Suicide Flashcards
Other than crime, what other types of deviant behaviour are interactionists interested with?
Suicide.
How can we understand suicide?
We must study its meanings for those who choose to kill themselves.
What does Atkinson argue about official statistics?
They are merely a record of the labels coroners attach to deaths.
What does Atkinson argue is impossible to know for sure?
What meanings the dead gave to their deaths.
What does Atkinson focus on?
The taken-for-granted assumptions that coroners make when reaching their verdicts.
What are coroners ideas about a ‘typical suicide’?
Certain modes of deaths (hanging), location and circumstances of the death and life history (recent bereavement).
What does one coroner say about the deceased taking more than 10 sleeping pills?
‘I can be almost sure it was a suicide’.
How can Atkinson’s approach be used against him?
If he is correct that all we can do is have interpretations of the social world, rather than real facts about it, such as how many deaths are really suicides, then his account is no more than an interpretation and there is no good reason to accept it.
