Prof: So good morning.
 
Well today we have a fun topic:
suicide.
Actually I didn't realize how
much interest there is amongst
students in suicide.
 
Once we invited a professor
from Australia,
who wanted to teach a course on
death and suicide,
and I was very concerned that
no students will take it;
and the class was full.
 
So it looks like suicide is a
popular topic.
And I think I know why.
 
Because when I was your age,
occasionally it occurred to my
mind, what if I commit suicide?
 
Right?
 
So I think thinking about
suicide is probably something
what crossed many of yours mind.
 
And therefore hopefully
Durkheim will be exciting for
you, and will help you to
understand why did you consider
it and why you did not do it?
 
Right?
 
Or why your friends or
acquaintances thought about it.
Some of them may have tried;
some may have killed themselves.
Anyway, so this is about
Suicide.
And as I said already before,
this is a path-breaking book,
in many ways.
 
It's really the first rigorous
empirical study of a social
phenomenon--
and a very curious social
phenomenon,
and we will talk about this as
the lecture unfolds.
 
Because we tend to think about
suicide as something very
personal--right?--and
individual.
And all right,
if a psychologist is interested
in suicide, it's understandable.
 
But why on earth a sociologist
would be interested in suicide?
It is so rare,
socially, fortunately--I mean,
not in some societies,
but in most,
very rare.
 
And it looks like it's so much
a question of individual
decision.
 
So why should a social
scientist try to explain it?
So Durkheim sets for himself a
very difficult task,
and he does it formidably.
 
I will show you that he does
some spectacular methodological
innovations.
 
He kind of offers
methodological insights,
what social scientists are
excited about,
even today, well over a century
after he published this book.
Okay, so that's about
Suicide.
And first of all,
I will ask a few general
questions.
 
And first of all,
the question is what is
suicide?
 
When do we decide that a death
is suicide?
And then also I would like to
pose the question,
what are the reasons for social
scientists to study it?
And Durkheim gives some very
good reasons.
And finally,
I will introduce Durkheim's
typology of suicide.
 
Many Durkheim scholars were
struggling with this,
how to make sense of this
typology?
And I will show you one way how
to do it.
Sort of there are--his major
types are egoistic,
altruistic, anomic and
fatalistic suicide,
and I will talk about each of
them in turn.
Okay, so let me start with the
definition.
And this is tricky, by the way.
 
Also it's extremely tricky,
when it comes to statistics,
to figure out what statistics
do report as suicide.
When people die,
especially if they do not leave
a letter behind,
it's very hard to decide
whether that person actually
committed suicide or it was just
an accident.
 
Well there are occasions when
this is quite obvious.
Right?
 
Somebody's hanging himself,
or herself,--
which is a favorite way of
committing suicide,
of a certain type of people,
in certain instances,
right?--and the way how
somebody hanged himself makes it
quite clear that it was a
suicide.
But doctors investigating the
cause of death very often are
puzzled whether this is suicide
or not.
So you clearly have an overdose
of sleeping pills;
it's unclear whether it was an
accident, accidentally you took
more pills that you should have,
or whether this was actually a
suicide.
 
So there is a lot of problem in
studying statistical data about
suicide,
and very often doctors do make
judgments on the social
circumstances of the person who
committed suicide.
 
Right?
 
They read Durkheim,
or they have read some social
scientist.
 
They tell these are the kind of
people, under these
circumstances,
who commit suicide.
So they go to the scene,
they look at the dead person,
look at the circumstances.
 
This is an old man whose wife
just passed away very recently.
So that must be,
of course, suicide.
Right?
 
So therefore what is suicide is
being defined by the
circumstances,
rather than actually by the
medical reasons.
 
Okay, so let's try to struggle
a little bit this,
what is suicide;
under what circumstances can we
talk about suicide?
 
And here is Durkheim's
definition.
"The term suicide"--
right?--"is applied to all
cases of deaths resulting
directly,
or indirectly,
a positive or a negative act of
the victim himself,
which he knows will produce
these results."
 
Well looks like a very
complicated definition,
but a very full and a very good
one.
And the first point is
intention.
Right?
 
That in order to call a death
suicide, there must be intention
on behalf of the person who
commits suicide.
Well this intention can be
varied.
Well the aim might not be
necessarily self-destruction.
The aim may be something else.
 
