Durkheim Approach To The Study Of Suicide And Social Fact Essay

Assess Durkheim’s approach to the study of suicide rates and social facts.

1. Introduction

Émile Durkheim’s special approach to sociology, demonstrated mainly in his book Rules of Sociological Method aroused after its publication discussion among scholars in social sciences. His strictly sociological approach didn’t appeal to majority of academics from other disciplines. The debate about the amount of social forces and individual, psychological forces has continued for a long time and might be said that is still present in the contemporary sociology (Gane, 1988). Durkheim practically demonstrated his theoretically introduced method in his book Suicide which is still topical for social scientists who study suicide today (Taylor, 1982).

In order to be able to asses Durkheim’s approach to the study of suicide rates and social facts, I believe it is important to define these terms

Depiloige argued that Durkheim’s sociology cannot be objective because he already used theory while creating his definitions and methodology. Similarly, more recently Hirst suggested that Durkheim ‘inserts’ theory and moral elements into social facts. Whole methodology is viewed by Hirst as problematic as well because Durkheim first claims that it is necessary to use only empirical data but later appends theoretical analysis (Gane, 1988).

Durkheim’s sociological approach to suicide was discussed by many scholars. Delmas rejected that suicide should be social phenomenon when it happens in such a small amount. The criticism is based on the reversal of proportions of population from who committed suicide to the number of those ‘protected’ from suicide (the ‘non-suicide’ rate). So while it seems as a big difference when we compare the number of people who committed suicide in different environments, it seems hardly noticeable when we compare the numbers of those who are ‘protected’ (Giddens, 1965; Taylor,