Customer Reviews

Suicide

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Emile Durkheim's classic work tells us more than just details about suicide. Studying a powerfully individual phenomenon from a sociological perspective was, in its own right, an impressive undertaking. But what interests me more for sociology of media is the way Durkheim handled statistics. In the first chapter, he gives a series of examples that illustrate the danger in placing too much unexamined value in numerical data. He shows first that married people commit suicide more than singles, but then notes that single people include children who are unlikely to commit suicide. Therefore this data does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship between marriage and suicide. He adjusts the data, taking only people of marriage age and computes the data again. This time, single people commit suicide more than married people. However, Durkheim then notes that single people will automatically include a larger portion of mentally or physically defunct people. He therefore concludes that there is not sufficient data to make a conclusion about a causal relationship between suicide and marital status. This is really little more than mental exercise, but it is a critical one for any one employing survey methods and statistical analysis. The researcher must be vigilant in analyzing data to ensure avoiding errors in logic.
Durkheim's study in sociology contributes much more than this detail to the social sciences, but for my purposes of analyzing the sociology of media, this is the most critical point.

Emile Durkheim is called a Father of Sociology, and rightly so. He was the first man to work on all of the problems and issues, unresolved by other known sciences at the time ( in 19-century), to combine many of the already known scientific methods in one, and to call it sociology. Surely, there were other theorists, his contemporaries, who were starting to wander in the same direction at the same time with Durkheim, but he was the one, who put his own and other people's theories to practice. That is what "Suicide" is all about: gathering data and putting it to test with the theory (suicide, being the subject of the study in this case, of course). The best part about Durkheim's work presented in "Suicide" is that it is still an incredibly potent and groundbreaking manuscript. One, who reads it today, can't help but notice that human nature and human problems have largely remained the same: they are universal and ageless and they still need to be studied by competent sociologists.

This is the work considered the pioneer of modern sociology, with its author hailed the father of sociology. The innovative nature of the work lies in putting together all the methods of social analysis available at his time and providing a comprehensive view of the nature of suicide in society.

Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, Durkheim provides the basis for the future development of sociology. He brings science to the study of society, by developing a hypothesis, gathering data and testing the hypothesis. He proves the powerful influence of society on the behavior of individuals, which, though obvious today, was not a clear conclusion at the time.

This is a basic reading for anyone interested in sociology. However, anyone interested in the application of scientific methods to society and other non-traditional fields for science would also find it very useful.

Durkheim says at the beginning; the sociology is the current science, but nobody knows what it is. Even now, his words sound contemporary. This study aims at introducing the necessity and importance of the sociology to the public, but not at sophisticatedly professional people.
It matches the orientation of the primary students to study the sociology, because the preliminary knowledge isn�ft necessary. Actually, I could read this book at the first year of the university without any sociological knowledge. After finishing to read the first part, which proves that the suicide isn�ft the psychological phenomenon, but the sociological, you can investigate the present situation as he did in the 19th century by using the statistics of the international organization like WHO. You will find the manipulation of the statistics not only easy, but also important with Durkheim�fs tutorial. It may be your first experience of the scientific study at the society.
I can recommend it to the youth.

Suicide is as old a phenomenon as is murder or thievery. It has been looked down on as a criminal act requiring punishment in order to thwart additional acts. In 452, the Council of Arles declared suicide a crime to result in the culprit going to hell. This was followed in 563 by the Council of Prague declaring that in addition to going to hell one would also be forbidden from having any religious memorial during one's funeral. In addition, civil legislation followed with penalties resulting in one's possessions reverting to the lord or baron of the estate rather than to any natural heirs. They went to great lengths in their efforts to eliminate or reduce suicide by torturing the bodies of those who committed suicide. They would hang corpses in the town square or drag it through the streets. These actions were no doubt in frustration concerning their inability to not only understand suicide but also their failed attempts to control it.

Durkheim's study into suicide discovered that suicide is not a criminal act nor is it an individual phenomenon but rather it is a problem associated with our collective conscience or what we term society. The study by Durkheim has had additional benefits other than an understanding of suicide. These would be the methods used by Durkheim for this study as well as to propel sociology to a greater degree of acceptability.

Durkheim's style in this book is similar to that used by Michel Foucault in his series about the sexuality. They both offer hypothesis after hypothesis only to discredit them completely or partially resulting in new hypotheses. Durkheim continues this process until one has no other option but to conclude that he has successfully proved his hypothesis that society is the cause of suicide and that suicide is not only a negative phenomenon but a necessary one. The way in which Durkheim explains this strange required negativity, I would correlate to the unemployment levels in our modern capitalistic societies in that we can never expect to reach a level of complete employment.