For instance,
you can think about suicide
bombers.
 
Right?
 
They don't want to kill
themselves;
they want to kill others,
but they use their body as a
weapon--right?--and they explode
themselves in order to cause
harm to others.
 
Right?
 
But that's clearly a case of
suicide,
because they know that they
will die as a consequence of
their action,
and therefore it can be called
suicide,
though it is not aimed at the
person himself.
 
Well the act of suicide can be
indirect, and in fact it can be
negative.
 
Sort of you--most suicide is a
direct and positive action.
Right?
 
You jump from the fortieth
floor--right?--and then you kill
yourself.
 
You take sleeping pills,
an overdose,
and you kill yourself.
 
But it can be indirect and
negative;
I mean, you can starve yourself
to death, and that can be called
suicide, as long as your
intention is to kill yourself.
Right?
 
So it becomes very tricky.
 
What do you do with people who
are abusing drugs or alcohol?
Right?
 
They may actually die as a
result of excessive alcohol or
drug consumption.
 
If it is not intentional,
they don't want to kill
themselves;
they just like
boozing--right?--they just like
cocaine--right?--then it is not
suicide.
 
Right?
 
There are lots of Russians who
have been dying in the last
thirty-five years;
their numbers--especially
middle-age Russian men were
dying like flies because they
are drinking too much vodka.
 
In the overwhelming majority of
the cases, this is not suicide.
Right?
 
They are depressed;
they are silly,
they think drinking vodka will
help their depression,
and as a result they will get
liver cancer and they will die.
Right?
 
So it was not suicide.
 
Well, if you lock yourself into
your room, you take sleeping
pills and you drink a bottle of
vodka in order to kill yourself,
then it was suicide.
 
Right?
 
So anyway, you have to know the
consequences of your action.
You have to know that what you
do will kill yourself,
in order for your act to
qualify as a suicide.
So I think this is really
beautifully done,
and has been extremely
influential for social
scientists.
 
As I said, it makes a very big
challenge to medical
investigators who try to
determine the cause of death,
because it's very difficult to
establish the intention.
Right?
 
And in most of the cases of
suicide, you cannot be
absolutely sure of the
intention.
You don't know whether this was
an accident or whether it was
intentional,
unless the victim of the
suicide will tell you,
leaves a letter behind and
tells that I committed suicide.
 
Okay.
 
Well, as I said,
it looks like that suicide is
very much a very personal
action.
Right?
 
Well occasionally people talk
about their intention to commit
suicide.
 
When and if they do so,
they probably will not do it.
Right?
 
Those who are serious about
suicide keep it to themselves,
and then kill themselves.
 
Those who talk about "I'm
suicidal",
very often simply want to have
attention.
Right?
 
And then even if they attempt
suicide, often it's kind of
fake.
 
They're smart enough,
they just take a little
overdose of sleeping pills,
but not too much.
Because they already told they
are suicidal--right?--their
friend rushes them to the
hospital and they will be all
right.
 
Right?
 
So anyway, it's a very
individual act.
You usually keep your intention
to commit suicide to yourself,
rather than discussing with
somebody else.
And it looks like taking your
life away is really your own
business.
 
So the question is,
why on earth people who study
society should be interested in
this very individual,
very private act?
 
And well he said,
"Look at,
for instance,
the suicide rate,
how it varies across
countries."
And he said there is a
tremendous difference in suicide
rate across countries.
 
There are countries with very
low, and there are other
countries with very,
very high suicide rates,
relatively speaking.
 
Suicide is nowhere the
top-ranking cause of death,
though in some countries,
in certain age groups,
it can easily enter the top
five causes of death.
And, on top of this,
those countries where people
commit suicide tend to be
countries where people committed
suicide for a long time.
 
It's a very stable indicator.
 
Scandinavian countries are ones
where usually the suicide rate
is reasonably high.
 
My native Hungary is a country
which for a very long time was
proud of being number one in
committing suicide.
Right?
 
Well incidentally--this is not
in Durkheim,
but if I may add to this--there
were people who were--
of course, Durkheim inspired,
and still inspires,
a lot of research on suicide.
 
He has been challenged on many
questions, but he is still,
after 110 years,
the agenda-setter on suicide
research.
 
