Discuss distinct sociological method adopted by Emile Durkheim in his study of ‘suicide’. (UPSC CSE Mains 2017 - Sociology, Paper 1)
- The sociological study of suicide remains rooted in founder Émile Durkheim’s empirical study of suicide, still the disciplines’ greatest contribution to suicidology. Durkheim’s theory posits two core principles:
1. that the structure of suicide rates is a positive function of the structure of a group or class of people’s social relationships and those
2. that social relationships vary according to their level of integration and (moral) regulation.
- Though Durkheim never clearly defined his dimensions, sociologists have generally treated integration as the structural elements of social relationships like the number and density of ties and regulation as the degree to which a collective’s moral order controls and coordinates its member’s attitudes and behaviors.
- Additionally, Durkheim articulated two continua and four types of suicide related to integration and regulation: egoistic/altruistic suicides (too little ↔ too much integration) and anomic/fatalistic suicides (too little ↔ too much regulation).
- Importantly, Durkheim was not interested in the subjective appraisals suicide decedents provided for why they chose suicide, but rather saw suicide, like alcohol abuse or homicide, as a symptom of collective breakdown of society. In turn, rather than focus interventions to reduce suicide on individuals, he argued [like many population health scientists today that a more efficacious avenue to protect individual well-being lies in collective public projects to produce protective structural changes. These changes can restore the integrative and regulative functions of the social groups to which individuals belong or lessen the intense pressure on individuals in social groups where integration and regulation have exceeded “healthy” levels. Durkheim was writing at a time of immense political, economic, and cultural change, which in turn motivated his emphasis on the types of suicide predicated on too little integration or regulation over the dangers of too much.
- Durkheim found that suicide was less common among women than men, more common among single people than among those who are romantically partnered, and less common among those who have children. Further, he found that soldiers commit suicide more often than civilians and that curiously, rates of suicide are higher during peacetime than they are during wars.
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