Download Why study suicide?

What do these people have in common?
What caused their deaths?
Read through the information on each of
the deaths – are they as straightforward as
the media might have us believe?
Start to think about how sociologists
might look at this.
Opinion
Hoffman: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RqR4Pnu6d3k
Winehouse: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mj8JXlarsSQ
Monroe (long): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L7Xnx0I4GEM
What different reasons might sociologists
and psychologists give for these deaths?
Sociologists
Psychologists
The economy
Social class
Gender
Religion
Region
Age
Ethnicity
Stress
Depression
Individual psychological
circumstances
Individual economic
problems
The ultimate individual act?
If it is individual, surely there
should be no societal patterns?
Analyse the items
What have we learnt so far about
this cheery topic ‘Suicide’?
1. Emile Durkheim collected stats from official sources
2. We can spot patterns between suicide and region, age, ethnicity,
religion etc.
3. If suicide is an individual act surely there shouldn’t be patterns?
4. The process of labelling a suicide is subject to social processes
5. There are societal as well as psychological influences on suicide
6. Suicide is usually a deviant act (not always) and has been/is a
criminal act too.
Emile Durkheim
Le suicide 1897
Why study
suicide?
Why did Durkheim study suicide?
• To establish sociology as an
academic discipline.
• To demonstrate that suicide
could not be explained by
psychology alone.
• Durkheim’s ‘Le Suicide’ (1897) is
considered a classic ‘positivist’
study and also represented a
groundbreaking approach for
Sociology
SOCIAL FACTS
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXUX4CvxP68
“We must inquire whether, among the different
varieties of death, some have common qualities
objective enough to be recognized by all
honest observers, specific enough not to be
found elsewhere and also sufficiently kin to
those commonly called suicides for us to retain
the same term without breaking with common
usage.”
Synoptic link with methods
• Durkheim’s study is an exercise in
positivism.
• He uses the suicide statistics
from several European countries
• Durkheim regarded statistics as
‘social facts’.
• He would establish correlations &
reveal the casual relationships
which led to suicide.
Why does suicide need to
be studied for crime and
deviance?
The ultimate deviant act?
• Ecclesiastes 7:17 Be not over much wicked, neither be you foolish:
why should you die before your time?
• Jeremiah 29:11 For I know the thoughts that I think toward you, said
the LORD, thoughts of peace, and not of evil, to give you an
expected end.
• John 10:28 And I give to them eternal life; and they shall never
perish, neither shall any man pluck them out of my hand.
• John 12:25 He that loves his life shall lose it; and he that hates his
life in this world shall keep it to life eternal.
The ultimate deviant act?
Islam:
{Nor take life—which God has made sacred—except for just cause.} (Al-Israa' 17:33)
{If anyone killed a person not in retaliation for murder (without just cause) or to spread
mischief in the land,
it would be as if he killed all mankind, and if anyone saved a life, it would be as if he saved all
mankind.} (Al-Ma'idah 5:32
{Have you not turned your gaze to one who disputed with Abraham about his Lord because
God granted him power? Abraham said, "My Lord is He Who gives life and death."} (AlBaqarah 2:258
The ultimate deviant act?
Hinduism:
Killing (euthanasia, murder, suicide) interferes with the killed soul's progress towards
liberation. It also brings bad karma to the killer, because of the violation of the principle of
non-violence.
When the soul is reincarnated in another physical body it will suffer as it did before because
the same karma is still present.
Death: The doctrine of karma means that a Hindu tries to get their life in a good state
before they die, making sure that there is no unfinished business, or unhappinesses.
Prayopavesa, or fasting to death, is an acceptable way for a Hindu to end their life in certain
circumstances.
The ultimate deviant act?
Judaism:
Those who take their own lives are technically not entitled to Jewish burial and
mourning rites–but suicide as a freely chosen act (with the above consequences)
has been nearly defined out of existence by mental health considerations in the
development of Jewish law, and in most cases deaths by suicide are treated like all
other deaths.
