Abstract
For decades Durkheim’s theory of suicide has been tested and found wanting. Yet, rather than being consigned to the dust-bin of history, it lives on and is pointed to as an exemplar of the powers of sociological theory and research. If this rationalizing and/or dismissal of so many falsifications of the theory were an isolated phenomenon, it might be evidence of some lemming-like propensity for suicide or a disciplinary death-wish, among a few sociologists. But it appears to be a much more widespread and common occurrence. In this paper we explore some possible explanations of this ‘falsification denial’—‘The Social Misconstruction of Reality’ (Hamilton 1996), ‘When Prophecy Fails’ (Festinger et al. 1956), ‘Underdetermination’ (Duhem 1954; Quine Journal of Philosophy 67:178–183, 1970, Erkenntnis 9:313–328, 1975; Lakatos 1970), and ‘Boundary Maintenance’ (Erikson 1966), and we outline some of the more important and pernicious consequences of this falsification denial for the discipline and future of sociology.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
Searches on JSTOR and Google were done on February 5th and 6th of 2010.
And, this problem is by no means restricted to Durkheim. Noteworthy examples with regard to other ‘founding fathers’ would have to include Weber’s Protestant Ethic (Delacroix and Nielsen 2001), and Marx’s Labor Theory of Value, and Model of Historical Change (Parkes 1939; Schwartzschild 1947; Wesson 1976).
This calls to mind van den Berg’s (1988) critique of “Marxist theories of the state.” In it, he notes that although they gradually developed into decidedly Weberian theories they still somehow continued to be called “Marxist.”
Lakatos cites Duhem (1906: Chapter VI, section 10) for this paraphrase.
Ironically, some of these same factors that Durkheim fought so hard to discount (e.g., sex, age, race) in order to make room for his sociological explanation, are now pointed to as support for Durkheim’s argument (e.g., see Nolan 2003).
In this regard, I note, in passing, that an early reviewer of Nolan (2003) argued that, by questioning the theory’s validity on the basis of disconfirming evidence, I was missing ‘the larger more important lesson’ that was conveyed to students by teaching what apparently are viewed as ‘benign lies.’ The case in contention being the teaching as fact aspects of Durkheim’s theory that were questionable or demonstrably false.
It is worth emphasizing that this does not appear to be a problem peculiar to sociology. For example, as “environmentalism” has increasingly taken on features of religion (e.g., see Michael Crichton 2003; or Nolan and Lenski 2009: 243). Anthropogenic “global warming” or anthropogenic “climate change” appears to have been transmuted from a theory to an unchallengeable orthodoxy.
An alternative explanation for the dismal performance of the theory is bad data. After a relatively lengthy discussion of problems in defining and measuring suicide, Durkheim essentially ignores the problem and accepts government tabulations. Nonetheless, its measurement continues to be problematic even in the most statistically sophisticated societies (e.g., see Timmermans 2005).
We may be overly cynical with regard to this matter, but we find it very hard to believe that a number of these hypothesized shifts in the direction of the relationship over time, and the fact that it applies to one group or sex at one time and to another group or sex at another time were actually predicted before the data were examined.
As I write this, the virtually daily reports of errors, flaws, exaggerations, and misstatements of climate researchers offer strong testimony of the power of ideological commitment and “confirmation bias” to cloud the judgment of apparently even the most gifted scientists.
We must admit, though, that his use of suicide, together with marriage and birth, to demonstrate that rates of behavior were ‘social facts’ (Durkheim 1966: 8) clouds this judgment somewhat.
References
Acevedo, G. A. (2005). Turning anomie on its head: fatalism as Durkheim’s concealed and multidimensional alienation theory. Sociological Theory, 23, 75–85.
Adams, B. N., & Sydie, R. A. (2001). Sociological theory. Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge.
Allan, K. (2010). Classical sociological theory: Seeing the social world (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks: Pine Forge.
Austin, R., Bologna, M., & Dodge, H. H. (1992). Sex-role change, anomie and female suicide: a test of alternative Durkheimian explanations. Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 22(2), 197–225.
Bankston, W. B., David Allen, H., & Cunningham, D. S. (1983). Religion and suicide: a research note on sociology’s ‘one law’. Social Forces, 62, 521–528.
Berk, B. (2006). Macro-micro relationships in Durkheim’s analysis of egoistic suicide. Sociological Theory, 24, 58–80.
