Emile Durkheim's Consensus Theory On Society

Functionalist sociologists, such as Emile Durkheim, project a consensus theory on society. However the idea of consensus, when it comes to suicide, doesn’t fit perfectly. Durkheim addressed this within his work through a book he wrote a book called “Le suicide”. This book states that the idea of suicide being a product of individuality, meaning only individuals have power on whether they decided to commit suicide or not, is actually an illusion and that society itself has massive amounts of influence on that decision although on the other hand he did state that the act itself is an extremely personal and is solidarity action. He addressed psychological factors within his work and said that they they do have manipulation on the brain causing …show more content…
Three aspects of each country were compared. The aspects being, the cohesiveness of a social group in which an individual may belong, a person 's standing within society and a person 's religious, social and occupational standings. As a result of his research durkheim revealed 10 findings in which can be used to explain from a sociological point of view why suicide occurs. Firstly he found that if there is a higher integration level, integration meaning how valued a person feels to the group and how connected they are, they will feel loved and wanted therefore suicide would be less admired, however, if there is a low integration level they will feel left out and the feeling worthless will be stronger thus resulting in a higher suicide tendency. In addition he found that an individual with a religious standing or connection is less likely to commit suicide than an individual without a religious belief. This could be because individuals feel apart of a separate community therefore integration is higher. For comparison, he also found that protestants had a higher suicide rate than catholic and