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Classical Sociological Theory and Foundations of American Sociology: EXTRA: Review of Suicide by Havelock Ellis

Classical Sociological Theory and Foundations of American Sociology
EXTRA: Review of Suicide by Havelock Ellis
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table of contents
  1. Title Page
  2. Copyright
  3. Table Of Contents
  4. Introduction
    1. Aims and Goals
    2. Organization Overview
      1. Outline of the Textbook
      2. Translating Passages
      3. Modernizing the Text
      4. Some Useful History
        1. Ten Things Marx, Weber, and Durkheim Took for Granted about the History of the World that you Might Want to Read More About
      5. Suggested Further Reading
      6. Timelines (Marx, Weber, and Durkheim)
      7. Major Themes
  5. Downloads
  6. Marx and Engels
    1. Biography of Marx by F. Engels (1868)
    2. Economic and Philosophic Manuscripts of 1844
      1. Introduction
    3. Marx on Wages
      1. Introduction
      2. Ch. 19: The Transformation of the Value or Price of Labor Power into Wages
    4. Marx on Wage Labor and Capital
      1. Introduction
      2. Wage Labor and Capital
      3. The Nature and Growth of Capital
      4. Relation of Wage-Labor to Capital
    5. Value, Price and Profit
      1. Introduction
      2. Value and Labor
      3. The Different Parts into Which Surplus Value is Decomposed
      4. Attempts at Raising Wages
      5. The Struggle Between Capital and Labor and Its Results
    6. Capital, part 1
      1. Introduction
      2. Part I: Commodities
      3. Part II: Transformation of Money Into Capital
      4. Part III: The Production of Absolute Surplus-Value
    7. Capital, part 2
      1. Introduction
      2. Part VII: The Accumulation of Capital
      3. Part VIII: Primitive Accumulation
    8. Eighteenth Brumaire
      1. Introduction
      2. Opening Passages
      3. Part Two
      4. Part Three
      5. Part Four
      6. Part Five
      7. Part Six
      8. Part Seven
    9. Principles of Communism
      1. Introduction
      2. Principles of Communism
    10. The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery
      1. Introduction
      2. The Duchess of Sutherland and Slavery
    11. Revolution is Coming
      1. Introduction
      2. Marx's Speech on the Toast to the Proletarians of Europe
    12. The Communist Manifesto
      1. Introduction
      2. Bourgeois and Proletarians
      3. Proletarians and Communists
    13. Concepts/Dictionary
  7. Durkheim
    1. Biography of Durkheim
    2. Rules of Method (1895)
      1. Introduction
      2. Part I: The Rules of Sociological Method
        1. Introduction
        2. What is a Social Fact?
      3. Part II
        1. Chapter 2: Rules for the Observation of Social Facts
          1. Section 1. Treat Social Facts as Things
          2. Section 2. Guidelines for Sociologists
          3. Section 3. Rules on the Distinction Between Normal and Pathological
    3. Division of Labor, Introduction
      1. Introduction
      2. Preface
      3. Book One
        1. Ch. 1: The Method for Determining this Function
        2. Ch. 2: Mechanical Solidarity Through Likeness
        3. Ch. 3: Organic Solidarity Due to the Division of Labor
        4. Ch. 4: Further Proof of the Preceding
        5. Ch. 5: Progressive Preponderance of Organic Solidarity
        6. Ch. 6: Progressive Preponderance cont.
        7. Ch. 7: Organic Solidarity and Contractual Solidarity
      4. Book 2
        1. Ch. 1: The Progress of the Division of Labor and of Happiness
        2. Ch. 2: The Causes
        3. Ch 3. Secondary Factors--Progressive Indeterminancy
        4. Ch. 4: Secondary Factors--Heredity
        5. Ch. 5: Consequences of the Preceding
      5. Book 3
        1. Ch. 1: The Anomic Division of Labor
        2. Ch. 2: The Forced Division of Labor
        3. Ch. 3: Another Abnormal Form
    4. Division of Labor, Book 1
      1. Introduction
      2. Chapter 3: Organic Solidarity Due to the Division of Labor
      3. Chapter 4: Further Proof the Preceding
      4. Chapter 5: Progressive Preponderance of Organic Solidarity; Its Consequences
      5. Chapter 6: Progressive Preponderance of Organic Solidarity, cont.
    5. Division of Labor, Book 2
      1. Introduction
      2. Chapter 2: The Causes
      3. Chapter 5: Consequences
    6. Division of Labor, Book 3
      1. Introduction
      2. Chapter 1: The Anomic Division of Labor
      3. Chapter 2: The Forced Division of Labor
      4. Conclusion
    7. Le Suicide (1897) - Introduction/Book 2
      1. Introduction
      2. Book Two: Social Causes and Social Types
        1. Ch. 1: Method of Determining Them
        2. Ch. 2: Egotistical Suicide
        3. Ch. 3: Egotistical Suicide, cont.
        4. Ch. 4: Altruistic Suicide
        5. Ch. 5: Anomic Suicide
    8. Education and Sociology (1922)
      1. Introduction
      2. The Nature and Role of Education
        1. Part 1: Different Definitions of Education
        2. Part 2: Defining Education
        3. Part 3: The Social Character of Education
        4. Part 4: The Role of the State in the Matter of Education
        5. Part 5: The Power of Education and the Means of its Influence
