Social Meanings of Suicide

ISBN: 9780691621173 出版年：2015 页码：412 Douglas, Jack D Princeton University Press

This book presents a review and criticism of all sociological literature on suicide, from emile durkheim's influential suicide (1897) to contemporary writings by sociologists who have patterned their own work on durkheim's. Douglas points out fundamental weaknesses in the structural-functional study of suicide, and offers an alternative theoretical approach. He demonstrates the unreliability of official statistics on suicide and contends that durkheim's explanations of suicide rates in terms of abstract social meanings are founded on an inadequate and misleading statistical base.