Suicide: A Study in Sociology
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'Durkheim's great books are dedicated to the proposition that society transcends the individual: that our beliefs, values, dispositions and desires are often products of social forces and structures we poorly understand.' - Financial Times
'One of the acutest and most brilliant sociologists.' - Bronislaw Malinowski
Product Description
There would be no need for sociology if everyone understood the social frameworks within which we operate. That we do have a connection to the larger picture is largely thanks to the pioneering thinker Émile Durkheim. He recognized that, if anything can explain how we as individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why is it more common in some places than others? In seeking answers to these questions, Durkheim wrote a work that has fascinated, challenged and informed its readers for over a hundred years. Far-sighted and trail-blazing in its conclusions, Suicide makes an immense contribution to our understanding to what must surely be one of the least understandable of acts. A brilliant study, it is regarded as one of the most important books Durkheim ever wrote.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
10 of 10 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Not sure what the cover is meant to construe, perhaps its a eureka! moment or something, anyway, this is a great book and this is a great edition of the book. The contents are clear, there is a good index included for students or anyone who needs to be able to make quick references to specific parts of the text.
This is a prior really of the first sociological/social explanations for significant individual behaviour using the example of suicide.
As the blurb says this was a phenomenon previously only considered as being psychological in nature and Durkheim doesnt ignore this, there is a good opening chapter on "extra-social" explanations and their significance, Durkheim isnt dogmatic and doesnt dismiss these out of hand but the second and final chapters deal mainly with is own theories of social construction, social interaction, pressure and consequences.
The ideas have in many ways been superseded and it cant be described as total prescient to any current/contemporary scenario as it once was (in this respect there are other sociological and psychological books dealing with fragmentation, identity and disparity). However it is a classic in sociological reasoning and explanation which students, professionals or interested readers could benefit from reading.
The text isnt as accessible and readable as some of the books in the routledge classics range but bearing with it is rewarding, its not a novel afterall but it can give some insights into the day to day and the nature of crisis and individual consequences.
This is a prior really of the first sociological/social explanations for significant individual behaviour using the example of suicide.
As the blurb says this was a phenomenon previously only considered as being psychological in nature and Durkheim doesnt ignore this, there is a good opening chapter on "extra-social" explanations and their significance, Durkheim isnt dogmatic and doesnt dismiss these out of hand but the second and final chapters deal mainly with is own theories of social construction, social interaction, pressure and consequences.
The ideas have in many ways been superseded and it cant be described as total prescient to any current/contemporary scenario as it once was (in this respect there are other sociological and psychological books dealing with fragmentation, identity and disparity). However it is a classic in sociological reasoning and explanation which students, professionals or interested readers could benefit from reading.
The text isnt as accessible and readable as some of the books in the routledge classics range but bearing with it is rewarding, its not a novel afterall but it can give some insights into the day to day and the nature of crisis and individual consequences.
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
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12 reviews
40 of 42 people found the following review helpful
Synthesis of intimately personal and powerfully public
18 Dec 2001
Format:Paperback
Emile Durkheim's classic work tells us more than just details about suicide. Studying a powerfully individual phenomenon from a sociological perspective was, in its own right, an impressive undertaking. But what interests me more for sociology of media is the way Durkheim handled statistics. In the first chapter, he gives a series of examples that illustrate the danger in placing too much unexamined value in numerical data. He shows first that married people commit suicide more than singles, but then notes that single people include children who are unlikely to commit suicide. Therefore this data does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship between marriage and suicide. He adjusts the data, taking only people of marriage age and computes the data again. This time, single people commit suicide more than married people. However, Durkheim then notes that single people will automatically include a larger portion of mentally or physically defunct people. He therefore concludes that there is not sufficient data to make a conclusion about a causal relationship between suicide and marital status. This is really little more than mental exercise, but it is a critical one for any one employing survey methods and statistical analysis. The researcher must be vigilant in analyzing data to ensure avoiding errors in logic.
Durkheim's study in sociology contributes much more than this detail to the social sciences, but for my purposes of analyzing the sociology of media, this is the most critical point.
Durkheim's study in sociology contributes much more than this detail to the social sciences, but for my purposes of analyzing the sociology of media, this is the most critical point.
41 of 44 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating&Intelligent...From a man, who loved his subject
25 Mar 2000
Format:Paperback
Emile Durkheim is called a Father of Sociology, and rightly so. He was the first man to work on all of the problems and issues, unresolved by other known sciences at the time ( in 19-century), to combine many of the already known scientific methods in one, and to call it sociology. Surely, there were other theorists, his contemporaries, who were starting to wander in the same direction at the same time with Durkheim, but he was the one, who put his own and other people's theories to practice. That is what "Suicide" is all about: gathering data and putting it to test with the theory (suicide, being the subject of the study in this case, of course). The best part about Durkheim's work presented in "Suicide" is that it is still an incredibly potent and groundbreaking manuscript. One, who reads it today, can't help but notice that human nature and human problems have largely remained the same: they are universal and ageless and they still need to be studied by competent sociologists.
9 of 10 people found the following review helpful
PIONEERING WORK IN SOCIOLOGY
15 Nov 2003
Format:Paperback
This is the work considered the pioneer of modern sociology, with its author hailed the father of sociology. The innovative nature of the work lies in putting together all the methods of social analysis available at his time and providing a comprehensive view of the nature of suicide in society.
Mixing quantitative and qualitative methods, Durkheim provides the basis for the future development of sociology. He brings science to the study of society, by developing a hypothesis, gathering data and testing the hypothesis. He proves the powerful influence of society on the behavior of individuals, which, though obvious today, was not a clear conclusion at the time.
This is a basic reading for anyone interested in sociology. However, anyone interested in the application of scientific methods to society and other non-traditional fields for science would also find it very useful.
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