    9. Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912)
      1. Introduction
      2. Part 1: The Sociological Study of Religion
      3. Part 2: Theories of Knowledge
    10. EXTRA: Review of Année Sociologique (1898) article
    11. EXTRA: Review of Suicide by Havelock Ellis
    12. Concepts/Dictionary
  8. Weber
    1. Biography of Weber
    2. Methodological Foundations of Sociology (1921)
      1. Introduction
      2. Methodological Foundations of Sociology
        1. Point 1: Meanings are Empirically Situated
        2. Point 2: We cannot always find the intentions of the actors
        3. Point 3: The goal of interpretation is to generate evidence about the world, and we can do this both rationally and empathetically
        4. Point 4: Meaningless actions are still important insofar they impact social actions
        5. Point 5: Sociological understaning is explanatory
        6. Point 6: Sociological understanding is hypothetical
        7. Point 7: Motives of actions are crucial to sociological interpretation because they are related to causality
        8. Point 8: Meaningless actions are not unimportant, but they are not sociological facts
        9. Point 9: Individuals...are the intelligible performers of meaningful actions
        10. Point 10: Sociology is distinct from psychology
        11. Point 11: Sociology is distinct from the discipline of history
    3. PESOC, part 1
      1. Introduction
      2. Part 1: The Problem
        1. Chapter 1. Religious Belief and Social Layering
        2. Chapter 2. The "Spirit" of Capitalism
        3. Chapter 3. Understanding Luther's Conception of Beruf (Calling)
    4. PESOC, part 2
      1. Introduction
      2. Part 2: The Vocational Ethic of the Ascetic Braches of Protestantism
        1. Chapter 4. The Religious Foundations of Worldly Ascetism
        2. Chapter 5. Ascetism and the Spirit of Capitalism
    5. The Development of Commerce
      1. Introduction
      2. Chapter 14: Points of Departure in the Development of Commerce
      3. Chapter 15: Technical Requisites for the Transportation of Goods
      4. Chapter 16: Forms of Organization of Transportation and Commerce
      5. Chapter 17: Forms of Commercial Enterprise
      6. Chapter 21: Interests in the Pre-Capitalistic Period
    6. The Rational State
      1. Introduction
      2. The Rational State
        1. A. The State Itself; Law and Officialdom
        2. B. The Economic Policy of the Rational State
        3. C. Mercantilism
    7. The Evolution of the Capitalistic Spirit
      1. Introduction
      2. The Evolution of the Capitalistic Spirit
    8. Politics as a Vocation
      1. Introduction
      2. Lecture
    9. Bureaucracy
      1. Introduction
      2. Part 3, Chapter 6, Section 7: Bureaucracy
    10. CSP
      1. Introduction
      2. Introduction on Power
      3. Distribution of Power within a Gemeinschaft Community
        1. Classes
        2. Status Groups (Stände)
        3. Parties
    11. Concepts/Dictionary
  9. Early American Sociology
    1. Biography of Early American Sociologists
      1. William Graham Sumner
      2. Lester Frank Ward
      3. Albion Woodbury Small
      4. Franklin Henry Giddings
      5. Thorstein Veblen
      6. Charlotte Perkinds Gilman
      7. Jane Addams
      8. Robert Ezra Park
      9. Charles Horton Cooley
      10. Edward Alsworth Ross
      11. W.E.B. Du Bois
      12. Charles Abram Ellwood
    2. Comparison of Spencer and Ward by Barnes (1919)
      1. Introduction
      2. The Sociological View of the State
        1. Part I: Sumner, General Characteristics of His Sociological Thought
        2. Part 2: Ward; General Characteristics of His Sociological System
    3. Thorstein Veblen, on Labor(1898)
      1. Introduction
      2. The Instinct of Wokrmanship and the Irksomeness of Labor
    4. Charlotte Perkins Gilman, Women and Economics (1898)
      1. Introduction
      2. Preface
      3. Chapter 1
      4. Chapter 15
    5. Du Bois on The Study of Social Problems (1898)
      1. Introduction
      2. The Study of Social Problems
        1. Development of the Problems
        2. The Present Problems
        3. The Work Already Accomplished
        4. A Program of Future Study
    6. Jane Addams, “Trade Unions and Public Duty” (1899)
      1. Introduction
      2. Trades Unions
    7. Edward A. Ross on Social Control (1900)
      1. Introduction
      2. Social Control
    8. Charles A. Ellwood on Revolution (1905)
      1. Introduction
      2. Revolutions
    9. Charles Horton Cooley, “Social Consciousness” (1907)
      1. Introduction
      2. Social Mind in General
      3. Social and Individual Aspects of Consciousness
      4. Social Will
    10. Lester Ward, “Social Classes” (1908)
      1. Introduction
      2. Social Classes and Inequalities
    11. Franklin H. Giddings on Theory and Public Policy (1911)
      1. Introduction
      2. Theory and Public Policy
        1. Evolution is Simple or Compound
        2. Can war then be outlawed and generally prevented?
    12. Small on the Sociological Point of View (1920)
      1. Introduction
      2. The Sociologists' Point of View
        1. "Why need we study society?"
  10. Creative Commons License
  11. Recommended Citations
  12. Versioning

