ABSTRACT
The upsurge in studies of Emile Durkheim may surprise and even irritate those who see a break from the "founding fathers" as essential for the progress of sociology. This chapter shows that anomie suicide is situated very precisely at the turning-point of the work, in other words at the moment when the theory of the "juste milieu" is on the point of being supplanted by the theory of equilibrium and reference to variables by reference to trends. This strange and contradictory attitude of Durkheim towards the suicide of women is not of solely anecdotal interest. In terms of taking account of the lesser frequency of suicide among women, the possibility of an explanation of a biological or "organic" type is furthermore explicitly rejected: This influence of gender is much more an effect of social causes than of organic causes.
