How is Durkheim's suicide theory reliable in today's society ?

Résumé du document

Le suicide has become a classic which has influenced most of the research conducted on this issue since then. Nevertheless, as Durkheim points out himself « the questions that suicide raise are closely connected with the most serious practical problems of the present time ». Even if the 19th century indisputably paved the way to the modern society we live in, it is obvious that the problems individuals had to face a century ago, are very different from those to which we are today confronted.
Moreover, since the analysis of suicide is linked to the issues of peculiar times, it therefore seems legitimate to ask oneself how relevant Durkheim's theory on suicide is to modern society...

Extraits

[...] PRADES, Emile Durkheim, PUF, QSJ - C. BAUDELOT, R. ESTABLET, Durkheim et le suicide, PUF - www.asp.org contagion effect Ken Morrison, Marx, Durkheim, Weber p.164 Emile DURKHEIM, Le suicide : étude de sociologie, Paris, Alcan W.S.F PICKERING and Geoffrey WALFORD, Durkheim's Suicide, A century of research and debate, Routledge p.147, Table 10.6 BAUDELOT C., ESTABLET Durkheim et le suicide, PUF Hallbwachs and other researchers believe that the correlation between suicide and prosperity crisis is very fragile not only in the present context but also at the end of the 19th century mainly because Durkheim may have committed mistakes with statistics at that time. [...]

[...] Last but not least, before prooving and analysing the social causes of suicide, Durkheim has strongly rejected the extra-social factors of suicide which were previously considered as potential ones by most people ( climatic, hereditary causes Even, if it seems obvious after this demonstration, that suicide should nowadays still essentially be explained through social causes, can psychological causes be totally excluded ? One of the most interesting psychological factors that Durkheim analysed is imitation. In the present context, the rejection of imitation as a potential cause of suicide may be the most debatable : according to Durkheim, imitation can't be considered as a specific and original factor. [...]

[...] Women's emancipation may result in the difficulty for men in redefining their place in society. If Durkheim's theory of Egoistic suicide (lack of integration) can still very much be considered as relevant today this is probably because the need for integration is a social immutable reality. As Robert Merton would say, it is normal that the fear for the out-group pushes the individual to the integration in the in-group Nevertheless Durkheim's theory concerning Family and integration could slightly be refined in regard of the new ties that individuals nowadays have with one another : as Baudelot and Estabet have demonstrated[4], the protection of an individual against suicide depends on the number and the depth of the relationships he establishes with his home environment Before, the more children you had the better you were protected from suicide. [...]

[...] Finally the emergence of the Mass Media, a phenomenon which is specific to modern society, may slightlty contradict Durkheim's idea that suicide can be caused by social factors only : the developement of cluster suicide has demonstrated that the Media could be unintentionally transformed into an instrument and a support for the multiplication of collective suicides. Nevertheless, this example doesn't put Durkheim's social theory radically into question mainly because cluster suicides represent a relatively small part of the global suicide rate. [...]

[...] The dismantling of Family is symptomatic of the abandonment of traditional values. It is directly linked to Religion which was also considered by Durkheim as a major factor of integration (at least in Catholic, Jewish and Islamic religions). There again, the decline of belief may be a new socio-cultural fact which partially influences the rise of suicide. In Countries of Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Portugal) where religion is still an important composant of society, the suicide rate is low. On the contrary, in the Republic of Ireland where the decline of the Church as lead to the weakening of faith and traditional values such as Family, there has been, according to the Central Statistics Office, an increase of of the suicide rate, in ten years (with a peak of in 1996). [...]