24

EXTRA: Review of Suicide by Havelock Ellis

NOTE ON SOURCE: This is taken from a contemporary review of Suicide, by the well-known and controversial sexuality studies scholar, Havelock Ellis. It was published in the journal Mind (volume 7, issue 26) in April of 1898. 

Introduction – Why this is important and what to look for

Ellis’ review is worthwhile to read because it demonstrates how Durkheim’s sociological analysis was critically received by his contemporaries.  Analyzing suicide as a social fact was quite a novel proposition, and Ellis is not wholly convinced of its value, as this review makes clear.

REVIEW

There is room for a new study of suicide.  Morselli’s book, which must still be regarded as the most comprehensive and on the whole the most scientific manual on the subject, is now nearly twenty years old, and is not only out of date but disfigured by many hasty generalizations-which more recent writers have shown to be unfounded.  It can scarcely be said, however, that Professor Durkheim has replaced Morselli’s manual.  Although, with the assistance of the French Minister of Justice and old pupils of his own, he has prepared new maps and summarized the unpublished data of 26,000 suicides, the Bordeaux professor has for the most part been content to argue on old data, and has not brought his statistics up to date, even when the official publications of various  countries would easily have enabled him to do so.  Moreover, it can scarcely be said that the author takes any special interest in his subject except in so far as it expresses tendencies in the social organism, and consequently various aspects of suicide are passed over lightly or altogether ignored.

It is fairly clear, however, that Prof. Durkheim himself would not wish his book to be regarded as a complete manual of the subject.  By calling it “a sociological study” he admits the bias which affects it throughout.  The book is, indeed, not so much a study of suicide as a study of sociological method and, more especially, an illustration of the author’s philosophy of society.

In the Preface this special object of the book is frankly set forth, and it may be briefly recapitulated for those who are not acquainted with the author’s previous works.  Sociology, he asserts, must be made something more than a mere form of literary philosophy; it must interrogate the auxiliary studies of history, ethnography and statistics; it must ascertain laws. The special value of the study of suicide is that it enables us easily to ascertain such laws, and so to demonstrate better than by mere argument the possibility of sociology.  It enables us, he thinks, to establish a certain number of propositions concerning marriage, widowhood, the family, religion, etc., which teach what the ordinary theories of moralists are unable to teach; it even gives us some indications concerning “the causes of the general discomfort from which European  societies are at present suffering, and concerning the remedies  which may mitigate them.” Further, it is not only the value of sociology in general, but more especially the value of Professor Durkheim’s sociology, which this study is to affirm.  And for Professor Durkheim society is strictly an organism; “the individual is dominated by a moral reality which goes beyond him: the collective reality.”  Thus, he regards sociology as dealing with “realities as definite and as resistant as those the psychologist or the biologist deals with.” As he elsewhere (p. 350) states it, “individuals by uniting form a psychic being of a new species, and which consequently possesses its own manner of thinking and feeling.” That statement is the essence of Professor Durkheim’s sociological doctrine.

