Using Material from Item a and Elsewhere Assess the Different Sociological Explanations of Suicide. (21 Marks)

Sociologists have explained the suicide phenomena in different ways. For example, while positivists sought to achieve a scientific explanation of suicide, interpretivists sought to demolish it by focusing on the meaning of suicide to those involved and the meanings they attach to it.

Durkheim used the positivists approach to explain the suicide phenomena. According to him, our behaviours are caused by social facts; norms and values that exercise a social constraint which surpasses an individual. He argues that suicide is a social fact. Using quantitative data from official statistics, Durkheim analysed the suicide rates for various European countries and noted four regular patterns. The suicide rate for any given society remained more or less constant over time. When the rates of suicide did change, they coincided with other changes for example; they fell during war times but rose during economic depression or prosperity. Different societies had different suicide rates. Within a society, the rates varied constantly between social groups for example; Catholics had lower rates that Protestants. He identified the two social facts that determined suicide as social integration; the extent to which an individual feels a sense of belonging to a group and obligation to its members and moral integration; the extent to which an individual’s actions and desires are kept in check by society’s norms and values. Therefore, Durkheim concluded that these patterns were evidence that suicide rates couldn’t simply be the result of the motives of individuals.

However, Durkheim’s study has been criticised for using unreliable and incomplete statistics. This was so because medical knowledge was limited in the 19th century and autopsies were rare. Similarly, most countries lacked the sophisticated modern administrative system needed to collect and complete reliable statistics on a national basis. As a result, because the study lacked reliability, it becomes difficult to conclude that...