What does a suicide rate reveal about a society?

Résumé ou Introduction

Durkheim in his book “Suicide: A Study in Sociology” (1897) stated that “the term
suicide is applied to every case of death which results directly or indirectly from a
positive or negative act, carried out by the victim himself, knowing that it will produce
this result. An attempt is an act defined in the same way, but falling short of actual
death.” He used the study of suicide in order to illustrate his own methodological
approach and many studies that followed have been, at least in part, a reaction to his
work. Durkheim, although acknowledging that there are individual conditions which
can cause an individual to kill him/herself, emphasised that “every society is
predisposed to produce a certain number of voluntary deaths” and that “the
sociologist studies causes that affect not the individual but the group”. He believed
that the suicide rate “constitutes an order of facts which is unified and definite” and
that it can reveal certain aspects of society especially when looking at the different
types of suicide that have been committed. I am going to explore Durkheim’s theory
of suicide and what he believed a suicide rate reveals about a society. I am further
going to look at some other theories of suicide and how these have supported or
challenged Durkheim’s views. [...]