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Emile Durkheim's Theories Of Suicide

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Suicide written by French sociologist Emile Durkheim in 1897 was a cutting edge piece in the field of sociology. It was a case study of suicide, a publication unique for its time that provided an example of what the sociological monograph should look like.
Emile Durkheim was born on April 15, 1858 he was a French sociologist, social psychologist and a philosopher. His works has contributed greatly in establishing sociology as an academic discipline; he is commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science along with Karl Marx and Max Weber. The works done along with them had a greater influence on the society on that time and still continue to hold its importance. Durkheim was one of the main advocates of positive methodology. …show more content…

In this book Durkheim defined suicide and the particular way in which people who commit each type of suicide are connected to their society. This book explains theories of social causes of suicide and the different types of suicide. He went against the earlier notions of suicide and came to a new conclusion from his study that suicides are not individual acts but are socially influenced. Accordingly, his theory was that suicide was a social fact which was regular and predictable that was tied to social structures. He defined suicide as a social fact because it was something that happened driven by social causes or other social facts, however hidden they …show more content…

Because when he considered all suicides committed in a particular society during a specific time period as a whole, the total is not simply a sum of independent units, but constitutes in itself a new fact sui generis, which has its own unity and individuality, and therefore, its own pre-eminently social nature. Durkheim wants to find the social causes of suicide (not personal or psychological) and therefore looks at the social environments (religious beliefs, family, political society, occupations, etc.)In his study.
EXTRA SOCIAL CAUSES
Durkheim also pointed out the two kinds of extra-social causes which has an influence on suicide rate. First, within the individual psychological constitution there might exist an inclination, normal or pathological, varying from country to country, which directly leads people to commit suicide. Second, the nature of the external physical environment (climate, temperature, etc.) might indirectly have the same effect. Durkheim took up each in

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