If any one of you become a
biologist, a sociologist,
a doctor, and want to conduct
research on suicide,
you will have to cite Durkheim.
 
Right?
 
You have to start from Durkheim
if you are studying this.
Well anyway,
there were people inspired by
him and looked further inside
countries.
And what is interesting,
that within countries there are
actually gigantic differences
between regions.
There are some regions in these
countries with very high,
and some regions of these
countries with relatively low
suicide rates,
and these are pretty constant
as such.
 
Well I had a colleague--as I
said,
it's probably not too parochial
for me to refer to Hungary,
because now Hungary is I think
only number two or three in the
world,
in suicide rate,
but has been number one for a
century.
So anyway, I had a colleague
who did a detailed study in
Hungary about suicide,
inspired by Durkheim,
and found that there were
certain regions in the country
where the suicide rates were
particularly high--
as well it was low.
 
And he actually could identify
the type of people who committed
suicide and the way how they
committed suicide,
for instance.
 
And that has been stable for a
century, as far as it was
possible to go back in
statistics.
Just to give you an
example--and it will also help
us when we are looking at
Durkheim's typology of suicide.
For instance,
he found that male farmers,
old male farmers,
living in detached farms,
when their wife passes away
unexpectedly--
women are expected to live
longer than men,
right?--when their wife passes
away unexpectedly,
the typical way what men does:
they hang themselves in the
attic;
and this happens again and
again.
 
Detached farms,
old men, wife died,
people go up and hang
themselves.
Right?
 
Suicide, to put in another way,
is a way of dying.
Right?
 
There are some circumstances in
which in certain societies you
know that this is the answer to
your problem,
that you commit suicide.
 
Right?
 
If you are a man--we are
usually pretty dumb,
we don't know how to cook,
we don't know how to take care
of ourselves--
you are old,
your wife died,
so what do you do?
You commit
suicide--right?--under certain
circumstances.
 
Right?
 
Anyway, I think this is a--this
is why it makes it interesting--
right?--for social scientists,
that there are interesting
social patterns,
cultural patterns,
how people commit suicide.
 
And Durkheim will work on this
as much.
And then he said there are,
in fact, large,
big historical events,
which do have an impact on
suicide rates.
 
You would think if there is a
big social turmoil,
then suicide rate will go up.
 
You are wrong.
 
If there is a big social
turmoil, suicide rate tends to
be going down,
because there is--in times of
revolution, people don't commit
suicide.
Anyway, his point is that
suicide is a collective
phenomenon.
 
Right?
 
Somehow it is socially
determined as a phenomenon.
Okay, now this is the typology
of suicide.
And I have been struggling with
this, and people who know much
more about Durkheim have been
struggling with this typology.
And what of course I was trying
to do,
as others were trying to do,
to do a 2 x 2 table--
right?--and to put these types
of suicide in this 2 x 2 table.
Durkheim, in writing about
suicide, seemed to make a
distinction between the question
of integration and regulation.
Right?
 
Integration means how tightly
organized a group or society is
in which you live.
 
Right?
 
And as I already pointed out in
the earlier
lecture--right?--Durkheim has
this idea of normal versus
pathological.
 
And I will talk about this in
more detail in the last lecture
on Durkheim's methodology.
 
He has this interesting idea
that what is normal is the kind
of typical.
 
To put it very crudely,
normal is kind of the average.
If it is too much or too
little, this is pathological or
abnormal;
that is the idea.
So therefore one dimension in
which he uses the typology is
integration--right?--how well
integrated we are into a social
group we are in.
 
And that can be too high or it
can be too low.
Right?
 
And both too high integration
and too low integration can be
the cause of social pathologies.
 
And one of the social
pathologies is that you kill
yourself.
 
Right?
 
And the other dimension is
regulation;
how much, how tight,
how rigorous the norms are
which regulates your behavior.
 
Again, it can be too high or it
can be too low.
And it will affect also the
pathologies.
If you are away from the golden
middle road--that's what
Durkheim's idea of modernity is.
 
If you are on the golden middle
road, then you are normal.
If you deviate,
you are abnormal.
This is a very problematic
proposition in Durkheim,
and has been challenged.
 
Well the big trouble is,
are these two dimensions
independent from each other,
or they overlap?
And it's really they are not
really completely independent
from each other.
 
