Suicide (Durkheim book)

Suicide: A Study in Sociology
AuthorÉmile Durkheim
Original titleLe Suicide: Étude de sociologie
TranslatorsJohn A. Spaulding and George Simpson
LanguageFrench
SubjectSuicide, sociology
Publication date
1897
Publication placeFrance
Published in English
1952 (Routledge & Kegan Paul)
Media typePrint

Suicide: A Study in Sociology (French: Le Suicide: Étude de sociologie) is an 1897 book written by French sociologist Émile Durkheim. It was the second methodological study of a social fact in the context of society (it was preceded by a sociological study by a Czech author, later the president of Czechoslovakia: Tomáš Garrigue Masaryk, Der Selbstmord als soziale Massenerscheinung der Gegenwart, 1881, Czech 1904). It is ostensibly a case study of suicide, a publication unique for its time that provided an example of what the sociological monograph should look like.

According to Durkheim,

the term suicide is applied to all cases of death resulting directly or indirectly from a positive or negative act of the victim himself, which he knows will produce this result.[1]

  1. ^ W. S. F. Pickering; Geoffrey Walford; British Centre for Durkheimian Studies (2000). Durkheim's Suicide: a century of research and debate. Psychology Press. p. 25. ISBN 978-0-415-20582-5. Retrieved 13 April 2011.