Download The Suicide

Emil Durkheim
Suicide. A Study in Sociology
(1897)
How can we explain suicide?
• Mental disorder?
• Psychological distress?
• Personal history?
Durkheim:
• Suicide is regular and predictable.
• It cannot be explained by individual
stories (the individual details dissolve in
the total numbers).
• It is a social fact and should be
explained by other social facts
(exemptionalism)
Social fact
• Any social phenomenon that puts external
constraint on individuals
• Widespread in a given society and independent
from its individual manifestations
• It is because society constrains individual
behavior that it is regular and predictable ... and
that it can be measured by statistics.
• Statistics is the main sociological method
Where/when is suicide most
common?
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•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Men or women?
Younger or elder people?
Married or divorced?
With children or without children?
Autumn or spring?
Week-ends or weekdays?
Protestants or Catholics?
Denmark or Italy?
Answers:
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
•
Men or women? (but women try more)
Younger or elder people?
Married or divorced?
With children or without children?
Autumn or spring?
Week-ends or weekdays?
Protestants or Catholics?
Denmark or Italy?
Rate of suicide per million people in 1889-1891
15-20
20-25
25-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
70-80
MCP
100
214
365
590
976
1445
1790
2000
MCS
280
487
599
869
985
1367
1500
1783
MEP
400
95
103
202
295
470
582
664
MES
2000
128
298
436
808
1152
1559
1741
153
373
511
633
852
1047
1252
714
912
1459
2321
2902
2082
MVP
MVS
FCP
67
95
122
101
147
178
163
200
FCS
224
196
328
281
357
456
515
326
FEP
36
52
64
74
95
136
142
191
64
103
156
217
353
471
677
76
156
174
149
174
221
233
296
373
289
410
637
464
FES
FVP
FVS
375
M=Male; F=Female
C=Celibate; E=Married; V=Widow(er)
P=Province; S=Seine
Gender
15-20
20-25
25-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
70-80
MCP
FCP
100
67
214
95
365
122
590
101
976
147
1445
178
1790
163
2000
200
MCS
FCS
280
224
487
196
599
328
869
281
985
357
1367
456
1500
515
1783
326
MEP
FEP
400
36
95
52
103
64
202
74
295
95
470
136
582
142
664
191
MES
FES
2000
128
64
298
103
436
156
808
217
1152
353
1559
471
1741
677
153
76
373
156
714
296
511
174
912
373
633
149
1459
289
852
174
2321
410
1047
221
2902
637
1252
233
2082
464
MVP
FVP
MVS
FVS
375
Civil status
15-20
MCP
MVP
MEP
20-25
100
.
400
MCS
MVS
MES
280
.
2000
25-30
30-40
40-50
50-60
60-70
70-80
214
153
95
365
373
103
590
511
202
976
633
295
1445
852
470
1790
1047
582
2000
1252
664
487
128
599
714
298
869
912
436
985
1459
808
1367
2321
1152
1500
2902
1559
1783
2082
1741
.
FCP
FVP
FEP
67
375
36
95
76
52
122
156
64
101
174
74
147
149
95
178
174
136
163
221
142
200
233
191
FCS
FVS
FES
224
196
328
296
103
281
373
156
357
289
217
456
410
353
515
637
471
326
464
677
.
.
.
64
Why?
• Social regulation: what aligns individual desire on
social goals (Anomy: dissonance between private
and collective goals)
• Social integration: what allows society to
overcome individual differences. Done according
to the degree of complexity
– Mechanical solidarity: society relies on equality,
sameness. The ego disappears in the group.
– Organic solidarity: Society relies on difference (division
of labor, specialization). Big ego.
Regulation protects from suicide
• Economic anomy:
– More suicides in times of economic crisis and booms;
– More among jobless than those with jobs.
– More among traders than among farmers
• Domestic anomy:
– Married people are more protected than widowed &
divorced
– Married people in societies where divorce is common are
less protected than where it is rare
– Women are less protected than men when divorce is rare;
men are less protected than women when divorce is
common.
Integration of religious, domestic and
political society protects from suicide
• Religion has a prophylactic effect upon suicide.
Jews are more protected (and integrated) than
Catholics who are more protected than
Protestants.
• Married are better protected than single people
• Suicides decrease during revolutions and
national wars
Thus: Collective force/activities restrain suicide
Three (or four) types of suicides
• Integration
– Egoistic suicide (organic solidarity)
– Altruistic suicide (mechanical solidarity)
• Regulation
– Anomic suicide (anomy)
– (Fatalistic suicide) (too much regulation)
Methodological problems
• What is a suicide? Durkheim: when
someone consciously does (or avoids
doing) something that leads to his/her death
– Leaves the madmen out of suicide
– Includes heroic sacrifice
• How to record this? In official statistics:
– Heroic sacrifice is usually not seen as a suicide.
– The death of madmen jumping through
windows are usually defined as suicide.
Can we trust statistics?
• No universal definition of suicide. It is
therefore recorded differently in different
places (cannot be compared)
• Medical and criminal statistics do not fit
• There are powerful moral reasons and
material means to hide a suicide
Do the different rates reflect
different ways of hiding/recording?
• Provincial hospitals have less qualified doctors
and record less?
• Upper class has more interest in hiding suicide
(ex: life insurance) and more means to do so?
• Suicide of youth more shameful and less
declared? Elders have no one left to hide their
cause of death?
• Does the rate of suicide reflect the quality of data?
• Is there a uniform rate of suicide everywhere and
for all categories? (genetics, psychology?)
Counter-arguments
• Differences in medical and juridical
statistics can be explained
• There are ways of cross-checking data
through control studies
• Suicides are recorded through
anonymous and administrative circuits.
Very difficult to manipulate.
• Correlations are robust and found in all
statistics, even after they are corrected
What to remember?
• “Le suicide” was a seminal book that still inspires
present-day sociological studies
• It introduces some of Durkheim’s most important
concepts (anomy, solidarity, social facts)
• It shows the power of statistics
• It raises methodological questions about
definitions, data harvest and interpretation when
using statistics
• Social criteria: age, gender, occupation,
nationality, religion, number of children, civil
status, income, etc.
Suicide in Denmark:
Rate per 100.000 inhabitants (1995)
Dødeligheden af selvmord i perioden 1951-95.
Alder 55-64 år, rater pr. 100.000
Dødeligheden af selvmord i perioden
1951-95. Alder 55-64 år, rater pr. 100.000
References:
• http://www.leksikon.org/art.php?n=2274 (source of graphs)
• Center for selvmord forskning: http://selvmord.wnm.dk/
• For a report on suicide and unemployment, see:
http://selvmord.wnm.dk/filecache/9399/1101731587/nr.12.pdf
• Note: These reports are written by psychologists who tend to
downplay social factors to focus instead on psychological
ones (personality, depression, existential crisis, psychological
health, stress, identity, self-esteem, feeling insecure).
• Ex: Is unemployment a direct cause of suicide or just an
indicator for psycho-social problems?
• They see prevention in terms of personal treatment where
sociologists would focus on social and structural factors.
• None of these reports refer to Durkheim (!)