This is why you could not put
this into a 2 x 2 table--
right?--because some of the
types of abnormalities can be
only understood in integration
or in terms of regulation.
But anyway, I think this is
probably the best way I can come
up with,
or in the Durkheim literature
the best way I have read,
basically using these two
dimensions as--
not as a 2 x 2 table;
sort of, to put it this way,
rather than a 2 x 2 table,
it's like two dimensions.
 
Right?
 
And then you have the two types
over here.
Right?
 
Too high and too
low--right?--and you have
integration and you have
regulation.
And high and low and high and
low;
this is how you can do it.
 
Right?
 
You can conceptualize it.
 
But it doesn't work,
you put it in a normal 2 x 2
table.
 
Okay.
 
Well let me start to talk about
egoistic suicide.
Right?
 
And therefore--right?--egoistic
suicide has something to do with
social integration,
and it is a case when the
social integration is too low.
 
And he said,
well the more weakened the
group to which the person who
committed suicide belongs,
the less he depends on them.
 
And he calls this egoism. Right?
 
If you don't--you are yourself
and you are not--do not feel
responsible to your own group,
and therefore you may be
committing suicide.
 
Again, people who are
considering suicide--
just to show the lack of egoism
and the importance of the
group--
well you may think you have a
good enough reason to kill
yourself: "My life doesn't
have any purpose."
 
"My boy or girlfriend left
me, so therefore I'd rather kill
myself."
 
And then they say,
"Well I can't really do
this to Mom."
 
Right?
 
"I cannot disappoint my
parents."
Right?
 
So therefore you are not--you
cannot act egoistically.
Right?
 
You belong to a group,
and because the tightness,
the solidarity with the group
prevents you to commit suicide.
So in order to act egoistically
means that you don't care about
others, or you care first of all
about yourself,
as such.
 
Well the solidarity can be
different.
It can be religion,
it can be family,
or it can be the society.
 
And let me speak to this.
 
And if this religion,
family or society,
as such, offers sufficient
solidarity, then you will not be
likely to commit suicide.
 
Okay, so let me talk about
religion and suicide,
and also a bit about how
religion and education are
linked together with suicide.
 
Durkheim does here something
really path-breaking.
Though the statistical
technologies were not available,
he really does the logic of
multivariate statistical
analysis.
 
He almost does a regression
model, to put it this way,
without numbers.
 
But that's the logic of the
argument.
And then he's talking about
what he calls the Jewish
exceptionalism.
 
Well this will be interesting,
because the fundamental idea is
that,
in fact, generally people who
are more educated are more
likely to commit suicide.
Right?
 
There is also a relationship
between religion and suicide.
Protestants are more likely to
commit suicide;
Catholics less likely to commit
suicide.
Catholics are less educated;
Protestants are more educated.
Being more educated,
the Protestant,
makes you more susceptible to
commit suicide,
he argues.
 
But Jews are an exception.
 
Because Jewish suicide rate is
generally very low,
and Jews are very highly
educated.
So that's the Jewish puzzle.
 
Right?
 
Why on earth highly educated
Jews don't kill themselves?
If you are--right?--a Lutheran,
or a Presbyterian,
and you are educated,
you kill yourself.
Right?
 
Why Jews don't? Right?
 
That's the puzzle.
 
What is the relationship
between education and religion?
And why on earth education
leads to a higher level of
suicide?
 
Right?
 
Okay, let me therefore start
with this one.
Well as I said,
he generally finds that there
is a higher rate of suicide
among Protestants,
and lower rates among
Catholics, and Jews have the
lowest suicide rates among the
Judeo-Christian sphere of the
world;
that's what he studied,
the European countries.
 
In fact, Islamic suicide rate
is also low.
Well, one possible easy answer
would be that there are stricter
penalties if you are Catholic
and if you commit suicide;
that's why you don't commit
suicide.
Right?
 
But that's not quite true,
Durkheim argues.
Right?
 
In fact, all religions are
against suicide;
no religion allows suicide.
 
Well Roman Catholics may be a
little more rigorous about it.
You do not a get a religious
burial.
I think most Roman Catholic
priests would not bury somebody
who committed suicide,
in most countries,
while Protestant ministers may
perform a burial ceremony.
But I don't think if you commit
suicide that really you are all
that concerned where and how you
will be buried.
Right?
 