The volume consists of an introduction, in which suicide is defined and its relationship to sociology explained, and of three books. Book I deals critically with the alleged extra-social factors of suicide, i.e., with psychopathic conditions, heredity, cosmic influences and imitation. Chapter 2 deals with the question of race and heredity as a, factor of suicide. The author here subjects to severe criticism the arguments of Morselli, Wagner and Oettingen that every race has its own suicide-rate, and gives reasons in support of his own contention that if, for instance, the Germans commit suicide oftener than other peoples, the reason is to be found not in race but in civilization.

Having thus attempted to put aside, or minimize, the extra-social factors of suicide, in Book 2 Professor Durkheim proceeds to discuss the social causes and the sociological types of suicide.  The three main sociological types of suicide he terms egoistic, altruistic and anomic.

By egoistic suicide is meant that particular type of suicide which is the result of extreme individualism, and the chapters devoted to it are mainly a discussion of the influence of religion, education, the family, etc., in which it is shown that all the facts indicate that every loosening of social or domestic bonds increases the tendency to suicide.  On the whole the author concludes that suicide varies in inverse ratio with the degree of integration of religious, domestic and political society.

Altruistic suicide-a type chiefly prevalent in primitive societies, and of which the suttee may be taken as an example-is more briefly treated. It is the characteristic of altruistic suicide to be, regarded not as a right but as a duty, and its significance at the present day is small.

A more important form of suicide is that which the author terms anomic, by which he means the suicides produced by any sudden social shock or disturbance, such as that due to economic disasters. Men commit egoistic suicide because they see no further reason for living, altruistic suicide because the reason for living seems to them to lie outside life itself, anomic suicide because they are suffering from a disturbance of their activity.

Then the author turns to another form of suicide with which he had already dealt to some extent under the head of egoistic suicide (thus revealing a weakness in his classification)-domestic suicides.  He here deals with the suicides due to divorce, and further develops in detail the remarkable and interesting point already brought out, that marriage is a greater protection to men than to women. Where divorce does not exist, or where it has only lately been established, women contribute in larger proportion to the suicides of the married than to those of the celibate; the more prevalent divorce becomes, the more favorable marriage is for women.  The development of divorce involves an improvement in the moral situation of women, and it is the divorced man who is more exposed to suicide:

“We thus reach a conclusion far removed from the current idea regarding the part played by marriage.  It is regarded as an institution established for the benefit of the wife, in order to protect her weakness against masculine caprices.  In reality, whatever may have been the historic causes which led man to impose this restriction on himself, it is he who has profited by it.  The liberty which he has thus renounced could only have been a source of torment to him. Woman had not the same reasons for abandoning it, and in this respect, we may say that, in submitting to the same rule, it is she who has made a sacrifice” (p. 311).

In Book 3, the author gathers together his arguments, further expounds his general conception of society as a group of collective tendencies with an existence of its own as real as the cosmic forces, discusses the relation of suicide to criminality, and presents the practical consequences of his study. Professor Durkheim has no important suggestion to make in aid of the prevention of suicide; he relies mainly on his favorite panacea of co-operative associations of workers, professional groups or corporations developed on a new basis and made a definite and recognized organ of daily life. On the whole this is a work which every subsequent writer on suicide must seriously reckon with, while at the same time it confirms Professor Durkheim’s position as an original and systematic investigator into social problems.

Questions for Contemplation and Discussion

  1. According to Ellis, what is Durkheim’s conception of society?
  2. In the final paragraph, Ellis claims that Durkheim doesn’t provide any “important suggestions” to aid in preventing suicide, other than his “favorite panacea.” What is this favorite panacea?  How would this prevent suicide?
  3. What can we learn about the reception of Durkheim’s ideas at the time of his writing?

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Copyright © 2019 by Allison Hurst. Classical Sociological Theory and Foundations of American Sociology by Allison Hurst is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License, except where otherwise noted.
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