The case study involves a 29-year-old lady called Faigy Mayer who chose to end her life by jumping over the rooftop down 20 stories to her death. From the outward appearance, Mayer had a strong social support as she had a close group of friends. However, upon looking closely, she encountered several problems through her Hasidic religion and culture. Mayer had been forced to leave her faith and pursue a secular life and this had created a rift with her family (Katz, 2015). Emily Durkheim’s sociological approach can be used to effectively analyze the issue. Durkheim’s main observation is that the less socially integrated a person is, the more likely they are to commit suicide. Faigy Mayer experienced several challenges with her religion and culture making her social integration to decrease and this ultimately resulted in her committing suicide.
What is Durkheim Trying to Accomplish
Durkheim’s sociological approach to the social issue of suicide was an attempt to show sociological structure of suicide and to disprove other theories and explanations. Durkheim rejected the idea that people that resort to suicide are in a pathological state. He also rejected the fact that heredity, climate, poverty, unhappy, love, and other personal factors could provide a sufficient explanation for suicide. Instead, his main observation was that suicide was caused by a lack of social integration, social disorganization, and a lack of social solidarity.
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Group Norms and Culture Explaining Variation in Suicide Rates
Durkheim observed that there were differences in group norms and cultures that could explain variations in suicidal rates. For instance, protestants had higher suicidal rates than Catholics as the Catholics had a stronger social control. Suicide was also higher for the single than those in a sexual relationship. The connections between the differences in group rates is used to show that in every instance where there were higher suicidal rates, there was a less social integration. His ‘typology’ of suicide would thus be significant in solving the high suicide rates. By showing that suicide was a sociological problem, Durkheim attempted to provide the cause for suicide rates and how to solve it.
Argument of Durkheim’s in Faigy Mayer’s case
Durkheim might argue that the reason for Mayer’s suicide was due to a decreased social integration once she defected from her faith. She opted to have a secular life and this created a rift with her family. Her mother also diagnosed her as being bi-polar and this affected her relationship with her mother. Durkheim would have further argued that the suicidal rates for individuals that had defected from the religion was higher than that of individuals who were religious. He could have attributed this to the challenges that people experience after defecting from religion. People that defect become desperately lonely and this causes sociological problems.
Type of Suicide for the case
The type of suicide that would be applicable for Mayer’s case would be that of anomic suicide. This is based on an individual’s moral confusion and the lack of a proper social direction. People may not know where they fit in society and this can create a moral disorder where they are in a constant state of disappointment. For Mayer, that situation took place throughout her childhood to the point she chose to defect from her faith. One of the observations of Mayer was that she experienced multiple frustrations when growing up as a teen. She had a sense of loneliness, was disinterested in religious studies, and could not share her affinity for pop culture with her peers (Katz, 2015). When she defected from her religion, she further experienced a moral disorder as a result of the rift with her family. She may have felt confused and disconnected and chose to commit suicide.
References
Katz, B. (2015). When ultra-religious Hasidic women choose to lead secular lives, their freedom often comes at a price. https://womenintheworld.com/2015/08/18/when-ultra-religious-hasidic-women-choose-to-lead-secular-lives-their-freedom-often-comes-at-a-price/