Now, so the question is why?
 
Right?
 
The first answer,
that some religions prohibit
suicide more than others is not
very persuasive,
because all religions prohibit
suicide.
Well, and here he comes with
the idea of integration.
He said Protestantism is a less
strongly integrated church than
the Catholic Church--less of a
community.
And Judaism actually even more
tightly integrated,
even more so of a community.
 
So therefore it leaves
relatively little room for
egoistic suicide,
because the high level of
integration.
 
And here the rank order is a
relatively low level among
Protestants, higher level among
Catholics, and particularly high
among Jews.
 
Well how on earth comes
education into the picture?
Well he says as the common and
customary prejudice is
weakening, there is an increase
in the trend of suicide.
Well it's not exactly prejudice
in the most conventional sense
of the term, what he's referring
to.
He's referring here to the
question what we kind of
overcome with education,
generally speaking.
Right?
 
That if you are becoming more
educated, you will have less of
accepted doctrines.
 
Right?
 
Education--right?--is a
critical exercise.
Right?
 
That's what I was trying to do
in this course--
right?--to challenge
you--right?--to be a critical
theorist--
right?--to subject your own
consciousness to critical
scrutiny,
and to subject the theorists
you have read to critical
scrutiny.
 
Right?
 
That's why I asked you in the
test to do-- find a
puzzle--right?--and take sides
in this puzzle--offer some
criticism of some of the
theorists.
That's what education is all
about.
And therefore prejudice as
dogma is declining.
Right?
 
And if dogma is declining,
there are less given
stereotypes for us we believe
in, then we are more likely to
commit suicide.
 
This is a kind of
weakening--right?--of the
collective conscience.
 
It's becoming more of an
individual consciousness;
the critical thinker is
becoming more of an individual
consciousness.
 
Well and he said well,
they go together with religion,
because Catholics tended to be
less educated and Protestants
more educated.
 
I don't know how much this
still stands up to scrutiny.
But it's certainly true that
traditionally Protestant
churches did attribute a greater
emphasis to education.
One big reason was the
relationship between believers
and the clergymen.
 
Right?
 
In the classical Roman Catholic
theology, the clergyman
interprets the
Bible--right?--for the
believers.
 
The big--right?--revolution of
Reformation was that they
translated the Bible--
right?--into native
languages--and printing was just
made available--
and started to print the Bible,
and they wanted lay people to
read the Bible.
 
Well in the Medieval Roman
Catholic Church,
only the priest read the Bible.
 
Right?
 
Sort of Protestantism went
together with mass education,
massive public education,
and an emphasis on education:
how to read and write.
 
Right?
 
So therefore I think there is a
good claim to be made that on
the long-run,
and generally speaking,
Protestants tended to be more
educated than Catholics.
I doubt whether you would find
much religious differences in
contemporary societies.
 
But that, in a way,
was simply a correlation
pointing in the same direction.
 
And he also makes this
point--which is by now utterly
untrue--right?--women are not
less educated in advanced
societies than men.
 
Women are actually by now more
educated than men,
in the advanced Western
countries, including the United
States.
 
Right?
 
In no time you guys,
you really have to work harder
to make sure that you can catch
up with the ladies--
right?--because they will be
better educated than you will
be.
 
Right?
 
But anyway, in his times women
were less educated than men,
and they were less likely to
commit suicide.
I think that's also still the
case.
I think women are still less,
generally speaking,
still less likely to commit
suicide.
In fact, I think women are more
likely to attempt suicide,
but completed suicide rate is
much higher among men than among
women.
 
Right?
 
That's, I think,
the basic finding.
But anyway, here it's more a
methodological point.
I doubt that whether the
Catholic/Protestant distinction
still stands,
and it certainly doesn't stand
for women.
 
Right?
 
Women by now,
in the Western advanced
countries,
in almost every country,
are better educated than men
are,
especially the younger
generation are better educated.
But the methodological point is
interesting.
Right?
 
As I said, he's beginning to do
multivariate analysis.
Right?
 
So the dependent variable is
tendency to suicide.
And he has a little regression
model.
Right?
 
