Suicide

Introduction

Le Suicide appeared in 1897, two years after The Rules of Sociological Method, and puts its programme into practice: social facts are to be explained by other social facts. Durkheim compares official suicide statistics across countries, religions, family situations and periods. Protestants take their own lives more often than Catholics, the unmarried more often than the married, and rates rise in economic booms as well as in crises. From such findings he derives types of suicide that depend on too little or too much social integration and regulation; the fourth, fatalistic, type appears only in a footnote. His use of statistics has been criticised, but the book is still read as a model of combining theory with quantitative evidence.

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• The Rules of Sociological Method1895 · Émile Durkheim

More works by Émile Durkheim

• 1893The Division of Labour in Society
• 1895The Rules of Sociological Method
• 1912The Elementary Forms of Religious Life