Male suicide cases in Bangladesh: Lensing through Durkheim’s sociological typology

Abstract

ABSTRACT Durkheim’s classic Le Suicide provides the most astounding perspective in the sociological analysis of suicide. Using macro-level statistical data, he analyzed the suicide patterns of different populations and groups with reference to socio-cultural factors and social structures. His model comes with a four-fold typology of suicide: anomic, egoistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. This classification of suicide provides a means for analyzing the structural conditions in society with regard to the causes of suicide and the pathways for meaningful empirical research in sociology Moreover, suicide as a topic gradually waned from the mainstream sociological focus. Nonetheless, we attempted to understand the individual cases of suicide by explicating the essence form Durkheim’s four-fold schema. In doing so, we contextualized 20 male suicide cases from Bangladesh through qualitative semi-structured research interviews with persons close to deceased males and characterized their relevance to Durkheim’s typology. We conclude that explicating Durkheim’s model at the individual level has potential for rejuvenating the sociology of suicide in the field of suicide research.