He looks into the regression
model--countries and gender and
education and religion--and
tries to explain the variance in
the suicide rate.
 
In terms of research design,
this is very beautifully done.
Right?
 
This is social
science--right?--as we know it
today.
 
Well, and there is the
Judaistic puzzle.
Right?
 
Well Jews--I think this
probably is still true--is
better educated than non-Jews.
 
Again, I would not swear on it.
 
I really have not looked at
data on religion and education.
But certainly generally has
been true, at that time when
Durkheim was writing about it,
late nineteenth century;
Jews were highly educated,
in Europe in particular,
and by the 1920s and '30s in
the United States as well.
Though they are highly
educated, well they are less
likely to commit suicide.
 
So there is a
trouble--right?--with his
explanatory
model--right?--what's going on
here.
 
And then he tries to understand
what is the purpose of learning?
And he said the purpose of
learning among Jews is
different.
 
And that's the claim.
 
A Jew seeks to learn,
not in order to replace his
collective prejudices,
but merely to better arm for
the struggle.
 
Right?
 
So you read the Talmud. Right?
 
You go to the rabbi and you go
through all kind of education to
better understand the Holy
Scripture--
right?--and the interpretations
of the Holy Scripture.
Right?
 
You got a lot of
education--right?--if you are
preparing yourself for your bar
mitzvah.
Right?
 
You even have to learn
Hebrew--right?--to pass your bar
mitzvah.
 
You sweat blood probably
meanwhile while doing so.
Right?
 
But this is not to challenge
the doctrine,
it is to better understand the
doctrine.
Right?
 
And therefore it doesn't
undermine the collective
conscience.
 
This education strengthens the
collective conscience.
Right?
 
I think that's at least
Durkheim's claim.
Very interesting.
 
Again, I think take it
methodologically.
I think methodological
formidable what this guy is
doing--right?--as early as 1897.
 
Right?
 
This is the kind of stuff
today, if any one of you will do
a Ph.D.--
right?--in political science or
economics or sociology,
if you have this kind of
research design,
your mentor will say,
"Go for it.
 
That's the right way to do
it." Right?
Anyway, so that's.
 
So well he says education
therefore--it's a very
interesting idea,
right?
He now does a kind of
interaction
effect--right?--between
education and religion,
and he looks at this
interaction effect;
how these two affect each other.
 
He said it depends what
education is all about.
You know?
 
Education, if it is weakening
the collective conscience,
makes you just critical of
everything what you learned,
will be a cause of suicide;
otherwise it's actually
important to reinforce you in
society.
And now family and suicide.
 
This is the point what I did
make.
Right?
 
In fact, if you are integrated
in a family, you are less likely
to commit suicide.
 
And he said well there should
be--if that is true--
there should be some evidence
that people who are married will
be less likely to kill
themselves than people who are
unmarried and widowed.
 
And that is actually the case.
 
Generally, by the way,
marriage seems to have a health
advantage.
 
Right?
 
If you are considering never to
get married, think about your
health.
 
Right?
 
If you get married,
statistics will tell you,
you will live longer;
and actually they also tell
you, you will live happier,
than if you stay alone.
Well, and you probably are less
likely to commit suicide.
So that's what he called
matrimonial immunity to suicide.
"Why?" he says.
 
And it's again incredible what
the guy is doing here.
Right?
 
He said, well one possible
explanation is that because you
are in a
community--right?--therefore you
will not commit suicide.
 
"I cannot do to my spouse
to kill myself,
because my spouse will blame
him or herself for my death,
and I don't want to cause harm
to my spouse."
Right?
 
Therefore I don't commit
suicide.
As I said, young people often
don't commit suicide with
respect to their parents.
 
But he said--and this is really
extraordinary--he said that it
can be caused by matrimonial
selection.
Right?
 
People who are more likely to
commit suicide,
to begin with,
may not marry.
Well those of you who took
statistics classes,
you know what he's talking
about;
though at that time this was
not in statistics at all.
It is called the selection
problem.
Right?
 
This is exactly the selection
problem.
He said we cannot really tell
why people who are married are
less likely to commit suicide,
because it is possible people
with intention to commit suicide
will not get married--
right?--because they are lonely
people to begin with,
and this is why they did not
marry.
So the lower frequency of
suicide among married people is
not the consequence of marriage,
but marriage is the consequence
of people's likelihood not to
commit suicide.
This is the classical example
what is called the sample
selection problem.
 
