Durkheim Suicide

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

Egoistic suicide which is when individuals are not integrated well enough into society for example people who live alone compared to those who live with family. Secondly Altruistic suicide which is when individuals are felt to be too integrated into society causing suicide, for example members of the armed forces were said to have greater suicide rates than civilian personnel as they were too strongly integrated into a united body. Durkheim also put forward the idea of Anomic suicide, this is when the norms and values in society become unclear or confused in times of great social change and an individual is not taught to adapt to changes well enough. For example an unexpected death of a family member is sudden social change which can cause Anomic suicide. Lastly, he suggested Fatalistic suicide. Fatalism is the excessive amount of regulation which leads to one committing suicide.

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

Durkheim proceeded to distinguish suicide into four different groups that related to the individual’s integration into society and in turn the social regulation of society over its members. ‘Consequently, we shall be able to determine the social types of suicide by classifying them not directly by their preliminarily described characteristics, but by the causes which produce them…. We will first seek the social conditions responsible for them; then group these conditions in a number of separate classes by their resemblances and differences, and we shall be sure that a specific type of suicide will correspond to each of these classes.’ (Durkheim, 1897) The four suicide groups were identified as Egotistic, Anomic, Altruistic and Fatalistic.

Although no incidences of suicide were referenced in the article, this increased interaction could lead to an increase in both egoistic and altruistic suicide. Durkheim’s theory on anomic suicide states: “People are more likely to kill themselves when they do not know what is expected of them, when regulation is low, and they are largely free to run wild. This mad pursuit is likely to prove unsatisfying and, as a

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

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

Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life and sociologists over the years have tried to put forward various explanations for why someone may do this. Within sociology there are many different views on suicide on the causes and explanations for it, these come from two main methodologies which are Positivists who believe that sociology is a science and they should aim to make causal laws on suicide rates, compared to Interpretivists who believe that they should look for meaning behind occurrences and certain individuals experiences before the suicide. Other perspectives also put in their views on what they believe to explain

As I was reading through the different views on the causes of suicide, I thought that the sociocultural view made most sense for me. It made sense due to the claim that a person’s connections with social groups, religions, and communities can determine suicide probability (Comer, 2014). I imagine a sliding spectrum where people who are very invested in everything around them are on one end and on the other are people who don’t care about society. The two ends are the high suicide probability areas. Altruistic suicides where lives are sacrificed would fall on the invested end of the spectrum while the egoistic suicides which society has no control over a person and anomic suicides where a person’s social environment fails to provide structure

According to Durkheim’s theory, society can play a part in suicide rates due to strenuous social change which lead to unclear norms in a community. When this emotional strain leads to suicide, Durkheim would explain this as anomic suicide. First Nation groups experienced this during the time of residential schools. Aboriginal people were forced to rapidly change their ways

The poem “Preface to a Twenty Volume Suicide Note” by Amiri Baraka uses vivid images of sights, sounds, and daily activities to symbolize a heartfelt story. In the poem, Amiri, is one of the African American slaves who is frustrated about the discriminatory treatment by whites. So frustrated he wants to commit suicide. The writer used transition words starting with “lately”, “now”, and “then” for each stanza. He was imagining how he acted before his death and how his daughter reacted to his death.

Suicide, to Durkheim, is “an exaggerated form of ordinary practices,” and they arise from “comparable states of mind” in people, with the only difference between daily and suicidal behavior being the “chance of death” (Durkheim 20-21). Durkheim spends the majority of the work dissecting the “apparent motives” for suicide (Durkheim 151) and observing the varieties of suicide, a feat made difficult by the inaccurate reporting and misunderstandings of investigators. Thus, to understand the types of suicide, we must “reverse the order of our research” for “There can only be as many different types of suicide as there are differences in the causes from which they derive,” (Durkheim 149). He says “if they were all found to have the same essential characteristics, they would be grouped in one class” but “observations that we would need to have are more or less impossible obtain” (Durkheim

Durkheim does not see egoism, altruism, anomie and fatalism as types of suicide, but types of social structure that highlight the presence or lack of integration and regulation. It must be stressed that this excess/lack of integration and regulation are not seen as direct causes of suicide, rather Durkheim sees a number of voluntary deaths in society as inevitable; integration and regulation are merely prophylactic to suicidal impulses, which when taken to excess or dramatically reduced, fail to act as a preventative, and so suicides occur. This clarification is an important strength of Durkheim’s theory: it allows the biography of the individuals who kill themselves to vary, while still explaining underlying pressures/lack of to explain their deaths, and the varying suicide rates between groups.

Before discussing the social factors that affect suicide rates, Durkheim attempted to narrow down the ideas behind the reasoning of individual suicides and the level of suicide rates. One proposal to explain the suicide rate was the environment, such as the climate or conditions. Durkheim agreed, after analysing Europe that the suicide rate

The existence of too much and too little integration and regulation results in different suicides such as egotistic and anomie. Egoistic suicide happens when individuals are integrated too little (such as elderlies), there is excessive individualism, which is low social integration. Individuals who do decide to commit egoistic suicide are just not strongly supported by their peers in a unified social group. On the other hand, anomie suicide is committed once the person’s sense of perseverance is lost and individuals not being connected to the society. The circumstance of uncertainty results from the breakdown of morals and values and from the lack of ambition and