability

The suicide-rate is therefore a factual order, unified and definite, as is shown by both its
permanence and its variability. For this permanence would be inexplicable if it were not the
result of a group of distinct characteristics, solidary one with another, and simultaneously
effective in spite of different attendant circumstances; and this variability proves the concrete and
individual quality of these same characteristics, since they vary with the individual character of
society itself. In short, these statistical data express the suicidal tendency with which each society
is collectively afflicted.

Social suicide rates

Certainly many of the individual conditions are not general enough to affect the relation between
the total number of voluntary deaths and the population. They may perhaps cause this or that
separate individual to kill himself, but not give society as a whole a greater or lesser tendency to
suicide. As they do not depend on a certain state of social organisation, they have no social
repercussions. Thus they concern the psychologist, not the sociologist. The latter studies the
causes capable of affecting not separate individuals but the group. Therefore among the factors
of suicide the only ones which concern him are those whose action is felt by society as a whole.
The suicide-rate is the product of these factors.

SOCIAL CAUSES TO DETERMINE SOCIALLY INFLUENCED SUICIDES

Notes:

● Uses arguments by elimination - one candidate remaining is degree of integration

● Data on the documentation of motive of those who committed suicide are opinions and
not social facts - documented by themselves.
● How to differentiate suicide from sane from insane? One way to find out is statistical data
whose example is the documentation or presumptive motives
● Find the cause of suicide - accross family, politics, religion, cmmunities- different
societies.
● Example: egoistic suicide - context of religious confessions in the map of europe. Suicide
rates highest among protestants than in catholics and lowest among jews.
● Moral discipline in jews and Catholics are higher than protestants.
● Catholics - minority - degree of solidarity is higher, rate of suicide lower.
● Sense of isolation and solidarity; degree of solidarity in jews highest
● The stronger the degree of collectivity of states of mind are the greater its preservative
value, the lower the anomy or suicide rates.

for each social group there is a specific tendency to suicide explained neither by the
organic-psychic constitution of individuals nor the nature of the physical environment.
Consequently, by elimination, it must necessarily depend upon social causes-and-be in. itself a
collective phenomenon; some of the facts examined, especially the geographic and seasonal
variations of suicide, had definitely led us to this conclusion.

As the tendency, single or not, is observable only in its individual manifestations, we should have
to begin with the latter. Thus we should observe and describe as many as possible, of course
omitting those due to mental alienation.

as many suicidal currents as there were distinct types, then seek to determine their causes and
respective importance.

Example

Brierre de Boismont alone has tried to do this descriptive work for 1,328 cases where the suicide
left letters or other records summarized by the author in his book. But, first, this summary is
much too brief. Then, the patient's revelations of his condition are usually insufficient, if not
suspect. He is only too apt to be mistaken concerning himself and the state of his feelings; he
may believe that he is acting calmly, though at the peak of nervous excitement. Finally, besides
being insufficiently objective, these observations cover too few facts to permit definite
conclusions. Some very vague dividing lines are perceptible and their suggestions may be
utilised; but they are too indefinite to provide a regular classification. Furthermore, in view of the
manner of execution of most suicides, proper observations are next to impossible.

But our aim may be achieved by another method. Let us reverse the order of study. Only in so far
as the effective causes differ can there be different types of suicide. For each to have its own
nature, it must also have special conditions of existence. The same antecedent or group of
antecedents cannot sometimes produce one result and sometimes another, for, if so, the
difference of the second from the first would itself be without cause, which would contradict the
principle of causality. Every proved specific difference between causes. therefore implies a
similar difference between effects. Consequently, we shall be able to determine the social types
of suicide by classify- ing then not directly by their preliminarily described characteristics, but
by the causes which produce them. Without asking why they differ from one another, we will
first seek the social conditions re-sponsible for them; 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. In a word, instead of being morphological,
our classification will from the start be actiological.

The defect of this method, of course, is to assume the diversity of types without being able to
identify them. It may prove their existence and number but not their special characteristics. But
this drawback may be obviated, at least in a certain measure. Once the nature of the causes is
known we shall try to deduce the nature of the effects, since they will be both qualified and
classified by their attachment to their respective sources.
Reverse method

we shall descend from causes. to effects and our aetiological classification will be completed by
a morphological one which can verify the former and vice versa.

we are studying is the social suicide-rate. The only types of interest to us, accordingly, are those
contributing to its formation and influencing its variation,

alcoholism is not a determining factor of the particular aptitude of each society, yet alcoholic
suicides evidently exist and in great numbers. No description, however good, of particular cases
will ever tell us which ones have a sociological character. If one wants to know the several
tributaries of suicide as a collective phenomenon one must regard it in its collective form, that is,
through statistical data, from the start. The social rate.must be taken directly as the object of
analysis; (importance of statistics)

The legal establishments of fact always accompanying suicide include the motive (family
trouble, physical or other pain, remorse, drunkenness, etc.), which seems to have been the
determining cause, and in the statistical reports of almost all countries is found a special table
containing the results of these inquiries under the title: presumptive motives of suicides.

statistics of the motives of suicides are actually statistics of the opinions concern- ing such
motives of officials, often of lower officials, in charge of this information-service. (refer to eg
pg149)

Statistical efforts should take quite a different direction.

We shall try to determine the productive causes of suicide directly, without concerning our selves
with the forms they can assume in particular individuals. Disregarding the individual as such, his
motives and his ideas, we shall seek directly the states of the various social environments (re
ligious confessions, family, political society, occupational groups etc.), in terms of which the
variations of suicide occur. Only then returning to the individual, shall we study how these
general causes become individualised so as to produce the homicidal results involved.