Right?
 
And the only--you know what the
only solution for this is?
Experimental method. Right?
 
That's the only way how you
could deal with this,
to solve the problem.
 
Right?
 
And if you took with Professor
Green a political science
course, you know exactly what I
mean.
Right?
 
Social scientists really should
do experiment:
random assignments.
 
You could really come rid of
the problem of this sample
selection bias if you could
randomly assign people to get
married or not to get married,
and then they will get married
or not get married,
and then to see whether it had
an effect or not.
 
Unfortunately in society we
can't really do random
assignments.
 
Right?
 
We hardly can assign people to
get married or not to get
married, and follow it up thirty
years later whether they are
still alive.
 
Right?
 
That's the problem.
 
But otherwise there is--really
statisticians do all kind of big
tricks around this,
but it really cannot be solved.
The real solution would be only
the experimental method.
But what is formidable about
this--right?--that he is well
ahead of himself.
 
And the whole problem of sample
selection issue,
I came across of this in
statistics.
In the 1980s,
that's when it became a big
thing, the 1980s.
 
Sample selection model--how you
control for the sample selection
problem.
 
And he knew about the
problem--not the statistical
one, but the research design
problem--right?--in 1897.
Okay, but he said well there is
still data which supports
actually that matrimonialism has
an effect.
Well society. The same;
that's counterintuitive.
He said if there are great
social disturbances,
then actually social sentiments
are at high.
Revolution, right?
 
You feel identified with your
country in the revolutionary
cause and you do not commit
suicide;
if otherwise you would have
committed suicide.
Therefore suicide rate will be
going down.
So anyway, this was about
egoistic suicide.
Now let me--I am running out of
time very badly.
Altruistic suicide.
 
Well altruistic suicide is
happening when social
integration is far too high,
unbearably high,
and that's when people will be
committing what he calls
altruistic suicide.
 
And this can happen--for
instance he said,
people, old men,
the example what I gave,
old age, commits suicide;
women occasionally on the death
of their husband commits suicide
because they think this is
expected from them.
 
And traditionally often
followers or servants,
on the death of the chief,
committed suicide.
So we are talking about
altruistic suicide,
because people commit suicide
because they think it is their
duty to kill themselves.
 
Right?
 
And this is a sacrifice which
is imposed by society for
something like a social end.
 
Right?
 
It can be obligatory in certain
societies.
If you lost a battle and you
were a Japanese
soldier--right?--you committed
hari-kiri, if you were the
general.
 
Even in the Second World War,
they committed hari-kiri,
killed themselves.
 
Or it actually can be even kind
of mystical suicide.
For instance,
as you know Hindus occasionally
jump into the Ganges River to
kill themselves.
Well today he said this is a
relatively rare incident.
But it happens in the Army.
 
He says soldiers kill
themselves, not because they are
not sufficiently integrated but
because they are highly
integrated,
and therefore that
individualism is weak,
and that's why they commit
suicide.
 
And now about anomic suicide.
 
Right?
 
Well you know anomie;
anomie is the lack of social
regulation.
 
And indeed he said if you find
yourself in ever-changing
situations where value system is
changing, you are likely
to--more likely to commit
suicide.
And well it can be a reason for
economic reasons.
Traditionally institutions
decline.
Suicide during the Great
Depression, as the bank
collapsed, was frequent;
people were jumping out of the
window.
 
And actually a few of them
happened also last fall,
with the turndown of the stock
market.
And it can be--another good
example is domestic anomie.
Your spouse dies or you get
divorced, and then the suicide
rate is frequent.
 
And finally fatalistic suicide.
 
As I pointed out,
Durkheim's notion of fatalism
is a twin concept to Marx's
notion of alienation.
There is too much regulation
and not enough social
integration;
such as the case of slaves or
childless women,
then they tend to commit
suicide as well.
 
So, so much about Durkheim and
suicide.
And next lecture,
again I will talk to the
questions briefly before we go
on to Durkheim's methodologies.
So do come.
 
You know?
 
It'll be helpful for the test.
 
And I appreciate actually your
class attendance.
It was wonderful all along.
 
 
 
