The Sociology of Suicide — A Critical Appreciation

Abstract

There is currently little dialogue between sociology and suicide studies, which may seem surprising given the central role that Durkheim’s (2002 [1897]) Suicide played in the construction of sociology as a distinct discipline. Although a series of influential studies followed in the wake of Durkheim’s, emanating from various schools of thought, suicide has ceased to be of much interest to mainstream sociology. While contemporary sociologists have little to say on the subject, suicidology is dominated by various disciplines allied to medicine, including psychology, psychiatry and epidemiology. In this chapter, and in much of what follows, our aim is to re-engage with, and hopefully reinvigorate, the sociology of suicide. We begin here by reviewing four key studies that have been selected to illustrate the main sociological perspectives that have been applied to the subject. We start, inevitably, with Durkheim, before moving onto the work of Cavan (1965 [1928]), Douglas (1967) and Atkinson (1978). Coverage of these studies is followed by a brief review of more recent developments, which leads into a broader discussion of some key epistemological and ontological questions that we believe are fundamental to any sociology of suicide. Our answers to the questions we pose are rooted in a form of principled pragmatism: that is, we seek to transcend the unhelpful oppositions and dichotomies that have tended to dominate sociology, such as those that are often drawn between subjectivism and objectivism, social structure and human agency, the individual and the collective (Jenks, 1998). In so doing, we hope to move towards a more rounded analytical approach.