library / lib3c42b4ce7f5c59fe
suicide_a_study_in_sociology
In a sentence
Durkheim demonstrates that suicide, though seemingly the most private and individual of acts, is governed by social forces measurable through the stable, society-specific suicide-rate.
In this foundational work of empirical sociology, Emile Durkheim takes a phenomenon universally regarded as a matter of individual despair, psychology, or biology, and proves through rigorous statistical analysis that it is fundamentally a social fact. By systematically eliminating extra-social explanations—insanity, heredity, race, climate, and imitation—Durkheim shows that each society possesses a constant, characteristic 'collective inclination' toward suicide that varies with the degree of integration and regulation of its social groups. He identifies four types of suicide—egoistic (from insufficient integration), altruistic (from excessive integration), anomic (from insufficient regulation), and fatalistic (from excessive regulation)—and traces them to the states of religious, domestic, political, and economic society. The book is at once a methodological manifesto for treating social facts as realities external to and coercive upon individuals, a milestone in the use of statistics for social investigation, and a diagnosis of the moral crisis of modern industrial civilization, concluding with a call for occupational groups to reintegrate the isolated modern individual.
The four lenses
- Science
- Statistics
- Systems
- Strategy
Tags
The model
A causal model in which the degree of social integration and social regulation of the groups to which individuals belong (religious, domestic, political, economic) generates collective psychological currents (egoism, altruism, anomy) that determine the social suicide-rate.
Degree of Social Integrationcontextual condition
The strength, density, and constancy of the bonds attaching individuals to social groups (religious, domestic, political), reflected in shared beliefs, practices, and active common life that subordinate the individual to the collectivity.
Degree of Social Regulationcontextual condition
The extent to which society sets effective limits on individual desires, passions, and aspirations through legitimate moral authority, especially in economic and conjugal life, preventing limitless and unsatisfiable wants.
Integration of Religious Societycontextual condition
The strength of common beliefs and obligatory practices binding members of a confession, with Catholicism and Judaism more integrated than Protestantism, which permits greater free inquiry and religious individualism.
Integration of Domestic Societycontextual condition
The density and cohesion of family life, measured by marital status and especially family density (number of members actively sharing common life), conferring immunity from suicide.
Integration of Political/National Societycontextual condition
The strength of collective national feeling and partisan integration, which intensifies during great political upheavals and popular wars, temporarily binding individuals to a common cause.
Egoistic Current (Excessive Individuation)psychological state
A collective psychological state in which the individual ego asserts itself excessively against the social ego, producing detachment, languorous melancholy, and the sense that life lacks meaning because ties to society are slackened.
Altruistic Current (Insufficient Individuation)psychological state
A collective psychological state of impersonality in which the individual is so absorbed in the group that his own life has little value, producing readiness for self-sacrifice as duty or for the joy of renunciation.
Anomic Current (Deregulation)psychological state
A collective psychological state of unlimited, unregulated desire and consequent irritation and disgust, arising when society fails to set legitimate limits on aspirations, especially during economic disturbances and weakened conjugal discipline.
Military Spirit / Abnegationcontextual condition
The habit of impersonality, passive obedience, and self-detachment cultivated by military service, an institutional survival of altruistic morality predisposing soldiers to self-sacrifice.
Economic Disturbance (Crisis of Prosperity or Disaster)contextual condition
Any abrupt disruption of the collective economic order—whether sudden impoverishment or sudden enrichment—that upsets the scale of needs and removes effective limits on desire.
Conjugal Anomy (Divorce/Weakened Marriage Regulation)contextual condition
The weakening of matrimonial regulation, expressed and reinforced by divorce, which removes the limiting discipline marriage imposes on (male) passion, raising husbands' suicide while lowering wives'.
Social Suicide-Rateoutcome metric
The stable, society-specific proportion of voluntary deaths to population, a collective phenomenon sui generis expressing the moral constitution and suicidogenic currents of a given society at a given time.
How they connect
- religious society integration → predicts social integration
- domestic society integration → predicts social integration
- political society integration → predicts social integration
- social integration − influences egoism
- social integration → influences altruism
- social regulation − influences anomy
- economic crisis → predicts anomy
- conjugal anomy → predicts anomy
- military spirit → moderates altruism
- egoism → predicts social suicide rate
- altruism → predicts social suicide rate
- anomy → predicts social suicide rate
- social integration − mediates social suicide rate
- social regulation − mediates social suicide rate
The story
The reader A reader—scholar, statistician, or citizen—seeking to understand why people take their own lives and whether such a private act can be scientifically explained and socially addressed.
External problem
Suicide is rising alarmingly in modern societies and is conventionally explained by individual psychology, biology, or chance, leaving its true causes obscure and unaddressed.
Internal problem
The reader feels that conventional explanations are unsatisfying and that something deeper and more disturbing underlies the modern epidemic of self-destruction.
Philosophical problem
It is wrong to treat a society-wide regularity as merely the sum of individual misfortunes, because doing so blinds us to the moral crisis of civilization and renders us powerless to act.
The plan
- Define suicide objectively and isolate the social suicide-rate as the object of study.
- Eliminate extra-social factors (insanity, heredity, cosmic factors, imitation) as determining causes.
- Determine social causes by tracing how the suicide-rate varies with religious, domestic, political, and economic conditions.
- Classify suicide into types (egoistic, altruistic, anomic) according to their social causes.
- Recognize the suicide-rate as expressing collective forces and a society's moral constitution.
- Apply the analysis to diagnose modern society's malaise and prescribe the reconstitution of occupational groups.
Success
- A scientific understanding of suicide grounded in measurable social conditions.
- A society whose members are integrated into meaningful groups and whose desires are properly regulated.
- A reduction in the pathological suicide-rate through structural moral reform.
- A sociology capable of addressing the great practical problems of modern life.
At stake
- Continued misattribution of suicide to individual or biological causes.
- Persistence and growth of the suicidogenic currents of egoism and anomy.
- Deepening social disintegration, moral isolation, and collective sadness.
- An impotent, hypertrophied State confronting an unorganized mass of isolated individuals.
Chapter by chapter
ch01Suicide and Psychopathic States
Related in the literature
The measurement literature behind this signal — sourced, so you can defend it.
“Suicide A STUDY IN SOCIOLOGY Emile Durkheim THE FREE PRESS New York London Toronto Sydney Copyright 1951 by The Free Press, A Corporation Copyright renewed © 1979 by The Free Press, A Division of Macmillan Publishing Co., Inc. All rights reserved, including the right of…”
— Suicide a Study in Sociologymatch 69%
“anything, takes no care of health and so imperils it by neglect. Yet these different ways of acting are not radically distinct from true suicide. They result from similar states of mind, since they also entail mortal risks not unknown to the agent, and the prospect of these is…”
— Suicide a Study in Sociologymatch 67%
“the study of any other social fact would. No social fact to him has been explained until it has been seen in its full and complete nexus with all other social facts and with the fundamental structure of society. II Since Durkheim’s work on suicide, the chief advances in our…”
— Suicide a Study in Sociologymatch 66%
Resources: Suicide a Study in Sociology