Sociology: Durkheim on Suicide

Introduction
Social Changes in Europe and Suicide
Suicide as a Social Fact
Types of Suicide
Conclusion and the Critique of the theory of Suicide:

Introduction

The period in which Durkheim wrote and worked extensively on understanding social phenomena was a stage in which human history had recently passed into modernity. The industrial revolution, together with the logic of the market and urbanization, has led to a massive migration of people from the corners of the country to the cities. Cities became the new home of this incessant flow of migrants, especially poor agricultural laborers from the countryside. In this context, cities showed signs of collapse: slums, poverty and crime were the most evident characteristics of every Western European country. This was a time when society was losing faith in established forms of religion and normative orders. This new scenario meant that new forms of networking had to be established, new relationships had to be forged and above all, migration to cities also meant an isolated and impersonal life that could constrain him to restricted sociability. In his earlier work, Durkheim had shown how the "absence of norms" could make individuals feel unwanted by the system. The system itself is an autonomous, automatic, bureaucratic and impersonal machine. For the system, the individual was not important, but the assigned role was important. In such objectified roles and under intense work pressures, individuals began to take the extreme decision to commit suicide. However, those who took this extreme step were thought to have a history of psychotic disorders or were "weak men" who lacked the courage of others. Durkheim also noted that the actual suicide rate was lower for individuals belonging to the Catholic sect than for the Protestant sect within Christianity. This has led him to question some of the common sense claims, such as biological or family history of mental disorders. He suggested taking it a step further by exploring why people felt alienated in the first place. This meant that he had to ask questions that challenged previous understanding of social functioning. It became very clear to him that suicide rates among Catholics were lower because individuals were isolated from the harsher "outside" world by a very active community life – which included gatherings, feasts, regular church visits, and control over the church. church, extended family support, and other such reasons. The very basis of Protestantism was to actively demonstrate that one was the "chosen one" of god and therefore most individuals were workaholics, who had little time for social gatherings and civic functions. In such a situation, according to Durkheim, individuals became further individualized until they had to find mental and spiritual comfort in contractual relationships. Many of these individuals also believed in the virtue of capitalism's "utilitarian" principle: profit maximization. This meant constant hard work and intense competition between colleagues, leading to further alienation. This article will attempt to explore how so-called individual perceptions, cognitions and actions are in many ways a manifestation of social processes that are sometimes visible and mostly invisible. Thus individual action is part of a social repertoire given to the individual through the process of socialization. Suicide is therefore a social fact, which is an external coercive force acting on the individual without choice. The scope of Emile Durkheim's analysis of the interconnection of suicide with social and natural phenomena is so broad and varied that it is impossible to cover all its avenues and branches in the short space of this introduction. Within the confines of a not too long volume. Durkheim discussed or touched on normal and abnormal psychology, social psychology, anthropology, meteorological and other "cosmic" factors, religion, marriage, family, divorce, primitive rites and customs, social crises and economics, crime and law and jurisprudence, history, educational and professional groups.

A brief balance is still possible because in Durkheim's work on each of these themes secondary to suicide, the underlying theme is that suicide, which appears as a phenomenon linked to the individual, is actually etiologically explicable with reference to the social structure and to its branching functions. The first part of Durkheim's work is devoted to questioning and denying doctrines and theories that attribute suicide to personal, biological, and extrasocial factors, such as mental illness, schizophrenic personality, and abnormal personalities. Durkheim's work involved the process of eliminating all propositions that resorted to individual causes or other extrasocial causes for suicide. This is used as a basis for restating his claim in his introduction that the suicide rate is a sui generis phenomenon; that is to say, the totality of suicides in a society is a separate kind of social phenomenon, separate and studyable in its own terms. Since, according to Durkheim, suicide cannot be explained by its individual forms, and since the suicide rate for him is a phenomenon in its own right, he goes on to relate the currents of suicide to social structures and processes. It is these social side effects of suicide that will serve Durkheim to place each individual suicide in its correct etiological context.

