Le Suicide: Etude de Sociologie

The study analyzes suicide as a social phenomenon, arguing that variations in suicide rates reflect collective conditions rather than solely individual pathology. It proposes a methodology that treats social facts as things and uses statistical comparison and classification to test hypotheses. It distinguishes types of suicide linked to degrees of social integration and regulation—egoistic, altruistic, anomic, and fatalistic—and examines how institutions such as family, religion, and economic change influence those dynamics. Non-social explanations like psychological or environmental factors are considered but found insufficient to account for broad patterns. The work concludes with methodological recommendations for focused, empirically grounded sociological inquiry.