Question

How would Durkheim explain the high suicide rate among rock and roll performers who achieve stardom?

Answer 1

Durkheim explained the high suicide rate among rock and roll performers who achieve stardom as Emile Durkheim was a French philosopher who was born on 15 April, 1858. Durkheim acknowledged Comte as his master. On a sociological perspective when Comte and Spencer were considered as the founding fathers of Sociology, Durkheim is considered as the grandfather and the systematic approach to study the society began with him.

Durkheim’s theory of ‘suicide’ is related in various ways to his study of the division of labour. It is also linked with the theory of ‘social constraint’. Durkheim has established the view that there are no societies in which suicide does not occur.

Rejecting most of the accepted theories of suicide, Durkheim on the basis of his monographic studies claims suicide as primarily a social phenomena in terms of the breakdown of the vital bond of life. Durkheim in his classical study of ‘Le Suicide’ which was published in 1897, demonstrates that neither psycho-pathic factor nor heredity nor climate nor poverty, nor unhappy love nor other personal factors motivate along form sufficient explanation of suicide.

According to Durkheim, suicide is not an individual act nor a personal action. It is caused by some power which is over and above the individual or super individual. He viewed “all classes of deaths resulting directly or indirectly from the positive or negative acts of the victim itself who knows the result they produce” Having defined the phenomenon Durkheim dismisses the psychological explanation. Many doctors and psychologists develop the theory that majority of people who take their own life are in a pathological state, but Durkheim emphasises that the force, which determines the suicide, is not psychological but social. He concludes that suicide is the result of social disorganisation or lack of social integration or social solidarity.