Critical Analysis Of Emile Durkheim's Theory Of Suicide

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CRITICAL ANALYSIS OF EMILE DURKHEIM’S THEORY OF SUICIDE Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 -15 November, 1917) was a French sociologist and is mostly famous for his monograph the theory of Suicide (1897). He is also a French sociologist, social psychologist and a philosopher and has formally established the academic discipline and is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology. His most important work was apparently a case study of suicide which is a study of suicide rates in Catholic and Protestant populations, founded modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy. If we have a look at the suicide statistics it is known that precisely, 11.1 out of every 100,000 people have died by suicide (WHO 2011). Looking over the last two decades suicide rates have gone up by 36% and are ascending. It is …show more content…

The agent knows that death will be the result of his act, regardless of whether or not death is his goal. This is sufficient to distinguish suicide, from other deaths which are either imposed on oneself unconsciously or not. Durkheim's work on suicide has influenced supporters of control theory, and is often mentioned as a classic sociological study. Durkheim concluded that suicide rates are higher in men and among women who are single than those who are married. Also, it is higher for people without children than people with children and among Protestants than Catholics and Jews. Moreover, it is also higher among soldiers than civilians and in times of peace than in times of war. Further, i higher the education level, the more likely it was that an individual would commit suicide. However, Durkheim established that there is more correlation between an individual's religion and suicide rate than an individual's education