Suicide, Status Integration and Pseudo-Science

Abstract

Just as Bagley's observation that Gibbs and Martin's work on status integration and suicide (Gibbs and Martin, 1964) 'has received considerable attention' (Bagley, 1972, p. 395) accords to that work a degree of acclaim that most of the 'attendere' have been at pains to deny, so this note may look like a display of unwarranted concern for the status integration debate in general and Bagley's contribution in particular. But the trouble is that this is only the latest episode in the saga which has me seriously worried in more ways than one. For it seems that I am being constrained by forces, which Bagley is able to identify and measure, into the occupancy of an 'atypical configuration of statuses' (Bagley, 1972, p. 396), which, together with some of his newly added Variables' makes me a serious suicidal risk. It may therefore seem strange to authors and editors who take the suicide and status integration 'theorem' seriously enough to publish 'tests' of it that I do not feel in the least bit tempted to leap head first into the quicksands of Morecambe Bay. But then my 'suicidal ideation' (Bagley, 1972, p. 402) has never been computed, and there is, of course, as Bagley notes in passing, that perennial and nagging methodological difficulty with using ecological data, which always need to be further 'examined with data on individuals' (Bagley, 1972, p. 397). And a further complication has now appeared in that there even seems to be some confusion as to whether lack of status integration is a 'cause' of deviance or is itself a special type of deviance: 'The norms of the social system constrain deviance of various kinds, including moving into atypical combinations of statuses' (Bagley, 1972, p. 401). Now lest it seem that I am not taking the debate seriously enough, I confirm that in one sense this is true. For the sheer quantity of natural science terminology, the elaborate statistical juggling of observer-invented indices and the singular lack of concern for the more fundamental assumptions of the paradigm within which their 'normal science' is being conducted, the works of Gibbs and Martin and now Bagley emerge as real gems for any archaeologist interested in excavating the relics of positivism for pure specimens of pseudo-scientism at its most extreme. From the much that could be said about it, therefore, I shall here confine myself to commenting on a single passage where Bagley writes off the kinds of problems which, if taken seriously, might be taken as good enough reasons for writing off his style of research :