Social Changes in Europe and Suicide

According to Giddens (2006), Durkheim's suicide study is one of the classic sociological studies on the relationship between the individual and society. While people view themselves as individuals exercising agency and choice, their behavior is often socially shaped and shaped. Durkheim has shown through studying him that even a very personal act like suicide is influenced by the social world. By examining official suicide records in France, Durkheim found that some categories of people were more likely to commit suicide than others. For example, he found that suicides were higher among men than women, Protestants than Catholics, the rich than the poor, and unmarried singles. Durkheim also noted that suicide rates were lowest during times of war and highest during times of economic change or instability. In general historical terms, there are a number of reasons why Durkheim brought up the subject of suicide when he first did it. First, in 1850 suicide was a growing social problem in Europe and many believed it was related to the development of industrial society. Industrialization had fostered individualism, accelerated social fragmentation and weakened the social ties that bind individuals to society. Second, industrial society had made economic institutions dominant over other social institutions and this served to place individual self-interest and economic gain above the collective forces of society. As individual autonomy and political freedoms increased, the individual became the center of social life, serving to reduce levels of social restraint and question the nature of collective social ends. Third, the political crisis of the Dreyfus affair in 1894 dealt a severe blow to the national unity of France and revealed how social fragmentation and selfish forces had replaced the collective authority of society. This led Durkheim to suggest that the question of social dissolution by industrial society could be examined sociologically by considering the mechanisms of society that connect individuals to social goals external to themselves. Fourth, factual evidence made available through comparative moral data from different societies linked suicide to social factors such as industrial change, occupation, family life and religion, and this served to draw attention to the society and social institutions rather than complex psychological factors. Durkheim found that statistical data in suicide death records for this period could be categorized by age, religion, sex, occupation, military service, and marital status, which led directly to an investigation of the role of social factors in the cause. of suicide. .

Suicide as a Social Fact

In The Rules of the Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim examines a category of human facts "having particular qualities: they consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, to which is conferred a coercive power by which they control him." (Rules, 52). He regards these circumstances as social facts; they are "ideas and actions" and not purely "organic" or "psychic" phenomena. Durkheim uses this characterization of social facts in The Rules to demonstrate that individuals are social beings inextricably woven into the fabric of social processes.He assumes that one cannot understand individual behavior without understanding the social forces acting on that individual. He also states that an understanding of the fundamentally social nature of humanity will help the field of sociology undergo the necessary process of transition "from the subjective stage...to the purpose". (Rules: 71) Durkheim demonstrates the coercive influence of social organization on our morality and behavior by describing what we are born into and describing what an individual faces if they attempt to resist. We are born into families and perhaps religions, and our families and religious leaders teach us what to believe and what to think of right and wrong. We are given language, which is our only means of communication. And we are constrained in every way by the organization of the laws, rules and customs of the societies in which we live. The person trying to communicate without speaking will not be able to do so. The person who tries to behave outside the norms established by our laws and customs will be punished. And the individual whose moral compass does not reflect what Durkheim calls “the public conscience” is either penalized by law or socially isolated. When a person grows up in a religion, opposition to the teachings of that religion also leads to forms of punishment. Social facts regulate human social action and act as constraints on individual behavior and action. They can be imposed by law, with clearly defined sanctions linked to the attack on the feelings and values of the group. Sanctions can be linked to social facts, for example in religion, where resistance can lead to disapproval from others or spiritual leaders. Individuals may ignore and generally accept social facts. In this case, individuals can accept the values and codes of society and accept them as their own. Durkheim's attempt to provide an empirical study of suicide must be measured against the criteria he sets out in the rules. Durkheim's objective in establishing a social methodology was twofold; First, he wants sociology to become more scientific, moving from the realm of subjectivity to objectivity (The Rules, 71), and second, he wants to prove the primacy of "social fact." For Durkheim, social facts should be treated as things and not as personal experiences, but should also be observed by a researcher. Durkheim says that in the past, we analyzed our ideas and combined them with our observations and comparisons. However, these social facts have resistance (Le Regole, 70), in the sense that they cannot be shaped to fit a specific situation, but remain independent of the researcher, the individual and to some extent the situation, even if these facts arise from the sum of individual experiences.

