Suicide Flashcards
What positivist is known for their study of suicide?
Durkheim
What did Durkheim believe that he could show?
That suicide had social causes and there were social patterns in suicide that this would prove that sociology was a distinct and genuinely scientific discipline
In Durkheim’s view, what is our behaviour caused by?
Social facts - social forces found in the structure of society
According to Steven Lukes, what are the three features of social facts?
They are external to individuals, they constrain individuals and they are greater than individuals
For Durkheim, what is the suicide rate?
A social fact
What did Durkheim use to analyse suicide rates?
Official statistics
What four patterns did Durkheim identify from the official statistics?
Suicide rates for any given society remained more or less constant over time, when rates changed they coincided with other changes, different societies have different rates and within a society, the rates varied considerably between different social groups
Instead of a psychological explanation, how does Durkheim explain the suicide rate?
He explains the suicide rate as the effect of social facts or forces acting upon individuals
What two social facts does Durkheim identify that determine the rate of suicide?
Social integration and moral regulation
What are Durkheim’s four types of suicide?
Egoistic suicide, altruistic suicide, anomic suicide and fatalistic suicide
What is an egoistic suicide caused by?
Too little social integration
What is an altruistic suicide caused by?
Too much integration
What is an anomic suicide caused by?
Too little regulation
What is a fatalistic suicide caused by?
Too much regulation
What types of suicide tend to found in modern industrial societies?
Egoistic suicides because individuals rights and freedoms become more important than obligations towards the group so integration is low and also anomic suicides because rapid social changes undermines accepted norms
What types of suicide tend to found in traditional pre-industrial societies?
Altruistic suicides because of higher levels of integration and fatalistic suicides because there are rigidly ascribed statuses that limit individuals opportunities
Who developed Durkheim’s theory using his positivist approach and what did he argue?
Halbwachs, who argued that differences between urban and rural residence were the main reasons for variations in suicide rates
How do Gibbs and Martin criticise Durkheim?
They argue that Durkheim does not operationalise his concept of integration
What sort of approach does Jack Douglas take to explain suicide?
An interactionist approach
What is Jack Douglas interested in?
The meanings that suicide has for the deceased, and in the way that coroners label deaths as suicides
For what reason does Douglas criticise Durkheim’s use of official statistics?
The decisions to classify a death as a suicide are taken by a coroner and other social actors, which may produce bias in the verdicts reached
What does Douglas criticise Durkheim for ignoring and assuming?
The meanings of the act for those who kill themselves and for assuming that suicide has a fixed or constant meaning
What alternative method to categorising suicides based on social causes does Douglas propose for classifying suicide?
He argues that instead we must classify each death according to its actual meaning for the deceased using qualitative methods and sources to produce case studies based on the analysis of suicide notes and diaries etc. from which we can build up a typology of suicidal meanings
Atkinson takes an ethnomethodology view of suicide. What does this mean?
Social reality is simply a construct of its members
