Relevance: Sociology Paper I: Emile Durkheim- Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society.
Introduction
When one takes a close gander at the works of the prominent sociologist Emile Durkheim, one finds that most of his works are based on two broad sociological themes. The first theme is that he gives more importance to the social factors over the individual characteristics and the second and the most important idea is that society can be studied scientifically. Because both of these themes continue to be controversial, Durkheim and his studies are still relevant.
Durkheim believed that education must be on the lines of scientific reasoning so that it will equip the students to understand their life better. He published several works on sociology and most of his works relied on empirical analysis. Suicide (1897) was one such book published by Durkheim where the study was purely based on scientific method and empirical data available from various government censuses and statistics.
The issue of suicide
- Durkheim chose to study the phenomenon of suicide because it is relatively common across various societies and the amount of data available for study is huge.
- However, the most important reason behind this attempt was to establish the relevance of sociology.
- The act of suicide is generally considered to be something very private and personal.
- Durkheim believed that if he succeeds in explaining such a seemingly individualistic act like suicide with the help of sociology, it would be comparatively easy to extend Sociology’s realm to processes that are much more readily considered as open to sociological analysis and interpretation.
- According to Durkheim, suicide was not actually an act done intentionally, but an act done advisedly, meaning the action will result in his/her death with death may or may not being his/her ultimate goal.
- Though Durkheim believed that social causes played a greater role in motivating people to commit suicide, he also pointed out two extra-social causes that can influence a person on taking such decision.
- The first extra-social cause is the inner psychological inclination of the individual towards the idea of suicide which may vary from person to person.
- The second cause is the nature of external physical environment like climate or nature which will indirectly have the same effect.
- Durkheim also divided the kinds of suicides into three broad categories based on the social setups that influence the suicide. These kinds differ from each other based on the nature of motive behind the suicide.
The first kind is the anomic suicide.
- This kind of suicide is due to the breakdown of social equilibrium. It happens due to a social situation which has cropped up suddenly. Such social situations create a condition in which the individual finds himself unable to adapt to the changed environment.
- Suicide of a person who suddenly becomes bankrupt or a bright student who fails in the college exams unexpectedly are all examples of anomic suicides.
Altruistic suicide
- Suicide committed by an individual when the connection between the individual and the group or the society is too strong and it is this strong bond which motivates the individual to commit suicide.
- A terrorist who kills himself as a suicide bomber is a typical example for the altruistic kind of suicide. He kills himself due to his strong bond with his organization and its ideology.
Egoistic suicide
- Kind of suicide where the individual commits suicide due to the feeling that they are detached from the society.
- People are integrated into the society through family ties, relationships and emotional bonds.
- Once a person loses this crucial integration with society, it will lead him to a state of isolation and alienation.
- Suicides of the elderly people, particularly the people who go through the empty nest syndrome, can be cited as an example of egoistic syndrome.
The fourth kind of suicide as defined by Durkheim is the Fatalistic suicide.
- It is the suicide committed by an individual due to the over regulation of the society or group of which the individual is a part.
- The recent rise in the suicides of soldiers of Indian army, suicides of housemaids and servants who works for long hours under extreme situations are all examples of fatalistic suicides.
- Though these are the four broader categories used to explain suicides, it must be noted that suicides are not always of a single form.
- In several cases, a suicide can be put under two or more categories from the four mentioned above.
Durkheimian theory and farmer suicides in India
- India is largely an agrarian society with around 60% of its population working in the primary or the agricultural sector.
- Most of them find their livelihood by depending directly or indirectly on the agrarian economy.
- Though 60% of the population is engaged in agricultural activities, the contribution of agriculture to GDP is just 14.6%.
- This gap between human input and economic output shows how inefficient is our administrative system and throws light over the poor performance of policy makers in transferring such a large share of human effort and resource into economic benefit.
- In other words, though 60% of human capital of the country is used for agricultural activities, only one-fourth of it is transferred to the economy.
There are several reasons why a farmer commits suicide.
First reason is the sudden developments in the pre-planned agricultural activities. This includes unexpected changes in monsoon patterns, changes in government policies, lack of proper public distribution system (PDS) etc.
- As a result, the farmers, who are supposed to feed the population, find it difficult to feed and support their families.
- In 2003, a study was conducted regarding the psychological state of farmers who tried and failed to commit suicide.
- Most of them responded to the survey team that they felt alienated and helpless after the continuous crop failures.
- The government officials, according to the farmers, didn’t show any interest in listening to the problems of farmers.
- In many cases, farmers felt like they are becoming a liability to the entire family.
Another reason pointed out by the study
- was that most of the farmers felt insecure to be a part of society that largely neglected the problems of those who produced the essential commodity for the survival of the human beings.
- In his classical study of suicide, Durkheim points out that a suicide is the result of social factors which pushes the individual to think about suicide in order to fade away from the society which doesn’t appreciate or support the group which kills the starvation of the society.
- Durkheim mentions four kinds of suicides in his work and clearly states that a suicide can be any of these four in nature or a mixture of two or more kinds.
Using the findings of Emile Durkheim and applying them to the context of farmer suicides in India.
- Most of the suicides of farmers comes under two categories of suicides as defined by Durkheim; anomic and egoistic.
- As mentioned in the introduction, Anomic suicide is the kind of suicide committed by an individual when a sudden, unexpected event takes place in the life of the individual.
- In our given case, most of the farmers committed suicides due to the unexpected events; the unexpected event of crop failure due to some natural disasters or the unsupportive response from the part of bureaucracy and government who are obliged to protect and safeguard the agrarian community, who forms the back bone of the society.
The reason why one must categorize these suicides also under egoistic suicides is
- that farmers kill themselves due to the isolation and alienation that they feel after a crisis.
- According to Durkheim, egoistic suicides are committed due to alienation of an individual from the rest of the society. Alienation includes the breakage of social ties, isolation from other individuals, weakening of the social bonds etc.
- As mentioned before, a farmer, who has lost everything, will find himself as a loser and thinks that he is no more an asset to the society or his family.
- This emotion is largely due to the response of the society towards the farmer.
- Elderly people commit suicide because they feel loneliness and consider themselves as good for nothing.
- Such suicides of old people are often cited as an example of egoistic suicides.
- Similarly, the farmer suicides also exhibit the nature of egoistic suicide as their action of killing themselves is largely due to the response that they receive from the society they live.