1. Preparation for learning
Think of reasons why you think people might commit suicide.

2. Suicide
Lesson Objective: To be able to identify two different approaches to suicide.

3. Why? Gender Age Race Class Social Religion Individual Economics
Depression
Uncertainty
Certainty
Stress

4. Suicide statistics:
Read over the statistics for the rate of suicide over different countries and summarise what the graphs tell us about the rate of suicide.

6. What information is used to decide on a verdict of suicide?

7. Positivist and Interpretivists
Positivists
Interpretivists

8. Present New Information
Positivism is an approach that suggests that quantitative methods.
Positivists see human behaviour formed by social forces external to the individual.
Durkheim believed that even a highly personal, private act like suicide is a product of social forces.

9. Positivist Approach - Durkheim
High Suicide Rate
Low Suicide Rate
Explanations
Location
Family status
Marital status
Religion
Urban areas
Rural areas
No family or children
Children and relatives
Catholic
Protestant
Married
Single divorced

10. Durkheim
Durkheim used quantitative official statistics of suicide and found:
Suicide rates for any given society remained more or less constant over time.
When rates did change, this coincided with other changes. For example, the rates fell during wartime, while they rose at times of economic depression and – perhaps surprisingly – times of rising prosperity.
Different societies have different rates
Within a society, the rates varied considerably between different social groups. For example, Catholics had a lower suicide rate than Protestants, married people with children had lower rates than the single, widowed or childless, and rural dwellers had lower rates than city dwellers.

11. Durkheim
These patterns were evidence that suicide rates could not simply be the result of the motives of individuals. For example, the population of the city of Paris is constantly changing, and the French army too, is made up of different individuals as the years go by. Yet in both cases, Durkheim notes, the suicide rate remains more or less constant over time.
Durkheim explains the suicide rate as the effect of social facts or forces acting upon individuals.

12. Construct The Suicide rate:
Durkheim believed that if this was a truly private act then statistics would then be expected to show a random pattern.
He therefore concluded that the cause of suicide must be outside the individual and in forces at work in society.

13. Construct
Integration
Regulation

14. Apply
Design a storyboard/flowchart based around integration and regulation that demonstrates what it is within society.

15. Apply
Look at the following articles and see if you can decide whether this deaths are down to too much or too little integration or regulation.

16. Elaborate
Around the table are 4 stations of information about each type of suicide.
In your group - you first need to transfer the information into your booklet
2. Then you are then going to make up a case study or storyboard that represents this type of suicide. You can use extra paper if you need to.

17. Apply
Loot back at the articles – which of these link to a type of suicide.
Explain why.

18. Apply
Complete the task on page 7 – what type of suicide explain the 7/7 bombings.
Explain why.

19. What about these….?

20. What about these….?

21. What about these….?

22. What about these….?

23. What about these….?

24. Suicide and type of society
For Durkheim, modern societies and traditional societies differ from one another in their levels of integration and regulation, and this means we tend to find different types of suicide for each type of society:
Modern industrial societies – have lower levels of integration. Individuals’ rights and freedoms become more important than obligations towards the group. This weakens social bonds and gives rise to egoistic suicides. Similarly, modern societies are less effective in regulating individuals because they undergo rapid social change, resulting in anomic suicide.
Traditional pre-industrial societies – have higher levels of integration. The group is more important than the individual and this gives rise to altruistic suicides. Similarly, these societies regulate their members’ lives and impose rigidly ascribed statuses that limit individuals’ opportunities, and this produces fatalistic suicides.

25. Later positivist approaches
Maurice Halbwach
Gibbs and Martin
He accepted Durkeim’s positivist approach but used more recent and reliable statistics than Durkheim. He argued that the differences between rural and urban residence were the main reason for variations in suicide rates. Higher rates among protestants, people living alone were more a function of their urban location – these groups were more likely to be found in towns, where people lead more isolated lives.
Like Durkheim, they wish to make law-like, cause and effect generalisations and predictions. However, they argue that Durkheim did not operationalise his concept of integration (define in such a way that it can be measured).
They define integration as a situation where there are stable and lasting relationships. These tend to occur when an individual has status integration – compatible statuses that do not conflict with one another e.g. when their educational and occupational statuses are similar. They predict societies where there is little status integration (where educated people are forced to take low status jobs), the suicide rate will be higher.

26. Criticisms of Durkheim’s theory of suicide, can you think of any?
Elaborate:
Criticisms of Durkheim’s theory of suicide, can you think of any?

27. Review
Write down one type of suicide on your post it note – You have to get other people to explain that type of suicide to you and give an example. Then vice versa.

28. Preparation for Learning
Write down one question based around the positivist view of suicide. You will then receive someone else's question, you then have to answer it correctly.

29. An Interpretivist and Realist View
Lesson Objective: To be able to explain an interpretivist and realist view of suicide.

30. Present New Information
Read the following scenario. How could you discover meanings of victims suicide? What kinds of things could you do?

31. A Recap on Interpretivist Approaches
Sociology should focus on the meanings and motives of individuals (actors).
To study the social world: use qualitative methods.
People work out what something means before they react to it.
Human behaviour is shaped by internal stimuli (what goes on in the mind).

32. Douglas: the social meanings of suicide
Douglas and Atkinson
Douglas: the social meanings of suicide
Atkinson: ethnomethodology and suicide

33. Apply
Begin completing your A3 sheet of paper that will allow you to see the key arguments surrounding positivist, interpretivists and realist.

34. Mini Review
Write down two things that Douglas suggested when referring to suicide.

35. A Realist Approach to Suicide
Taylor is a realist, staying in the middle between positivism and interpretivism.
Realism does not suggest that all social causes of phenomena need to be observable and quantifiable: events can also be caused by underlying, unobservable structures.
Taylor studied suicides and attempted suicides on London’s underground and found that coroners constructed biographies. He does feel that it is possible to identify the causes of suicide.

36. A Realist Approach to Suicide
Read the following cases – think about the kind of things you would take into account when researching these stories. Try and think of 4 categories.

37. Construct Submissive Sacrifice Thanatation Appeal
Inner-directed suicide
(about self and identity)
Other directed suicide
(about communicating something to others)
Certainty
Stability and predictability of events.
Submissive
Sacrifice
Uncertainty
Change and unexpected
Thanatation
Appeal

38. Apply
In your group complete the following giant card sort!

39. Apply
Read the following article about suicide – think about how you can explain it using:
1 – Durkheim
2 – Douglas
3 – Atkinson
4 - Taylor