Aboriginal Suicide: A Different Perspective Emile Durkheim, a French sociologist born in 1858, was a man on the leading edge of sociology in his time, but do his theories still hold up today? In 1897, he studied the French public records regarding suicides, and made some interesting connections. He found that people with a weaker connection to their community or family were more likely to commit suicide then those who had stronger ties in their social group. For instance, those who were married were less likely to end their lives than those who were single. A surprising example however would be that the wealthy had a much higher rate of suicide then the poor. Durkheim attributed this to the isolated and centric nature of wealthy members
Durkheim Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917), believed individuals are determined by the society they live in because they share a moral reality that we have been socialised to internalise through social facts. Social facts according to Drukhiem are the “manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him [or her].” Social facts are external to the individual, they bind societies together because they have an emotional and moral hold on people, and are why we feel shame or guilt when we break societal convention. Durkheim was concerned with maintaining the cohesion of social structures. He was a functionalist, he believed each aspect of society contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole.
and taught them how to live. He gave them the laws that are handed down from
According to Durkheim, studying individual reasons for an action is psychology’s concern, not sociology (Durkheim, Suicide, 35). Weber would argue that the individuals are what make up a society, and thus, they should be the ones to be studied since their meaningful social actions are the ones that impact the society as a whole. Weber states, “Action in the sense of subjectively understandable orientation of behavior exists only as the behavior of one or more individual human beings” (Weber, Basic Sociological Terms, 3). In the case of suicide, Weber would argue that we must take the generalities within Durkheim’s theory into consideration, but then go beyond that. It would be more thorough to analyze the individual cases within different societies to derive a clear understanding of the motives people have behind the act of suicide. Weber would also utilize his concept of verstehen, to gain an explanatory understanding of the subjective
In 1897, Emile Durkheim (1997) showed that the suicide – perhaps the most personal of all decisions – could be analysed through the conceptual lenses of sociology.
Desfor Edles, Laura and Scott Appelrouth. 2010. “Émile Durkheim (1858-1917).” Pp. 100 and 122-134 in Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.
This paper is a critical review of the French sociologist Emil Durkheim and his writings on suicide from his book titled ‘Suicide’ written in 1897. Durkheim was seen as a positivist and functionalist. In his book, Durkheim’s goal was to study people’s tendencies towards suicide and to determine the social causes behind them. Suicide, which Durkheim defined as ‘all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result’ (Durkheim, 1987).
Some flaws exist in Durkheim’s thought. One minor flaw is that Durkheim failed to collect his own data, using outside sources collected by others. Furthermore, Durkheim has been criticized for his failure to take individual into account properly. This can be seen in a flaw in his legendary sociological work, Suicide. Many have criticized Durkheim for trying to explain micro events using macro statistics; however, Van Poppel and Day (1996) state that this isn’t a fallacy, but rather an empirical mistake as how suicides were described by Protestants and Catholics were described differently, which Durkheim failed to account
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The indigenous people of Australia, called the Aborigines, are the oldest culture found on Earth. Studies show that the Aboriginal genome can be traced back seventy-five thousand years to when this community first migrated from Africa to Australia. As the oldest known continuous culture, their traditions and rituals have thrived even though the world around them has changed so drastically. In this paper I’d like to talk about the history of Aboriginal cultures in Australia, their cultural rituals and how their culture has been so heavily influenced and changed over the last few decades.
Sociological Imagination is being aware of relationships between personal experience and the wider society. Sociology takes a unique, astounding, and enlightening viewpoint on social events. Suicide is known as a supremely antisocial individual act. When people think about individuals committing suicide their more likely to look at their individual state of mind rather than the state society has on them. French sociologist Emilie Durkheim showed that suicide is more than just an individual act, suffering from psychological disorder but are also influenced by social forces. Durkheim believed people with a high degree of agreement are more likely to not be suicidal compared to those who had a low degree of solidarity. To support this argument Durkheim expressed that married couples are likely to live a happy life with no suicidal feelings rather than those who were unmarried as marriage creates social ties and moral cement which bind the individuals to society. We do not only live in society but society also lives in us. For example Social relations affect us all in many different ways. It plays with our
Although sociologists like J.D. Douglas would question the reliability of the statistics, due to the coroners decision being final, most sociologists would agree that Durkheim's study into suicide was successful, and indeed many have tried to develop and improve on his theory. Overall, this essay has shown that one type of methodology may not always be suitable for the particular research carried out. Both Interpretative sociology and the Positivist approach equally show that they are valid methods for carrying out research, but like everything, nothing is one hundred percent accurate. Therefore, there is always room for flaw, but in the study of Sociology, there is always room for more ways of obtaining and interpreting data.
When Durkheim analyzed the data, he found that suicide rates differed amongst groups of people with different religious affiliations. For an example, the data showed that Protestants were more likely to commit suicide than Catholics. To explain this, Durkheim developed the concept of social solidarity. Social solidarity is described as the social ties that bind a group of people together such as location, religion or political status. Though plenty have disagreed with his theory and conclusions, Durkheim’s work introduced the importance of theory in sociological study.
Emile Durkheim and Max Weber both appealed to me in the reading of chapter 1. They both have similarities and differences on their approaches to sociology. While reading the background of Emile, I found it fascinating how he studied sociology in a way that he put together the individual dimensions and added them together to better understand a society or social group. The case of suicide rates and religion. This one case can be analyzed through other elements, such as careers. For instance, the type of profession can be studied. I am really into statistics and like to break down information. The way he broke down the information to analyze a society or social groups interested me. Max Weber, I chose to write about because I felt he had a refined understanding of his teacher, Karl Marx.
Merton disagreed with the theory that social problems such as crime arose from individuals. He said that The United States places extraordinary emphasis on economic success, holds this up as a universal goal for all to achieve and yet its social structure limits access to these goals through legitimate means. This disjuncture between the goals or desires, and the means of achieving them is what places large segments of the population in a state of anomie. While Durkheim theorised that for many the only escape from the uninterrupted and unappeased agitation is suicide, Merton argued that it merely produces an intense pressure for deviation. In this way Merton’s theory proposes that it is society and the way that it is structured that causes
Talcott Parsons have some of the same views of sociology as Durkheim, he believed that social life is categorized by social cooperation. Parsons also believed that commitment to common values maintains or...