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Suicide (Durkheim book)

Sociological study of suicide as a social fact.

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Durkheim's book classifies suicide into four types based on imbalances of social integration and moral regulation.[1] A person who feels persistently disconnected from any community may experience egoistic suicide.[2] Altruistic suicide happens when group objectives and convictions dominate an individual's own will.[3]

Making and release

He used aggregate statistics on suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics.[4] In 19th century Europe, suicide rates were higher in more heavily Protestant countries.[5] Durkheim's data did not tie individual suicides to any particular religious faith.[5] He had rates for countries, not for religious denominations within geographic areas.[5]

The analytic interest was in religion, but data were available for geographic groupings.[5] Baechler argues that differences in social cohesion determined by religions are a "pure Durkheimian fantasy."[6] Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli were earlier researchers whose data Durkheim primarily used.[7] The disparity in suicide rates between Protestants and Catholics that Durkheim observed appeared only in German-speaking regions, according to subsequent studies.[8]

Jean Baechler offers a strong criticism of Durkheim's claimed link between religious affiliation and suicide.[6]

What the cited sources add

Freedman explains that the "ecological fallacy" consists in thinking relationships observed for groups necessarily hold for individuals.[5] Ecological regression makes the "constancy assumption" that individual behavior cannot depend on geographical location.[5] Protestants all over Europe must have similar propensities to commit suicide under this assumption.[5] Inkeles, Johnson, and Gibbs claimed Durkheim only intended to explain variation among social environments, not individual suicides.[9]

Van Poppel and Day (1996) propose that the apparent variation in suicide statistics between Catholics and Protestants may result from differing death-recording practices.[9]

References

  1. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Thompson, "Emile Durkheim", Tavistock Publications, 1982, p. 109–111; Dohrenwend, "Egoism, Altruism, Anomie, and Fatalism: A Conceptual Analysis of Durkheim's Types", American Sociological Review, 1959, p. 473 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  2. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Harriford, "When the Center is on Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times", University of Texas Press, 2008, p. 165 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  3. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Harriford, "When the Center is on Fire : Passionate Social Theory for Our Times", University of Texas Press, 2008, p. 166 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  4. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Selvin, "Émile Durkheim : Selected Essays", Prentice-Hall, 1965, p. 113–136; Freedman, "The Ecological Fallacy", University of California, 2002 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  5. Freedman, "The Ecological Fallacy", University of California, 2002. facts only, no text reused. stat.berkeley.edu
  6. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Baechler, "Les Suicides", Calmann-Lévy, 1975, p. 406 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  7. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Stark, "Religion, Deviance and Social Control", Routledge, 1996, p. 32 (we also read that source) en.wikipedia.org
  8. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Pope, "Sociology's One Law", Social Forces, 1981, p. 496–514; Huang, "Religion, Culture, Economic and Sociological Correlates of Suicide Rates: A Cross-National Analysis", Applied Economics Letters, 1996, p. 779–782 (original not read by us) en.wikipedia.org
  9. Wikipedia, "Suicide (Durkheim book)" (CC BY-SA 4.0), which cites: Van Poppel, "A Test of Durkheim's Theory of Suicide—Without Committing the Ecological Fallacy", American Sociological Review, 1996, p. 500; Inkeles, "Sociological Today", Basic Books, 1959, p. 249–76; Johnson, "Durkheim's One Cause of Suicide", American Sociological Review, 1965, p. 875–86; Gibbs, "A Theory of Status Integration and Its Relationship to Suicide", American Sociological Review, 1958, p. 140–147; Berk, "Macro-Micro Relationships in Durkheim's Analysis of Egoistic Suicide", Sociological Theory, 2006, p. 58–80 [p. 60] en.wikipedia.org

Each numbered sentence above was checked against the source it cites before publication. Sentences citing Wikipedia adapt text from the English Wikipedia article Suicide (Durkheim book) (contributors), used under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is available under the same licence. Other sources were used for facts only; no text or images are copied from them.

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Compiled from Wikipedia and the sources listed below. Text from Wikipedia is available under CC BY-SA 4.0; this entry is adapted from it.

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