Zusammenfassung der Ressource
Suicide - Kenilworth Sixth Form
- Durkheim
- compared suicide rates
between countries and
subgroups
- found that suicide rates vary
- but remain stable over time
- suggesting that suicide is
determined by structural social
factors
- the underlying cause of
suicide is too much or too
little social control
- egoistic - lack of integration
- altruistic - over integration
- anomic- lack of regulation
- fatalistic - over regulation
- Interpretivism
- criticise the statistics
- claim they are socially constructed
- statistics are the product
of interpretation,
negotiation and decision
making by social actors
- for example, family members
can influence verdicts by
revealing or withholding
certain information
- Atkinson
- coroners socially construct
suicide statistics
- coroners look for primary
clues such as type of death
and secondary clues such
as the biography of the
deceased to make a
decision on the type of
death
- variations in suicide rates
may simply reflect the
different ways in which
coroners go about
categorising suspicious
deaths
- Douglas
- used case studies,
informal interviews
and personal
documents to study
suicide
- conclusions
- suicide can be
understood in
terms of:
- revenge
- search for help
- repentance
(regret or
remorse)
- escape
- suicide is an
individual act that
has personal and
social meaning
- Realism
- Taylor
- claims suicide
statistics are
socially
constructed
- study of
suspicious
deaths on the
London
Underground
- none were clear-cut suicides
- social factors
influenced verdicts
such as witnesses
and a history of
mental illness
- half the cases resulted in a
verdict of suicide even
though there was no
conclusive evidence of
suicidal intent
- parasuicides
- most acts of deliberate
self harm fall somewhere
in between genuine and
fake suicides
- risk taking behaviour should
be the focus of sociological
research
- findings and
conclusions: two
main types of
suicide and suicide
attempts
- ectopic - inner directed
- submissive - certain about themselves
- thanatation -
uncertainty
about
themselves
- symphysic - a way of
communicating with
others
- sacrifice - certain about
others, eg. their partner
has had an affair
- appeal - uncertainty about others