Functionalist view of suicide
Using material from Item A and elsewhere, assess different sociological explanations of suicide. (21 marks)
Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life and sociologists over the years have tried to put forward various explanations for why someone may do this. Within sociology there are many different views on suicide on the causes and explanations for it, these come from two main methodologies which are Positivists who believe that sociology is a science and they should aim to make causal laws on suicide rates, compared to Interpretivists who believe that they should look for meaning behind occurrences and certain individuals experiences before the suicide. Other perspectives also put in their views on what they believe to explain suicide for example, Realists. Item A references to Durkheim’s Structural Functionalist view on suicide, as stated Durkheim believes that due to sociology being a science with the topic of suicide it is very easy to make causal laws or as said in Item A ‘social facts’. Using quantitative data from official statistics, Durkheim analysed the suicide rates for various European countries and noted four regular patterns. The suicide rate for any given society remained more or less constant over time. When the rates of suicide did change, they coincided with other changes for example; they fell during war times but rose during economic depression or prosperity. Different societies had different suicide rates. Within a society, the rates varied constantly between social groups for example; Catholics had lower rates that Protestants. He identified the two social facts that determined suicide as social integration; the extent to which an individual feels a sense of belonging to a group and obligation to its members and moral integration; the extent to which an individual’s actions and desires are kept in check by society’s norms and values. Therefore, Durkheim concluded that these patterns were evidence that suicide rates couldn’t
Suicide is the intentional taking of one's own life and sociologists over the years have tried to put forward various explanations for why someone may do this. Within sociology there are many different views on suicide on the causes and explanations for it, these come from two main methodologies which are Positivists who believe that sociology is a science and they should aim to make causal laws on suicide rates, compared to Interpretivists who believe that they should look for meaning behind occurrences and certain individuals experiences before the suicide. Other perspectives also put in their views on what they believe to explain suicide for example, Realists. Item A references to Durkheim’s Structural Functionalist view on suicide, as stated Durkheim believes that due to sociology being a science with the topic of suicide it is very easy to make causal laws or as said in Item A ‘social facts’. Using quantitative data from official statistics, Durkheim analysed the suicide rates for various European countries and noted four regular patterns. The suicide rate for any given society remained more or less constant over time. When the rates of suicide did change, they coincided with other changes for example; they fell during war times but rose during economic depression or prosperity. Different societies had different suicide rates. Within a society, the rates varied constantly between social groups for example; Catholics had lower rates that Protestants. He identified the two social facts that determined suicide as social integration; the extent to which an individual feels a sense of belonging to a group and obligation to its members and moral integration; the extent to which an individual’s actions and desires are kept in check by society’s norms and values. Therefore, Durkheim concluded that these patterns were evidence that suicide rates couldn’t