Introduction

Suicide seems the most individual and private of acts, yet Durkheim chose it to prove the power of sociology: the suicide rate is a 'social fact' that cannot be explained by individual psychology, heredity, climate or imitation, but only by social causes. Gathering great quantities of statistics from across Europe, he found that Protestants killed themselves more often than Catholics, and Catholics more often than Jews; the unmarried more than the married, the childless more than parents; and that in times of war and political upheaval the rate actually fell. From this he distinguished several types of suicide: 'egoistic suicide', arising when the bonds between individual and society grow too slack; 'altruistic suicide', when the individual is swallowed up by the group; and 'anomic suicide', arising from the breakdown of social norms, which increases in economic crises and even in sudden prosperity. It is the first classic of sociology founded on empirical research. This volume translates its most important parts.