Durkheim's Views On Suicide

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The study of sociology is one which answers questions in a much different way to that of other sciences such as psychology and biology. Sociology is defined as: "the scientific study of society and human behavior" (Giddens et al, 2000, Pg6) Sociology looks for answers by studying the interactions between different social groups and analyzing the social factors which contribute to a different outcome through a series of different research methods; which may take either a qualitative or quantitative form. Sociology can help us to answer many questions, varying over a range of different topics. This essay seeks to explore four different topics - crime, suicide, education and the family structure - in order to demonstrate the kinds of questions …show more content…
For instance, an example of egoistic suicide - low amounts of social integration - is "a highly individuated man" (Bearman, 1991, Pg502) This clearly displays that Durkheim actively spotted the positive trend between single/unmarried men and the rate of suicide in comparison to the rate of suicide of married men, at the time. This is an example of how Durkheim used the study of sociology to explain why people commit suicide, and displays that the way in which he completed his study was through the use of studying different social aspects and studying the links between those and the rates of …show more content…
This is where the theories of victimology came from. For instance, Positivist victimology claims that the behavior and circumstances which somebody has can be a direct cause of victimization. (Miers, 1989) For instance, if someone has a low-income and so therefore lives in a low socio-economic area then they are more likely to be victims of crime. The study most associated with the Positivist Victimization theory is that of Wolfgang; in which he puts forward the notion that the victim sometimes causes the crime which is being committed against them, this is known at the Victim Precipitation Theory. (Reemst et al, 2015) Wolfgang here demonstrates a form of victim blaming. By doing this he is demonstrating that a way in which sociologists answer questions about crime is by finding the general trends of the people most likely to be victims e.g. males, working classing people and making the link between that and what causing somebody to become a victim. However, this is just one sociological approach to
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