Durkheim's Analysis Of The Sociological Factors Of Suicide

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Durkheim's definition of suicide is as follows, "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." Suicide (1897). Émile Durkheims theory of suicide 1899 is based on how social factors influence suicide. Durkheim was eager to find the effects of social causes on suicide, therefore he created four types of suicide; Egotistic, Altruistic, Anomic and fatalistic, in which I will go into further detail later. As this essay progresses I hope to go into further analysis of what the sociological factors of suicide consist of in relation to Durkheims theories. Another perplexity that Durkheim chose to observe, that in a western …show more content…
A study was found that the rates of suicide is less among catholics than protestants. This could partially be because when a religious community is a minority within a larger society the community may exercise strict control over its members. Durkheim looks at the constitution of families. Theorising that the more children people have, the less likely they will commit suicide. This is an interesting observation because one would think having more children to take care of and support financially and care for, would be more likely to commit suicide because the parent or parents cannot give basic needs. In a society where collective sentiments are strong there is a lot of patriotism and political faith within the nation concluding suicide rates are significantly less. Keeping the latter in mind during periods of social upheaves and popular wars the suicide rates go down. For instance when there is war, chaos and anarchy; instead of societies falling apart they migrate toward each other creating more of a sense of community. Durkheim's main focus on egotistic suicide would be that suicide varies depending on the degree of integration of social groups in which the individual belongs. In lieu, suicide also varies on the degree of integration between religious societies, domestic societies ie family and political

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