Suicide Flashcards
Identify the 4 patterns Durkheim noted when analysing suicide rates in the 19th century ?
Suicide rates remained for more or less constant.
The rate did change but coincided with other changes- (rates fell during wartime, but increased during the depression.)
different societies have different rates.
Within society, the rates varied considerably between social groups.
Durkheim identified 2 social facts that determine the rate of suicide, explain them ?
Social integration-the extent to which we experience a sense of belonging to a group and obligation to it’s members.
Moral regulation- the extent to which our actions and desires are kept in check by the norms and values of society.
Durkheim further identified 4 types of suicide, explain them ?
Egoistic suicide- caused by too little social integration (most common)
Altruistic suicide- caused by too much social integration.
Anomic suicide- caused by too little moral regulation
Fatalistic suicide- caused by too much moral regulation.
Durkheim further asserts that there is differences in types of suicide in different types of society. However his student … claims the main reason for variation in suicide rates is ?
Halbwachs and rural and urban residence.
Halbwachs found what ? and who was he supported by ?
that higher rates among protestants, people living alone and so on were more a function to their urban location. He was supported by Sainsbury who found that suicide rates in London boroughs were highest where the levels of social disorganisation were highest.
Gibbs and Martin argue that Durkheim doesn’t operationalise his concept of integration in a way so it can be measured. How do they define it ?
a situation where there are stable and lasting relationships.
Where do Gibbs and Martin predict the suicide rate will be higher ?
In societies where there is little status integration (compatible status that don’t conflict together) e.g. where well educated people are forced to take low status jobs.
As well as Durkheims definitions being criticised, what else of Durkheims has been criticised ?
The statistics he used- unreliable and incomplete. In the 19th century, medical causes of death was limited and autopsies were rarely performed.
Also many countries lacked the sophisticated modern administrative system needed to collect and compile reliable statistics on a national level.
Douglas (interpretivist) criticises Durkheims study of suicide on two grounds, what are they ?
The use of suicide statistics.
Actor’s meanings and qualitative data.
Explain Douglas’ criticism of the use of statistics.
The decision to classify a death as a suicide is taken by a coroner and influenced by other social actors which my produce bias in the verdicts reached e.g. The finding that high levels of integration leads to low suicide rates might be explained by the person who committed suicide might have family or friends who deny the fact it’s a suicide out of guilt or maybe even cover it up by destroying a suicide note.
Explain Douglas’ criticism of Actors meanings and qualitative data.
Durkheim ignores the meaning behind the suicide and assumes that all suicides have a fixed meaning. The meanings of suicides different across cultures e.g. a dishonoured Japanese samurai warrior and a western business man facing financial ruin have different meanings and they need to be understood with their own cultural context.
Also Durkheim tries to classify suicides by their social cause where as Douglas believes it should be by meaning and to do so we need to use qualitative methods and sources to produce case studies based on the analysis of each suicide so a typology can be built.
Why does Douglas argue using qualitative data overcome the problems of using official statistics ?
Because they allow us to get behind the label attached by the coroner and discover the real meaning behind the suicide.
How has Douglas been criticised ?
What makes him think sociologists are better at interpreting how someone died than a coroner ?
Sainsbury & Barraclough found that the rank of suicide for immigrant groups to the USA correlated closely with that of suicides rates of their origin countries despite the fact that a different set of labellers were involved.
Finally he’s inconsistent, he suggests official statistics are products of coroners opinion. At other times he claims we can discover the cause of the suicide, but how d we know it’s a suicide if it’s not for a coroners opinion ?
What is ethnomethodology and who takes this approach ?
Atkinson (interpretivist) takes this approach. Ethnomethodology is a interpretivist approach that argues that social reality is simply a construct of it’s members and that we create reality using commonsense knowledge.
Atkinson reviews Douglas’ contribution to the study of suicide and accepts the his idea that official statistics are merely labels given by coroners, by rejects his idea of using qualitative data to discover the real rate of suicide, why?
Atkinson argues we can never really know the real rate of suicide since we need to know the reason the person gave to their death, which is impossible. Therefore it’s pointless trying to discover the real rate of suicide.
