Durkheim & Deviance

Durkheim’s “suicide” in the zombie apocalypse, by Anna s. Mueller, Seth Abrutyn, and Melissa Osborne talked about how Durkheim's work on suicide ties into the world today. They started off the article with a walking dead analogy showing how a natural disasters such as a zombie apocalypse can tear the world apart. One of the key arguments found in the essay are is integration or regulation more important for keeping a society together? Durkheim would say that while social integration structures give you love, social connections and inclusion in a group, you also need regulation for rules, order and guidance. The article states that slowly over time isolation leads to suicide. Ultimately Durkheim would argue that without support of other people

The interpretivist approach directly contrasts the positivist one and seeks to focus on the meanings of suicide for those involved. Douglas criticises Durkheim's use of official statistics as they are not accurate and recommends qualitative studies to discover the real rate of suicide. The statistics are a result of a coroners label and thus it is not trustworthy in his view. This suggested that cases are decided on "the basis of probability”. Douglas further seeks to find out the meaning of the suicide

For many the concept of teenage suicide is almost always correlated with the psychological mindset of the individuals. However, there is a lot of the factors behind these horrifying events that actually are more sociologically related. These catastrophic events are directly correlated with interactions with the world. The loss of teenagers across the world is increasing and it is a subject that should be touched on in both sciences. Throughout this paper the study of teen suicide in the sociological view will be discussed by going through Emile Durkheim’s studies and the sub groups in which it can occur. These events are related back to such things as social rejection, religious beliefs and social situations. This paper will also touch on the different types of suicide and what the suicides correlate with. The main purpose of this paper is to show how teen suicide is not only a psychological problem with students but to breakdown the areas in which cause these feelings.

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist credited with developing the functionalist theory. He believed that society should be viewed as a structure with each person playing a role, creating, to some extent a “functional” society. He also stated that society is held together through mutual acceptance of various norms and values. Durkheim published “Suicide” in 1897, which as the title suggests is centred round suicide and the patterns of suicide within society, a subject which at the time was seen as taboo. He believed that sociological influences were contributing factors of suicide, although the act itself is considered by society to be, one of individual choice. Durkheim also suggested that “anomie” played a pivotal role in suicide.

Durkheim was an early sociologist whom is widely known for his theories on the structure of society, including its functioning in traditional and modern societies and the contrast between individualism yet social order. Unlike the other sociologists of his era, his theories analysed external features or "social facts", such as social structure, rather than internal/ psychological features such as a person 's desires and motives. These social facts are made up of the values, morals and structures within a society. "According to Durkheim collective consciousnesses, values and rules are critical to a functional society" (Hurst, 2015). Durkheim 's book "Suicide" (2002) presented the concept of anomie. "The term anomie refers to a condition or state in which

The first sociologist to theorize on suicide and its sociological interpretations was Emile Durkheim. Durkheim worked during the late 1800’s identifying social structures as the key determinant in self-destructive behaviour. In his work Suicide: A study in Sociology, Durkheim stated that “suicide rates increase when a society’s value system breaks down.”2 Durkheim believed that the shared values of a society and the mechanisms in place that ensure that its members adhere to these values, is interpreted as a person’s “social structure.” Durkheim suggested two basic factors in social structure that heavily influence the incidence of suicide. These are regulation and integration. He believed that an individual needs to become part of, and find direction in his own society. Without these factors in place, suicide becomes a common substitute. Teens are often anxious about fitting in to their society (especially among peer groups) so it is clear that integration is essential to adolescence. Durkheim also suggested that it is these two factors

Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess different sociological explanations of suicide. (21 marks)

“Suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result” (Durkheim 34). Suicide is a phenomenon that has plagued our world since the beginning of time. It currently accounts for the second leading cause of death in people ages ten to twenty-four years old (Garni Powerpoint). This means of ending your own life is something we can prevent as a society. If we can eliminate societal pressures and stereotypes we can all be treated equally. All suicides during a certain time period are grouped together, when in all reality we should be treating each situation as it’s own. Durkheim states “...with it’s own unity, individuality, and consequently its own nature- a nature, furthermore, dominantly social”.

According to Item A, suicides are based on coroner’s interpretations and differ across cultures as Danish coroner's base their verdicts on probability rather than English coroners who must find evidence to support their verdict as suicide. Durkheim identifies the difference in suicide rates across cultures and societies. Durkheim defines suicide as “all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from positive or negative act of the victim himself”. He used suicide to demonstrate that positivistic and scientific methods of researching social topics was possible whereas interpretivists argue that to understand the

Durkheim’s theories and work on suicide classified the phenomenon into four types; Egoistic, Altruistic, Anomic and Fatalistic (Ritzer Pg 200-202). Durkheim’s concept of social integration ties into egoistic suicide as it

By applying the functionalist perspective to the issue of suicide, we will highlight the importance of shared social morals and bonds. “When rapid social change or other disruptive conditions occur, moral values may erode, and people may become more uncertain about how to act and about whether or not their life has meaning” (Kendall , 2014) . Suicide falls under

Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a purely individual decision but French sociologist Emile Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed in the influence of society on the individual and that if anything can explain that relation, it is suicide. His use of the data of suicide, not specific cases and reports, to study the societal trends reveals his true subject of study: society as a whole and its role in the individual experience. Durkheim uses the study of suicide via the quantitative methodological approach as a tool to study society as a broader whole.

The Suicide theory proposed by Emile Durkheim (1951), explains that because of the numerous adverse socioeconomic factors that operate in the life of the young Black male, many give into the negative socio-genic force of illicit drug culture as either a psychological or physiological escape from their reality. The development of deeper feelings of low self-worth which can cause a vicious cycle of self-defeating behavior which will cause suicidal behavior.

The importance of social factors over the individual can also be seen in Durkheim’s work on suicide (Stones, 2008). Suicide was explained in terms of two independent variables, integration in society and regulation by society. Low levels of integration led to egoistic suicide, while low levels of regulation led to anomic suicide. Durkheim cited egoism and anomie as the main causes of suicide in the modern world; a world which he believed showed less interaction and people thinking more about themselves than others. As a result, people are less bound to one another, there is less community and social control is weaker (Stones, 2008). Durkheim applied his

Durkheim was a functionalist, and theorised that a holistic social narrative could be identified which would explain individual behaviour. He argued that, whilst society was made up of its members, it was greater than the sum of its parts, and was an external pressure that determined the behaviour of the individuals within it. At that time, suicide rates in Europe were rising, and so the causes of suicide were on the agenda. Since suicide is seen as an intrinsically personal and individual action, establishing it as having societal causes would be a strong defence for Durkheim’s functionalist perspective. Durkheim used the comparative method to study the official suicide rates of various European countries. While he was not the first to