Suicide By Emile Durkheim

In The Politics of Suicide, Maria Teresa Brancaccio, Eric J. Engstrom, and David Lederer investigate and unravel the conceptualization and operationalization of suicide in the years leading up the Emile Durkheim. It wasn’t until the age of the Enlightenment that the concept of taking one’s own life was deemed worthy of scientific analysis (Brancaccio, Engstrom, & Lederer, 2013). It was during this time that police, physicians, and mental health care providers began to determine the indicators of such potential behaviors and began to see such rising trends as modern social dilemma (2013).

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

According to Durkheim’s theories, suicide is the result of disturbances in the balance of social integration and regulation for an individual. Social integration can be defined as one’s connection to a social group, and moreover as the purpose and meaning provided to an individual’s life through said group. Common sources of social integration include: religion, domestic groups, political groups, and ethnic groups. Often social integration can be associated with social regulation. Social regulation can be understood as the social and moral rules that regulate what is right or wrong; and good or bad. Durkheim uses these terms to understand suicide as a social fact, or a result of a force that is beyond the individual. He sees social integration

The act of suicide effects many individuals worldwide. The medical definition of suicide is “the act or an instance of taking one’s own life voluntarily and intentionally” (Turner,1). However, suicide is more than just a medical condition. Emile Durkheim, referred to this state as altruism, which means that an individual’s personality is preserved to be of little value; he called this altruistic suicide (Douglas, 13). On the other hand, there are many types of cause and effect relationships of suicide. Many view the personal causes, while others look at the social causes and effects. As individuals, we need to look beyond the personal causes and look at what is happening socially.

Durkheim views suicide as a marker for the health and well being of society, if the suicide rates begin to start changing then that means there is a major change going on in our culture. Suicide is all how you about how well or not well you feel connected to society and the social norms of society. Every different type of suicide says and shows different things about that individual and the society they are in and what society is going through. Anomie, is a when society has little to no standards or norms. Egoistic suicide is one who has low social interaction with others in society and they feel lonely and feel as if they are an outsider and take their own life. Altruistic suicide is when someone gives up their own life for the good of the

Émile Durkheim in his book “Suicide” not only described different several distinct sociological profiles of suicide, but also made a variety of inductions based on his findings. He conducted various studies in Western Europe, used available statistics and data from existing research to argue for the hypotheses. A number of the conclusions may fit certain societies in Europe, or even the United States, as the work of Durkheim centred around the suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics in Europe (predominantly, the different cantons in Switzerland). Despite the drawbacks, Durkheim’s classic sociological study is to this day used by various scholars and media, as a basis for discussing the topic of suicide. Some of the major deductions that Émile Durkheim made (besides describing various suicide types) are:

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.

First, one may question whether such phenomenon caused by external force such as society but shared awareness from individuals. However, Durkheim defends it by the term of conscience collective, which is also a kind of a social fact and points out the strength of linking morality to discover social laws. Secondly, Durkheim’s classification of suicide form has limited the causes and types. Moreover, Durkheim concerned the causes of suicide only with social facts and rejected the relationship between suicide and personality in terms of psychology, as well as alcoholism. Additionally, the subject of suicide is more likely to exist in disordered societies thus leading to an unbalanced research, which is prone to the theory of pathology. As a result, the contribution of suicide to sociology is actually

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.

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist that was mainly responsible for the change of the earlier diffuse philosophy of Comte and others into a systematic discipline. He was known as a key figure in the development of sociology (Thomson, 2003, pp.15-17). In the work of Suicide Durkheim proves that on the basis of an analysis of statistical evidence the number of suicides depended on the nature and strength of social bonds(1951, pp.309-325). Of the greatest importance is Durkheim’s analysis of anomic suicide, which furthermore resulted in the social disorganization. He concluded that the structure of society at any time affects the degree of social solidarity and this was measured by the number of suicides that took place (1951,p.323).

People are ending their lives every day whether we as a society are aware of it or not. The situation or problem may be temporary but the solution and outcome is always permanent. This affects our society because when hearing about a suicidal incident or if it is someone that was known, it brings curiosity on one to want to know what they could have done to prevent it, or what options are there out there to help and decrease certain deviance behaviors such as this. This self-destruction deviance should not be happening, however it is. Emile Durkheim’s Anomie theory explains it is a condition in which the society provides little moral guidance to individuals; it is basically the analysis of social bonds between an individual and the community. Therefore, suicide relates and affects the society individually and collectively. It’s amazing how in the most prosperous nation on earth, America; research states almost five million of its inhabitants at some time in their lives attempt suicide. Though this is only attempting, every twenty minutes someone is the United States commits suicide. Another interesting fact that astound me was knowing the rates and who were more likely committing and attempting suicide in our society, and it stated that it is mostly attempted by people in their “prime of life” which are between the ages of 24 and 44, however suicide is also rising in “prime of the youth” ages also 15 to 24 years of age.

Religion can influence much of the behavior of religious believers and also their attitudes toward the meaning of life and death, and end-of-life decisions. Furthermore, it can also contribute to the differences in how various ethnic groups tolerate and accept suicide as a way of life. Religiosity is associated with reduced risk of suicidality (Lizardi et al., 2007).

Durkheim claimed that within society there were two main reasons for the increase in suicide rates: egoistic suicide increased when individual members of society did not assimilate into society’s social life, as for anomic suicide this increase is due to the weakness and lack of regulation of society’s norms and values when considering individuals wants and need. The correlation between the level of social assimilation, regulation and suicide rates highlights the control that society holds over the individual. Durkheim (1893, p.21) proposed that, society was separate to the individual and even suicide had its place within the roots of society.

The next, altruistic suicide, is the complete opposite of egoistic suicide. A person who commits altruistic suicide thinks that the larger group is more important than he is. All things of the larger group take precedent over the individual which leads to suicide. We discussed “honorable” suicide under this category and one thing still bothers me from that discussion. Our humble narrator gave the example of a soldier jumping on a grenade as a form of honorable suicide. I disagree with this statement. I would argue that this is not a form of suicide but a form of training. This man or woman is trained to give his life for his country. It isn’t logical to think that the person jumping on the grenade thinks that he is committing suicide. Aside from that aspect, I feel that I understand this form of suicide the most. I think that being overlooked by the dominant group can lead to a person taking their own life. There are numerous times where we have seen on the news about the kid no one paid attention to taking his or her own life.

Emile Durkheim studies the social pathology of suicide in detail. Through the use of both excessive and insufficient social integration we can grasp suicide in a social context. Durkheim uses the example of suicide among Jews, Protestants and Catholics within varying cultures and social settings. This allows us to understand the rates and causes of suicide and how they differ across the three religions.