Theories of Suicide
Several theories focusing on the study of suicide from a sociological perspective
- Created by: Rebekah Allanah
- Created on: 20-03-14 09:17
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- Suicide
- Durkheim
- Wanted to prove suicide had social causes in an attempt to prove Sociology is a scientific discipline
- 4 patterns that show suicide could not simply be a the motive of the individual
- Suicide rates for any society remain more or less constant over time
- When rates did change it coincided with other social changes
- E.g. a fall during times of war and a rise during times of economic depression
- Different societies have different rates
- Within a society the rates change considerably dependent upon social group
- Two social facts that determine rates of suicide
- Social intergration
- The extent to which in individual experiences a sense of belonging and obligation too a group
- Moral regulation
- The extent to which an individual's actions and desires are kept in check via norms and values
- Social intergration
- Types of suicide
- Egotistic
- Too little social integration and caused by excessive individualism
- Explains lower suicide rates in Catholics in comparison to protestants
- Too little social integration and caused by excessive individualism
- Altruistic
- Too much social integration and the suicide is an act to better others
- Kamikaze pilots
- Too much social integration and the suicide is an act to better others
- Anomic
- Lack of norms and social moral regulation causing a loss of purpose
- Such as times of economic depression
- Lack of norms and social moral regulation causing a loss of purpose
- Fatalistic
- Caused by too much moral regulation restricting all choices, causing a lack of control
- Prisoners and slaves are he most common under this type
- Caused by too much moral regulation restricting all choices, causing a lack of control
- Egotistic
- Interpretivism
- Douglas
- Bias occurs in suicide classifications
- The level of social integration affects the verdict of death rather than being the cause of death as Durkheim suggests
- More people to dispute if it was a suicide
- The level of social integration affects the verdict of death rather than being the cause of death as Durkheim suggests
- Suicides across cultures cannot be compared as Durkheim suggests
- Suicide is not a fixed constant
- The suicide of a failed Western buisnes man cannot necessarily be compared to a disgraced samurai warrior
- Qualitative methods need to be used to find meanings and prevent over generalisation
- Criticism
- Shouldn't completely abandon structure
- There is no reason why Sociologsts will be better at determining a death than a coroner as they also have a lot of shared meanings
- Bias occurs in suicide classifications
- Ethno-methodology
- Atkinson
- Argues that commonsense knowledge the coroners have leads them to label different types of evidence as relevant
- There is too much focus on attempting to find the 'real rate' of suicide yet this will never be possible without talking to the deceased
- More focus is needed upon the meanings
- Atkinson
- Douglas
- Realism
- Steve Taylor (1982; 1989)
- Agree's with the interpretivist criticism of official statistics as they offer little validity
- Prefers the use of case studies as they have a high level of validity and allows an insight into the underlying motives
- Created an extended definition of suicide that included failed attempted as well as those that were successful
- Types of suicide
- Self directed
- Submissive
- Thanatation
- Other directed
- Sacrifice
- Appeal
- Self directed
- Approach: reveal the underlying causes and structures that are not immediately observable
- Steve Taylor (1982; 1989)
- Durkheim
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