Research Paper on:
Suicide by Emile Durkheim and its Relevance

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
believe. With increases in technology, the world today is much easier to live in. At the same time, with more complexity comes more pressures. Thus, it is interesting to look  at the infamous work on suicide to see if it is applicable to todays world. Much of the reason for suicide is found to be related to social phenomena.  After all, Durkheim looks at marriage and relates it to suicide. The marital state today has drastically changed and people no longer feel trapped. Durkheim talks about divorce in the  work, but divorce no longer has a stigma. Still, is Durkheims work as relevant today as when he wrote it in 1897? How far should consideration of the social context  within which Suicide was written affect our judgment of its relevance? While Suicide was written in a particular social context a long time ago, some of the principles contained within  it are timeless. For example, Durkheim contends that a man who commits suicide is mentally alienated (Durkheim 58). He also considers it a partial insanity, and one limited to a  single act (59). That is a labeling of an act that is really not contingent on social factors. At the same time, the field of psychology has changed quite a  bit and so, to speak of insanity in those terms is somewhat antiquated. Today, there are legal definitions of insanity and the term is no longer used loosely. Yet,  Durkheim begins his analysis by looking at the facts to be studied under the label suicide, in order to inquire whether there are common qualities that may be recognized by  all observers (Durkheim 42). Further, in analyzing the subject, the criteria should be specific enough so that it is not found anywhere else (42). Durkheim seemed to, by and