ABSTRACT
The basis for a sociology of death lies in Emile Durkheim's analysis of funeral rites. While sociology has until relatively recently tended to neglect death as a social issue, Durkheim was among the first thinkers to consider death as a social problem with social implications. Durkheim identifies four different types of suicide: anomic, egoistic, altruistic, and fatalistic. Anomic suicide, Durkheim contends, results from the upheaval caused by rapid social change and the disruption this causes to society's ability to regulate effectively the moral conduct of its members. If anomic suicide is born of society's failure to properly regulate the moral conduct of the individual, egoistic suicide stems from society's failure to fully integrate the individual. In altruistic suicide, in contrast to egoistic suicide, the individual is too well integrated within society or social group. Understood in terms of the integration–regulation axis theorized by Durkheim, fatalistic suicide, in contrast to egoistic suicide, results from too much rather than insufficient social regulation.