Excerpted with permission from The Jewish Religion: A Companion,Oxford
University Press
UK: Is suicide illegal?
The Suicide Act 1961 (9 & 10 Eliz 2 c 60) is an
Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.
It decriminalized the act of suicide in England
and Wales so that those who failed in the
attempt to kill themselves would no longer
be prosecuted.
Ireland
Attempted suicide is not a criminal offence
in Ireland and, under Irish law, self-harm is not
generally seen as a form of attempted suicide. It
was decriminalised in 1993. Assisted suicide and
euthanasia are, however, illegal.
DEFIANCE
In ancient Rome or medieval Japan,
suicide was seen as a defiant act of
extreme personal freedom against
perceived or actual tyrants.
STARTER
True or false?
1. Suicide is always deviant
2. Religions view suicide as a deviant act because only God can choose
when to end a life
3. Jewish people will never bury a suicide victim
4. Durkheim found that suicide is a purely individual act
5. Durkheim argued that Sociology can be studied as a science
6. A social fact is a purely individual action
Lesson objective
•To explore Durkheim’s
explanations for suicide.
From your knowledge, what might
Durkheim attribute suicide to?
Durkheim’s theory is grounded in two key
concepts
• 1. Social integration
• The degree to which
individuals were
integrated into society.
• Eg: part of a family, at
college/work, religious
practises etc.
2. Social Regulation
Social regulation
• The degree to which
society regulates
(controls) an individual’s
behaviour
• Eg: the laws in society,
religion, socialisation
etc...
Balance
• Durkheim believed that if
the level of social
regulation or integration
was too strong OR too
weak then suicide is more
likely to occur.
• He links each possibility
to four types of suicide
Durkheim’s Findings
Who commits more suicide?
1.Married/unmarried
2.Children/childless
3.Protestant/Catholic/Jewish
Used quantitative data from official statistics,
analysed suicide rates in a number of European
cities. Saw 4 patterns…
1. Suicide rates
for each society
were more or
less constant
over time.
2. When rates
did change,
they coincided
with key events.
E.g. war…
3. Different
societies
had
different
rates.
4. Rates varied
greatly within
different groups
in society. E.g.
single more than
married etc..
Therefore suicide rates cannot simply be the
result of motives of individuals
1.
Egoistic Suicides
(more common in industrial societies)
• Social integration is too
weak.
• Results from the individual
not being sufficiently
integrated into society.
• Compared suicide rates
amongst Catholics &
Protestant’s as evidence.
Homelessness: A silent killer
A research briefing on mortality amongst homeless
people (Crisis: December 2011)
“Homeless people are
over 9 times more
likely to commit
suicide than the
general population”
Gang members
Around a third
(34.2 per
cent) had
attempted
suicide
2. Anomic Suicide
(more common in industrial societies)
• Social regulation is too weak
• Results from the individual not
being sufficiently regulated by
society.
• Where traditional norms & values
are disrupted by rapid social change
producing ‘uncertainty’ in the
minds of individuals.
• Durkheim pointed out that suicide
rates increase in economic booms
and busts as evidence.
'My grandfather killed himself in the '29 crash'
• The Wall St Crash of 1929 is
popularly remembered for
stories of bankrupt investors
throwing themselves to their
deaths. The grandfather of
criminologist and film-maker
Roger Graef was one of them.
3. Altruistic Suicide
(more common in pre~industrial societies)
• Social integration is
too strong
• Where the individual
sacrifices their life out
of a sense of duty to
others.
• Eg: Hindu wives,
Japanese kamikaze
pilots, elderly Inuits
etc..
KAMIKAZE
• http://www.history.com/topics/
world-war-ii/world-war-iihistory/videos/kamikaze-pilots
4. Fatalistic Suicide
(more common in pre~industrial societies)
• Social regulation is too
strong
• Common among slaves &
now rare in industrial
societies.
