Suicide: A Study in Sociology

427 Pages·2005·1.85 MB·English

by  Emile Durkheim

Suicide
“One of the acutest and most brilliant sociologists.”
Bronislaw Malinowski
“Suicide is used by Durkheim as a means of demonstrating
the key impact of social factors on our personal lives and even
our most intimate motives. The book succeeds brilliantly,
both as a technical study of suicide and as a fundamental
contribution to this broader issue. Students of sociology will
continue to be required to study this book, which will remain
on the sociological agenda for many years yet to come.”
Anthony Giddens
“Suicide remains one of the most incisive and profound cri-
tiques of modern society ever written. The first exemplar of
modern ‘scientific sociology’, Durkheim’s classic demon-
strated the relevance of multivariate statistical sociology to
the most compelling moral and existential issues of the day. In
his insistence on the centrality of social solidarity, Durkheim
issued a challenge that contemporary sociologists have yet to
meet.”
Jeffrey Alexander
“Suicide is a sociological masterpiece on three counts: it
addresses a problem of great social significance which evokes
the moral concern of both author and reader, it assembles and
analyses a large quantity of factual information and it
develops an original and sophisticated theoretical argument.”
Gianfranco Poggi

Émile
Durkheim
Suicide
A study in sociology
Translated by John A. Spaulding and
George Simpson
Edited with an introduction by George Simpson
London and New York
Le Suicide: Étude de sociologie first published 1897, Paris
English edition first published 1952
by Routledge & Kegan Paul Ltd
First published in Routledge Classics 2002
by Routledge
11 New Fetter Lane, London EC4P 4EE
Routledge is an imprint of the Taylor & Francis Group
This edition published in the Taylor & Francis e-Library, 2005.
“To purchase your own copy of this or any of Taylor & Francis or Routledge’s
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© 1951 The Free Press
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reprinted or
reproduced or utilised in any form or by any electronic,
mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter
invented, including photocopying and recording, or in any
information storage or retrieval system, without permission in
writing from the publishers.
British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data
A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library
ISBN 0-203-99432-9 Master e-book ISBN
ISBN 0–415–27831–7 (pbk)
ISBN 0–415–27830–9 (hbk)
To those who, with Durkheim, understand the life of reason as itself
a moral commitment, and especially to Arthur D. Gayer in eco-
nomics; Sol W. Ginsburg in psychiatry; Robert S. Lynd in sociology;
and Arthur E. Murphy in philosophy

CONTENTS
Editor’s Preface ix
Editor’s Introduction xiii
Preface xxxiii
Introduction xxxix
BOOK I Extra-Social Factors 1
1 Suicide and Psychopathic States 3
2 Suicide and Normal Psychological States—
Race, Heredity 30
3 Suicide and Cosmic Factors 53
4 Imitation 74
BOOK II Social Causes and Social Types 95
1 How to Determine Social Causes and Social Types 97
2 Egoistic Suicide 105
3 Egoistic Suicide (continued) 126
4 Altruistic Suicide 175
5 Anomic Suicide 201
6 Individual Forms of the Different Types of Suicide 240
viii contents
BOOK III General Nature of Suicide as a Social Phenomenon 259
1 The Social Element of Suicide 261
2 Relations of Suicide with Other Social Phenomena 291
3 Practical Consequences 328
Appendices 360
Index 367
EDITOR’S PREFACE
Of the four major works of the renowned French sociologist, Émile
Durkheim, only Le Suicide has remained to be translated. The Elementary
Forms of the Religious Life was first published in English in 1915; the Division
of Labor in Society in 1933 and The Rules of Sociological Method in 1938. Over
half a century has gone by since the first edition of Le Suicide, yet far
more than antiquarian interest attaches to it in the sociological, stat-
istical, philosophical, and psychological disciplines. But the historical
significance of the volume in social thought would be enough reason
for presenting it to readers in the English-speaking world. As a mile-
stone in social science and an indispensable part in understanding the
work of the man who founded and firmly established academic soci-
ology in France and influenced many others outside of France, it
should have long since been available in translation.
Though our statistical material today is more refined and broader,
and our socio-psychological apparatus better established than was
Durkheim’s, his work on suicide remains the prototype of systematic,
rigorous and unrelenting attack on the subject with the data, tech-
niques, and accumulated knowledge available at any given period.
Indeed, Le Suicide is among the very first modern examples of consistent
and organized use of statistical method in social investigation. In the
last decade of the nineteenth century when Durkheim was conducting