Denomination, religious context, and suicide: Neo-Durkheimian multilevel explanations using individual and contextual data
Publication year
2005Number of pages
27 p.
Source
American Journal of Sociology, 111, 3, (2005), pp. 797-823ISSN
Publication type
Article / Letter to editor
Display more detailsDisplay less details
Organization
SW OZ NISCO MT
SW OZ RSCR SOC
Journal title
American Journal of Sociology
Volume
vol. 111
Issue
iss. 3
Languages used
English (eng)
Page start
p. 797
Page end
p. 823
Subject
Inequality, cohesion and modernization; Ongelijkheid, cohesie en moderniseringAbstract
In Suicide, Durkheim found that involvement in religious communities is inversely related to suicide risk. In this article, two explanations for this relationship are examined. One is that religious networks provide support. The other is that religious communities prohibit suicide. To examine these hypotheses, individual-level data on suicide in the Netherlands from 1936 to 1973 are used. The results show that with an increase in the proportion of religious persons in a municipality, the chances of committing suicide decrease for every denomination in that municipality, as well as among nonchurch members. Furthermore, along with the secularization of Dutch society, the impact of religious composition on suicide wanes. These results contradict the network-support mechanism and confirm the notion that religious communities have a general protective effect against suicide.
This item appears in the following Collection(s)
- Academic publications [238430]
- Electronic publications [122512]
- Faculty of Social Sciences [29483]
- Open Access publications [97507]
Upload full text
Use your RU credentials (u/z-number and password) to log in with SURFconext to upload a file for processing by the repository team.