Durkheim's contributions to the methods of research used by future social scientists concentrate on the correlation of data to prove causation. He was meticulous in amassing a vast amount of raw data to analysis but he also discussed the limits of the data analyses. This would have implications for future sociologists in that they would be expected to uphold the standards set by Durkheim. Concerning suicide, the problem with data would hem not only on the definition of suicide but also on the unknown instances of the act of suicide. Durkheim defined suicide as, "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" (p.44). This definition, however, has some validity issues. How would Durkheim view a soldier during war who rushes into the enemies line of fire knowing full well that he will be killed but if he fails to act in this situation many of his comrades will be killed? According to Durkheim, this situation would be considered a suicide. Many would disagree but Durkheim addresses this by defining three forms of suicide.

Three forms of suicide: Egoistic, Altruistic, and Anomic. Egoistic results from a lack of integration into society. The more individualist one is the greater the risk for suicide. Durkheim feels that society as a whole is moving towards a more individualistic society resulting in increases in egoistic suicide rates. The second form, altruistic, goes against the rule of egoistic suicide in that the degree of social integration is irrelevant. Suicide is committed for the greater good of society so the greater one's connection and commitment to society the greater risk of committing the act. This, however, is a form of suicide usually found only in tribal or lower societies. Suicide takes the form of ritual or sacrifice. This form is also found in the modern army in the form of the example of a soldier committing suicide to save his comrades. The final form, anomic, is correlated to the degree that one is upset with one's environment. This usually occurs during a divorce, loss of a job, winning the lottery, or discovering devastating truths or fallacies. The point here is that the individual is removed from their group in physicality, social status, etc. The supporting infrastructure is upset and one is left to fend for oneself. This can be evidenced by stockbrokers jumping to their death during the crash of 1929 or the lottery winners today attempting suicide. Durkheim does point out that one of the greatest protections from suicide is being poor.

The book is a very difficult read with an almost endless amount of facts and figures resulting in what is termed paralysis by analysis to the general layman BUT as a student of Sociology it is necessary in order to prove his hypothesis.

Durkheim sometimes gets a bad rap for his politics, but this is a good book that laid the foundations for much of the sociological work that has followed it. Using the case study example of suicide rates, Durkheim undertakes to show that social structure has a profound and powerful influence on almost everything that individuals do. While the translation is sometimes awkward, Durkheim's work is impressive in its methods, ambitions, and execution. I'd recommend this book to anyone interested in the hstory of sociology or just the power of social structure.

One of the first quantitative and yet, qualitative sociological studies in history. From Durkheim's dissertation arises many diverse concepts on suicide. A must read for anyone studying sociological theory! Durkheim's Division of Labor and work on relgion, as well as Weber's theory on the Protestant Ethic and The Spirit of Capitalism are also must reads for the sociological mind.

Given the academic traditions which prevailed at the time, European scholars were commonly forced to be thorough to a fault, covering a lot of non-essential material and making for excruciatingly long reads. With Durkheim's Suicide, if you begin with chapter 4, social causes and social types, you'll be able to read a masterpiece of sociological reasoning. The most conspicuous concepts in his analysis, anomie (cultural deregulation) and egoism (social deracination), are applicable to a broad range of social phenomena in a wide variety of settings. In modest empirical pieces I've used them to help explain variability in teen pregnancy, early teen pregnancy, dropping out, crime on school property, and reckless behavior among adolescents.

As with today, Durkheim lived in a world that was becoming more complex, rendering values and norms relative, and tearing apart extended families, neighborhoods, communities, and other groups that provided social support. Durkheim surmised that in the absence of normative stability and a strong sense of belonging, people felt socially and culturally lost, devoid of guidance and support. As a result, they became depressed, anxious, and more likely to commit suicide. Within the methodological limitations of the late nineteenth century, he thoroughly researched his thesis and found compelling empirical evidence to support it.

Today, much is made of the archaic nature of Durkheim's research methods and the likelihood that his findings were compromised by the ecological fallacy, making untenable inferences about individuals from group data. In my view, however, his seminal concepts, though often misrepresented and misunderstood, have proved priceless in understanding our socially and culturally chaotic world and explaining why some of us commit ourselves so completely to causes and organizations that seem absurd and sometimes broadly dangerous. The same concepts continue to explain variability in suicide rates from time to time and place to place.

This is still considered the first book on sociological theory. Not only does Durkheim provide us with a working model to use social statistics to draw very strong inference but if one reads carefully between the lines, he provides us with theoretical rhetoric as well as the afore-mentioned practical design. Durkheim was overall pessimistic; he saw the forces of society as overwhelming to the individual and makes little or no provision for escape (unlike Marx). Suicide, in Durkheim's view, was merely a symptom of a greater sociological ill. But unlike those who had come before him, Durkheim based his sociological assertions on solid empirical evidence and helped create an entire new science, which like the "hard" sciences, was based on the collection of data and research. Next time you read a report which links household income to education attainment, or prison rates among African Americans to a never-ending drug war, remember Emile Durkheim. He was first.

I bought "Suicide" to use as a reference for a research paper. This book was a few dollars cheeper than the same one offered at a local book store, and it was shipped to my home faster than the book store could have it shipped to their location. This book was exactly what I expected and wanted which is worth 5 stars to me.