Types of Suicide

Durkheim's study of suicide is divided into two explanatory sections. In the first, Durkheim explains suicide by referring to the concept of social integration and the strength of the social bonds that exist between the individual and society. Selfish and altruistic suicide form opposite poles of social integration. In the second part of the theory, Durkheim explains suicide through the concept of social regulation. Social regulation, as opposed to integration, refers to the coercion of society on individual needs and desires, and generally manifests itself in regulatory demands imposed by society on individuals when their social needs and desires begin to exceed the means, they must be reached. In terms of social regulation, anomic and fatalistic suicide form opposite poles with respect to changes in the regulatory functions of industrial society, which may lead to shifts in suicide rates.

Egoistic Suicide: The term "egoism" dates back to the 19th century and was widely used by Durkheim and others to describe the breakdown of social bonds that accompanied the development of industrial society and the pursuit of private interests. Selfishness can be described as the process by which individuals detach themselves from the wider society by turning their activity inward and withdrawing into themselves (Durkheim, 1979: 279). Selfishness is characterized by excessive self-reflection in personal matters and withdrawal from the outside world. In this state, according to Durkheim, the "sources of action" are released and the individuals turn inward, towards themselves and away from society. According to Durkheim, selfishness results from an excess of individualism and the weakening of the social structure. Simply put, selfish suicide is the result of a lack of social integration and a weakening of the ties individuals form with groups outside themselves. This occurs when the integrative mechanisms that unite individuals with family, religious and political groups form gaps in the connections that connect individuals with society, so that individuals withdraw into themselves. Under such circumstances, individuals rely more on themselves and less on society, with the result that they withdraw their loyalty to collective life. As social inclusion declines, the gap between individual and institutional touchpoints widens, resulting in individuals becoming less united. Durkheim thought that individuals cannot live naturally without attachment to certain social groups that transcend them. Selfishness therefore attacks social bonds in at least two fundamental ways. First, by eroding the common ties that unite the individual to society, egoism makes privacy a dominant goal, which causes the annihilation of collective goals and ties. Second, selfishness encourages withdrawal from anything external to the individual, and when this happens, "society allows the individual to withdraw." Therefore, when individuals disengage from society, they encounter less resistance to suicide. So here the bond that binds the individual to life is loosened because the bond that binds him to society is relaxed.
Altruistic Suicide: This is considered the polar opposite of egotistic suicide. Durkheim began his discussion by referring to tribal suicide, in which individuals kill themselves rather than die of old age to preserve their dignity. In contrast, in other societies there are customs that dictate that dying a natural death leads to an afterlife filled with pain and suffering. In still other societies, it is believed that old people should throw themselves off a mountain when they are tired of life. In all of these cases, those who commit suicide are honored and their families spared humiliation, while those who do not are denied the honor of a burial and a life of shame and pain will likely await them. It differs from selfish suicide in this; it is the result of too much social integration rather than too little social integration. Under this category, Durkheim lists three specific types of suicide: First, the suicide of elderly men at risk of serious illness. Second, women commit suicide on their husband's deathbed. Third, the suicide of partisans after the death of their leaders. People in these circumstances end their lives not because of their personal right, but because of a “social duty” imposed on them by society. This duty is so strong that when individuals shirk the obligation to take their own lives, they risk social dishonor or religious sanction.

When the duty is done, society bestows upon them social honors that are thought to extend to the afterlife. Altruistic suicide is the clearest case of "social type" suicide because suicide is externally imposed on the individual as a social duty and derives from social rather than personal ends. Because in these societies people commit suicide because their attachment to the group is so much greater than their loyalty to themselves. As individuals live in close proximity to each other, their social habits and beliefs tend to unify to the point of increasing their social attachment. As a result, collective surveillance and social surveillance extend across society, leading to similarities in social beliefs and practices. Under such circumstances, the individual has no private life immune from collective surveillance, there is little independence from group life, and individual existence has little meaning in itself. The altruist looks to a goal beyond this world and believes that this world is a hindrance and a burden to him. Altruistic suicide is born of hope and faith. Contemporary sociologists have used this analysis to explain kamikaze pilots, the suicide bomber sect, people who saw the social world as useless and would sacrifice themselves for a greater ideal.
Anomic Suicide: The term "anomie" was first used by Durkheim in The Division of Labor in 1893, but it was not until 1897 that he began to use the term in a narrower sense to describe general deterioration. the level of restraint in society. Anomie is used by Durkheim to refer to the decline of the regulatory functions of society and social institutions during industrial development, when society's ability to set the necessary level of social restraint declines. The command functions of society were intended to restrain and limit individual needs and desires. To clarify this point, Durkheim distinguished two different types of regulatory functions - between physical needs and social needs. According to him, physical needs and desires such as hunger or sleep regulate themselves. In this context, the body's limit to need and appetite is determined by biological constraints, which, as a rule, cannot operate outside the established limits. In the case of social needs and wants, however, the situation is entirely different. He emphasized that social needs, such as the hunger for wealth, prestige and power, are essentially limitless. There are no natural limits and the more an individual gets the better.

