SOC 201 Chapter 11: Chapter 11.6
Document Summary
Mile durkheim was one of the first researchers to look for the causes of deviance in terms of social rather than individual factors. In his early research during the 1880s, durkheim focused on the act of suicide. Suicide was an interesting choice in that hardly anything seems more personal than the decision to kill oneself. Surely the causes of suicide must be within the individual! In point of fact, durkheim was not really interested in individual acts of suicide. He was concerned with suicide rates and what changes in suicide rates indicated about the health of a particular society. As we discussed briefly in chapter 1, durkheim"s primary concern was the nature of society and social order. Durkheim envisioned society as a system made up of interrelated parts. Like a well-oiled machine, a well-functioning society depends on each of its parts working together.