Carl, J. D. (2010). Think sociology. Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Collins, R. (1985). Three sociological traditions. New York: Oxford.
Collins, R., & Makowsky, M. (2010). The discovery of society (8th ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Crichton, M. (2003). “Environmentalism as a religion,” speech to the Commonwealth Club of San Francisco, CA, September 15, 2003. http://www.michaelcrichton.net/speech-environmentalismaseligion.html.
Cutright, P., & Fernquist, R. (2001). The relative gender gap in suicide: societal integration, the culture of suicide, and period effects in 20 developed countries, 1955–1994. Social Science Research, 30, 76–99.
Danigelis, N., & Pope, W. (1979). Durkheim’s theory of suicide as applied to the family: an empirical test. Social Forces, 57(4), 1081–1106.
Delacroix, J., & Nielsen, F. (2001). The beloved myth: protestantism and the rise of industrial capitalism in nineteenth-century Europe. Social Forces, 80, 509–553.
Delaney, T. (2004). Classical social theory: Investigation and application. Upper Saddle River: Pearson/Prentice Hall.
Duhem, P. (trans. P. Weiner). (1954 [1914]). The aim and structure of physical theory. English translation of the second edition of La théorie physique son objet et sa structure.
Durkheim, E. (1951 [1897]). Suicide. New York: Free.
Durkheim, E. (1964 [1893]). The division of labor. New York: Free.
Durkheim, E. (1965 [1915]). The elementary forms of the religious life. New York: Free.
Durkheim, E. (1966 [1895]). The rules of sociological method. New York: Free.
Erikson, K. T. (1966). Wayward puritans: A study in the sociology of deviance. New York: MacMillan.
Fernquist, R., & Cutright, P. (1998). Societal integration and age standardized suicide rates in 21 developed countries, 1995–1989. Social Science Research, 27, 109–127.
Festinger, L., Riecken, H., & Schachter, S. (1956). When prophecy fails: A social and psychological study of a modern group that predicted the destruction of the world. New York: Harper and Row.
Giddens, A., Duneier, M., Appelbaum, R. P., & Carr, D. (2009). Introduction to sociology (7th ed.). New York: W.W. Norton.
Girard, C. (1993). Age, gender, and suicide: a cross-national analysis. American Sociological Review, 58, 553–574.
Goldstone, J. A. (2009). Building macro-theory from comparative cases: Balancing the singular and the general, Annual Meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco.
Gould, S. J. (1978). Morton’s ranking of races by cranial capacity. Science, 200, 503–509.
Hamilton, R. (1996). The social misconstruction of reality: Validity and verification in the scholarly community. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Hamlin, C. L., & Brym, R. J. (2006). The return of the native: a cultural and social-psychological critique of Durkheim’s suicide based on Guarani-Kaiowá of Southwestern Brazil. Sociological Theory, 24, 42–57.
Johnson, B. D. (1965). Durkheim’s one cause of suicide. American Sociological Review, 30, 875–886.
Kimmell, M., & Aronson, A. (2009). Sociology now. Boston: Allyn and Bacon.
Kushner, H. (1994). Durkheim and the immunity of women to suicide. In D. Lester (Ed.), Emile Durkheim Le Suicide: 100 Years later (pp. 205–233). Philadelphia: The Charles.
Lakatos, I. (1970). Falsification and the methodology of scientific research programs. In I. Lakatos & A. Musgrave (Eds.), Criticism and the growth of knowledge: Proceedings of the international colloquium in the philosophy of science, London, 1965 (Vol. 4, pp. 91–195). New York: University of Cambridge Press.
Lehmann, J. M. (1995). Durkheim’s theories of deviance and suicide: a feminist reconsideration. The American Journal of Sociology, 100, 904–930.
Macionis, J. J. (2009). Society: The basics (10th ed.). Upper Saddle River: Prentice Hall.
Maris, R. W., Berman, A. L., & Silverman, M. M. (2000). Comprehensive textbook of suicidology. New York: Guilford.
Mayhew, B. H. (1980). Structuralism versus individualism: part I, shadowboxing in the dark. Social Forces, 59, 335–375.
Mayhew, B. H. (1981). Structuralism versus individualism: part II, ideological and other obfuscations. Social Forces, 59, 627–648.
