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Unit: I The Sociological Perspective
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Exploring Data
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Sociological and Individualistic Explanations for Human Behavior
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Theme: 1 The Sociological Perspective
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DescriptionIn this exercise students are asked why someone commits suicide. Then the instructor differentiates between individualistic explanations and sociological explanations.
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Learning GoalsTo help students recognize the difference between sociological and individualistic (or non-sociological) explanations for human behavior.Back to top
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Things NeededOne or two 50-minute class sessions. (If you do this essentially as a lecture, one 50-minute period might be enough; I prefer to encourage student participation, so I allow two 50-minute sessions.)
For data showing variations in suicide rates by state go to the American Association of Suicidology's statistics page and click on: 2006 Official Data: Rates, numbers, and rankings of each state.
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ActionsTo start the lecture/discussion I give the students a minute to list six reasons why a person might seriously consider suicide. Then I tell them that we will come back to these reasons in a few minutes.Back to top
I lead the students through a brief lecture on two basic questions that sociologists (and others) ask about human behavior:
(1) the descriptive question (i.e., What do people do?) and
(2) the explanatory question (i.e., Why do people do what they do?).
I tell them that we will use suicide and the explanatory question to generate examples of the difference between non-sociological and sociological explanations for human behavior.
Using items from the students’ lists of reasons why a person might seriously consider suicide, I list six or eight of these on the board. As students offer their suggestions, I rephrase them into statements about feelings. For example, a frequent suggestion from students is that a person might consider suicide if his or her spouse died. “What feelings would such a person experience that would lead him or her to consider suicide?” I ask. “Feelings of loneliness” is often the response. Typically, the list of six or eight feelings includes depression, unhappiness, guilt, hopelessness, rejection, worthlessness, etc. Occasionally, a student may offer examples of altruistic suicide (e.g., religious martyrs or Japanese kamikaze pilots); I add the appropriate feelings of religious fervor, patriotism, etc., into my list.
When I have half a dozen or so of these “feelings” on the board I ask the students to think about them as a set. “How are they alike?” They are overwhelmingly feelings of unhappiness (the altruistic suicide example may be the only exception). I suggest that we call these explanations the “Unhappiness Theory” of suicide: People commit suicide because they are seriously, chronically, and profoundly unhappy. This theory, I tell the students, is an example of an individualistic (or non-sociological) explanation. It is not wrong, I say, but it is not particularly sociological.
Then I pose another question about suicide which, I tell them, will lead us into some sociological speculations about the causes of suicide. The question I pose is this: “Why is the rate of suicide higher in California than it is in Ohio?” I cite the most recent suicide rates. (Instructors, of course, can select their own comparison states.) This is the point at which I end the first class if I am doing this lecture/discussion over two 50-minute sessions. “Bring some speculations on this question to our next class,” I instruct the students. (Alternatively, instructors who are using this technique through a single class session can give their students a couple of minutes to write three responses to this question in their notes.) Again I list on the board from student suggestions a set of six or eight of their speculations. Typically, students speculate that California has a faster pace of life, a more competitive life style, a higher cost of living, bigger cities, or more drug use than Ohio. For these reasons, they suggest, the suicide rate is higher in California. Using the list of student speculations I point out that their answers to the question about suicide in California and Ohio all refer to factors which are “external” to individuals (i.e., pace of life, competitive life style, cost of living, size of cities, rate of drug use, etc.). This set of speculations, I tell the students, is a pretty good example of sociological thinking about suicide.
Then we compare this set of speculations with the previous set of “feelings.” Those “feelings,” we now see, refer to factors which are “internal” to individuals. “Aha,” I say, “now we see a difference between sociological and non-sociological (or individualistic) thinking about human behavior.” I explain that sociological explanations for human behavior emphasize external factors and that individualistic (or non-sociological) explanations emphasize internal factors.
I usually follow these lecture/discussions with some ShowCase computer data (available with adoption of the Stark text) which allow me to test in class the relationship between suicide rates and geographical mobility (i.e., “newcomers” to a state). Because I plan to do this, I always work the “newcomers” factor into the blackboard list of “external” factors (i.e., there is a higher rate of “socially detached” persons in California than in Ohio).
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More InformationThe topic of suicide is interesting to many students. This exercise gets good classroom participation in these lecture/discussions. The first chapter of Stark’s text (like many introductory texts) includes some material on Durkheim’s Suicide, so the class material connects with the text. Instructors refer back to this example of individualistic and sociological explanations a number of times through the course, especially when I lead students in lecture/discussions on deviance and prejudice (about which students tend to think individualistically).
Instructors should assume that there are at least a few students in the class for whom suicide will be, one way or another, a personal and painful topic. Preface discussions by assuring students that you have not selected suicide because it is sensational but because it is a convincing illustration of the usefulness and distinctiveness of a sociological point of view on human behavior.
This exercise has been used in introductory courses. -
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Creator/SourceDavid S. Adams, Department of Sociology, the Ohio State University Lima, Lima, Ohio 45804. From Kain and Neas, 1993. Innovative Techniques for Teaching Sociological Concepts. Washington, DC: American Sociological Association, pp. 100-101.