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Date Submitted: 06/12/2014 01:43 PM
Suicide
Functionalist Durkheim takes a positivist approach and argues that our behaviour is caused by social facts. They have 3 features – they are external to individuals, they constrain individuals shaping their behaviour and they are greater than individuals – they exist on a different ‘level’ from the individual. So for Durkheim the suicide rate is a social fact.
Durkheim identified four regular patterns from his research. Firstly, suicide rates for any society remained constant over time. He also found when the rates did change; they coincided with other changes such as the war or economic depression. He noticed that different societies had different suicide rates and lastly within a society, the rates varied considerably between different social groups.
Durkheim identified two social facts that determine the rate of suicide. Social integration refers to the extent to which individuals experience a sense of belonging to a group and obligation to its members. Moral regulation refers to the extent to which individuals’ action and desires are kept in check by norms and values. In Durkheim’s view, without regulation by socially defined goals and rules, individuals’ desires are infinite and incapable of satisfaction.
Durkheim argues that suicide results from either too much or too little integration of regulation. This gives a fourfold typology of suicide. Egoistic suicide is caused by too little social integration, altruistic suicide is because by too much social integration, anomic suicide is cause by too little moral regulation and fatalistic suicide is cause by too much moral regulation.
However, Douglas takes a largely interactionist approach to suicide. He is interested in the meaning that suicide has for the deceased and in the way that coroners label deaths as suicide. He criticized Durkheim on two major grounds. Firstly, the decision to classify a death as suicide is taken by a coroner and influence by other social actors, and this may produce...