Newman, D. M. (2010). Sociology: Exploring the architecture of everyday life. Los Angeles: Pine Forge.
Nolan, P. D. (2003). Questioning textbook truth: suicide rates and the Hawthorne effect. The American Sociologist, 34, 107–116.
Nolan, P. D., & Lenski, G. (2009). Human societies: An introduction to macrosociology. Boulder: Paradigm.
Nolan, P., Irwin, K., Triplet, J., McDonough, S., & Guerrero-Arnold, E. (2008). Sex and suicide: a cross-national test of a convergence hypothesis. Sociation Today, 6(1). http://www.ncsociology.org/sociationtoday/v61/suicide.htm.
Pampel, F. (1998). National context, social change, and sex differences in suicide rates. American Sociological Review, 63, 744–758.
Parkes, H. B. (1939). Marxism: An autopsy. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.
Peregrine, P. N. (1996). The birth of the Gods revisited: a partial replication of guy Swanson’s (1960) cross-cultural study of religion. Cross-Cultural Research, 30, 84–112.
Pescosolido, B. A. (1990). The social context of religious integration and suicide: pursuing the network explanation. The Sociological Quarterly, 31, 337–357.
Pescosolido, B. A., & Georgianna, S. (1989). Durkheim, suicide, and religion: toward a network theory of suicide. American Sociological Review, 42, 33–48.
Pope, W. (1982 [1976]). Durkheim’s suicide: A classic reanalyzed. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
Pope, W., & Danigelis, N. (1981). Sociology’s ‘one law’. Social Forces, 60, 495–516.
Popper, K. R. (1976). The logic of the social sciences. In T. Adorno, H. Albert, R. Dahrendorf, J. Habermas, H. Pilot, & K. Popper (Eds.), The positivist dispute in German sociology (pp. 87–104). London: Heineman.
Popper, K. R. (2002). Conjectures and refutation. New York: Routledge.
Quine, W. V. O. (1970). On the reasons for indeterminacy of translation. Journal of Philosophy, 67, 178–183.
Quine, W. V. O. (1975). Empirically equivalent systems of the world. Erkenntnis, 9, 313–328.
Ritzer, G. (2010). Contemporary social theory and its classical roots: The basics (3rd ed.). New York: McGraw Hill.
Schwartzschild, L. (1947). Karl Marx: The red Prussian. New York: Grosset & Dunlap.
Stack, S. (1983). The effect of religious commitment on suicide: a cross-national analysis. Journal of Health and Social Behavior, 24, 362–374.
Stack, S. (1987). The effect of female participation in the labor force on suicide: a time series analysis, 1948–1980. Sociological Forum, 2(2), 257–277.
Steen, D., & Mayer, P. (2004). Modernization and the male-female suicide ratio in India 1967–1997: divergence or convergence? Suicide & Life-Threatening Behavior, 34(2), 147–159.
Steffensmeier, R. H. (1984). Suicide and the contemporary woman: are male and female suicide rates converging? Sex Roles, 10(7/8), 613–631.
Swanson, G. E. (1960). The birth of the Gods: The origin of primitive beliefs. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.
Timmermans, S. (2005). Suicide determination and the professional authority of medical examiners. American Sociological Review, 70, 311–333.
Trovato, F., & Vos, R. (1992). Married female labor force participation and suicide in Canada, 1971 and 1981. Sociological Forum, 7, 661–677.
Turner, J. H. (2003). The structure of social theory (7th ed.). New York: Wadsworth.
Turner, J. H., Beeghley, L., & Powers, C. H. (2007). The emergence of sociological theory (6th ed.). New York: Wadsworth.
van den Berg, A. (1988). The immanent Utopia: From Marxism on the state to the state of Marxism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
Wesson, R. G. (1976). Why Marxism? The continuing success of a failed theory. New York: Basic Books.
Whitehead, A. N. (1929). The aims of education and other essays. New York: MacMillan.
Wilson, J. (1983). Social theory. Englewood Cliffs: Prentice-Hall.
Young, F. W. (1965). Initiation ceremonies: A cross-cultural study of status dramatization. Indianapolis: Bobbs-Merril.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Additional information
Apologies to Henry Bamford Parkes
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Nolan, P.D., Triplett, J. & McDonough, S. Sociology’s Suicide: A Forensic Autopsy?. Am Soc 41, 292–305 (2010). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-010-9099-5
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-010-9099-5