Synopses & Reviews
The landmark investigation into suicide and society?now in a new translation Émile Durkheim, one of the fathers of modern sociology, was the first to suggest that suicide might be as much a response to society as an act of individual despair. When he looked at social, religious, or racial groups that had high incidences of suicide, he discovered that abnormally high or low levels of social integration increase the likelihood of suicide. More than a century after its initial publication, Durkheim?s groundbreaking work continues to fascinate and challenge those seeking to understand one of the least understandable of human acts.
Synopsis
Emile Durkheim's On Suicide (1897) was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Traditionally, suicide was thought to be a matter of purely individual despair but Durkheim recognized that the phenomenon had a social dimension. He believed that if anything can explain how individuals relate to society, then it is suicide: Why does it happen? What goes wrong? Why do certain social, religious or racial groups have higher incidences of suicide than others? As Durkheim explored these questions he became convinced that abnormally high or low levels of social integration lead to an increased likelihood of suicide. On Suicide was the result of his extensive research. Divided into three parts - individual reasons for suicide, social forms of suicide and the relation of suicide to society as a whole - Durkheim's revelations have fascinated, challenged and informed readers for over a century.
About the Author
Robin Buss is a writer and translator who works for theIndependent on Sunday and as television critic for The Times Educational Supplement. He studied at the University of Paris, where he took a degree and a doctorate in French literature. He is part-author of the article 'French Literature' in Encyclopaedia Britannica and has published critical studies of works by Vigny and Cocteau, and three books on European cinema, The French Through Their Films (1988), Italian Films (1989) and French Film Noir (1994). He has also translated a number of volumes for Penguin Classics.