1Introduction to SociologySociology 1001Durkheim’s Dilemma• Emile Durkheim, often regarded as the father of Sociology, sought to understand suicide through a sociological framework– Why suicide? Consider the characteristics of and reason(s) why one might kill oneself?• An intensely personal act• The result of some personal pathology• Firmly in the terrain of psychologists and those who study the human mind• Conventional expectations: – If psychological disorder causes suicide then:• Rates of suicide should be higher where rates of psychological disorder are higher– Includes both area and types of people– If true, this would suggest a clear psychological basis for suicide– If not true, the patterning of suicide might tell us what ‘social forces’ are at work2• Analyzed government statistics and hospital records– More women than men in insane asylums, yet males were 4 times as likely to commit suicide– Jews had the highest rates of psychological disorder, yet had the lowest suicide rates– Psychological disorders occurred most frequently when a person reached maturity (18-21), yet suicide rates increased steadily with advancing age– Areas with high psychological disorders did not necessarily have high rates of suicide• So what accounts for the pattern(s) of suicide if not psychological disorder?• His answer was social solidarity– Refers to the degree to which a groups members share beliefs and values and the frequency and intensity of interaction• The higher the level of social solidarity, the more firmly individuals are anchored to the collective and the less likely they are to take their life if adversity strikes• More specifically, he argued that suicide had a curvilinear relationship to social solidarityAnomic Suicide Altruistic SuicideLow Social SolidarityHighLowSuicideRateHigh3• Supporting Evidence:– Married people were half as likely to commit suicide as unmarried people• Marriage creates social ties and ‘moral cement’– Women less likely to commit suicide• Women more involved in intimate social relationships– Jews less likely to commit suicide• Jews formed more tightly knit communities• Note that this doesn’t tell us what person may commit suicide but does tell us what types of people are more or less likely to commit suicide– Early example of ‘epidemiology’• Durkheim’s Legacy– Suggested the limits of an overly ‘psychological’ or individualistic understanding of human behavior– Provided an example of the use of conventional scientific methods to study individuals, collectives and their characteristic behavior– Pointed social scientists to the underlying and often unacknowledge features of society that serve to structure social relations– Pointed us towards the important links between individuals and larger scale (dynamic and historical) processes and their joint connectionDiscussion Questions• Other than social integration, what other features of society might influence suicide rates?• What other types of behaviors could be explained by Durkheim’s approach?• What features of the modern (US) world are likely influencing the applicability of Durkheim’s thesis to contemporary