Durkheim believed that the causes of deregulation could be traced to two fundamental sources. First, the development of industrial society and private competition; and second, the dominance of the economy over other social institutions. From this perspective, anomie can be defined as the state resulting from the deterioration of the regulatory mechanisms of society due to uncontrolled economic progress.
Fatalistic Suicide: This is the last category of suicide mentioned by Durkheim and represents the opposite pole of suicide due to adjustments in the regulatory mechanisms of society. Fatalism, according to Durkheim, means a form of suicide that occurs due to an excess of social regulation, as opposed to anomie which means the absence of regulation. Fatalistic suicide occurs as a result of an overdeveloped control system over the individual. To explain the case of fatalistic suicide, Durkheim cited an example of slaves who saw no alternative to life but slavery under a master and took their own lives.

Conclusion and the Critique of the theory of Suicide:

In 1897, after the publication of Durkheim's study, there were a number of European and American scholars who believed that suicide was a psychiatric disorder, and as a result many were critical of Durkheim's claim that suicide it had social causes external to the individual. As the criticisms mounted, several disagreements emerged. First, Durkheim's theory of suicide was considered controversial because the individual was overlooked and directed outside the existing psychological framework within which suicide was understood. Second, there has been a more formal shift in the study of individual factors in suicide in Europe and America, leading to the eventual rejection of theories that deviate from the analysis of individual causes. Third, the emphasis on a psychological approach to suicide in America meant that the individual was the focus of research, and consequently many believed that social factors had nothing to do with suicide. Because many thought the concept of society was irrelevant to a theory of suicide, statements about society's role in suicide began to fade in Chicago, and as Philippe Besnard points out, even though Chicago was a center for the social sciences in America, does not even mention Durkheim's suicide in its review of sociological works. In addition to America, there has also been a series of critical attacks in France, centering on Durkheim's assertion that the causes of suicide lie outside the individual.

Gabriel Tarde, a contemporary of Durkheim, began to question the validity of Durkheim's claims. Tarde had argued that suicide was the result of some kind of psychological contagion and that suicide was spread by a means he described as psychological mimicry. While there were a number of cases in the medical records that supported this view, one particular case known as the "hallway incident" seemed to support Tarde's theory of psychological mimicry. The case involved fifteen people who, one after another, hanged themselves with the same hook in a dark corridor of the hospital hallway. However, once the hook was removed, the suicide epidemic stopped. Although Durkheim covered the incident in chapter two of his book, many felt the case supported Tarde's imitation theory. This led to a search for the biological basis of contagion and a mimicry theory of suicide.

The idea that suicide rates are higher among Catholics than Protestants may also be incorrect, as it could mean that Catholics may not have asserted that suicide happened in the family, since suicide is considered contrary to the will of God. Committing suicide could also mean that there could be a biological reason for it and something that has been passed down from generation to generation. Therefore, the stigma attached to suicide may have led the more conservative sect to cover up such cases when they emerged.

Reference

Durkheim, E (1979): “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” eds Spaulding, J. A., Simpson, G., The Free Press, New York
Durkheim, E (2013): “The Rules of Sociological Method and Selected Texts on Sociology and Its Method”, Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke
Giddens, A (2009): “Capitalism and Modern Social Theory”, Cambridge University Press, India Pvt Ltd, New Delhi.