• “ the suicide of persons with
futures pitilessly blocked &
passions violently choked by
opressive discipline”.
• Durkheim said these were of
‘historic interest’.
1. Allocate each of the following cases of suicide to one of the four types
identified in Durkheim’s typology of suicide:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
f)
A rural migrant who is bewildered by city life
A servant who kills himself on the death of his master
A bravery stunt with a gun that works too well
A prisoner facing a life sentence in a tough labour camp
A person’s attempt to make an ex-lover return
An educated person who has just lost his wife and children but cannot
turn to religion
Egoistic – integration too low
Altruistic – integration too high
Anomic – regulation too low
Fatalistic – regulation too high
What category would these people fit?
Match the suicide to Durkheim’s categories
• Suicide of
slaves/prisoners
• Hindu women throwing
themselves on
graves/suicide bombers
• Protestants
• Economic
booms/depression
Altruistic; Egotistic ; Anomic;
Fatalistic
Evaluation
What are the strengths and
weaknesses of his approach?
Evaluation
Strengths
• Sociological classic
• Used for over 70 years
• Links the claim that
sociology can be a
science
Weaknesses
• Relied on official
stats too much
• Cannot be verified
• Stats are socially
constructed
• Overestimated role
of religion, could be
area
Partial agreement
• Stack (1983), in a comparative analysis of 25
countries, creatively refined Durkheim's thesis to
arrive at the finding that lower suicide rates-for
women, but not for men-are associated not with
religiously based social integration (as Durkheim
and others have argued) but with commitment
to a few "life preserving" religious beliefs, values,
and practices
Frans van Poppel and Lincoln H. Day
• The gap between Protestant and Catholic suicide rates in
the Netherlands during the years 1905 through 1910
appears to be the result of nothing more mysterious than
differences in how deaths to Catholics and deaths to
Protestants were recorded:
• A large proportion of deaths to Catholics, which would have
been categorized as suicides had they occurred to
Protestants, were categorized as "sudden death" or "death
from ill-defined or unspecified cause."
Kruijt (1960)
• The differences in suicide rates recorded by religious composition in
the Netherlands might be explicable largely in terms of nothing more
arcane than differences in recording practices:
• [T]he lowest registration of suicides ... in the south of the Netherlands,
and perhaps also in some Orthodox Protestant areas, may correlate
with prevailing negative attitudes toward filling in "suicide" as a cause
of death on the death certificate.
• There is a stronger tendency among Roman Catholics to conceal the
fact that suicide was the cause of death than among groups that do not
judge suicide so harshly or punish suicide with religious sanctions.
Ecological fallacy
A fallacy is an error of logic usually based on
mistaken assumptions. The ecological fallacy is an
error of deduction that involves deriving
conclusions about individuals solely on the basis of
an analysis of group data.
Douglas (67)
• Interactionist
approach
• Stats are based on
coroners opinion
• People commit suicide
for four reasons
1. Transforming self
2. Transforming oneself
for others
3. Achieving fellow
feelings
4. Gaining revenge
I’m so unhappy
Transforming
self
I killed myself
because you
rejected me
Gaining revenge
You ruined my
life
Transforming
oneself
Please help me!
Achieving fellow
feelings
Can we adopt a scientific approach?
• Individuals place different meanings on suicide
• Need to look at why not just the stats
• Therefore using Douglas’s work Durkheim’s work is
useless
Atkinson
• Interactionist approach
• Stats are socially
constructed
• Based on coroner’s decision
• Coroner’s inquest is based
on
• Suicide note
• Mode of death
• Location and circumstances
• Life history and mental
condition
Shows how Durkheim’s work is questionable
as stats are based on coroner’s
decision
Taylor (90)
• All have ignored
parasuicides
• What about those people
who attempt suicide and
fail?
• When questioned these
people are taking more of a
gamble than a definite
decision
• Need to incorporate
Durkheim and Douglas
• Successful suicides can be
linked into Durkheim’s
explanations
• But we also need to include
the meanings behind them