Transcript powerpoint on suicide

The Suicide
debate
The Suicide Debate
•The sociology of suicide
may be examined as a form
of deviance
•Used to illustrate
methodological debates
The Suicide debate
• Explaining theories of social disturbution
• Evaluating the functionalist explanation of
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suicide
Explaining the social construction of suicide
statistic
Evaluating the positivist approach to sociology
Assess the usefulness of the comparative survey
Assessing the usefulness of secondary data and
official statistics in particular
Durkheim 1858 -1917
Develops the debate over
positivism. His method
was ‘multivariate analysis’
• Comparisions of social
factors with the incident
to event
• Studied statistics and
collected death
certificates and official
documents
• He found clear patterns
His study
• Over 20 years suicide rate • This was reinforced by
different by regions,
countries, religions,
married, unmarried
• He found that the greater
the level of social
integration the happier
the society
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religion ‘shared values’
and through the family
Social institutions help to
integrate people into
society
Can you suggest any?
Give an explanation of
how they fulfil this role!
Categorising suicide
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Durkheim identified 4 types of suicide
Egoistic
Alturistic
Anomic
Fatalistic
Divide into groups and create a mini presentation
(publisher) on a category
Email these to me
20 minute task
Evaluating Durkheim
His study was used for over 70 years and
provided the basis of positivistic research.
He threw Sociology into the respectable
ranks of ‘science’.
Yet…interpretive sociologists say this form of
research into the individual in society is
fundamentally flawed. Interpretive
sociologists seek a different understanding
Suicide : Interpretivism
• Douglas 1967 • Atkinson 1971
• Investigate the • Investigate
four ways
people commit
suicide
Atkinson’s
social
construction of
suicide
From Positivism to Interpretivism to
Taylor
Taylor 1990
Says they have all missed ‘parasuicides’
Where the person is not certain whether
they want to die or not, and gambles with
their life ‘risk taking’…develops Durkheim’s
so he suggests successful ‘parasuicides’
can be categorised as ‘ordeal’ sucides
Taylor 1990
Ordeal suicides
• Relates to Durkheim’s
‘Anomie’: they feel this profoundly
Purposive suicides
• Similar to fatalism
More likely to happen in
individuals too detached from
others in society
(egoistic)
And in those over attached
(altruistic)
So Taylor pulls
wider social
factors
(Durkheim)
• With Douglas’s
meanings