Encyclopedia of Sociology Vol

and those definitions change over the years. Such changes are not simply technical adjustments; they respond (among other criteria) to assumptions about what cities and suburbs are. For example, as many U.S. ‘‘suburbs’’ have become employment centers in the last two decades, altering traditional patterns of commuting to work, Census Bureau scientists have adjusted the definition of ‘‘central city’’ to include some of those peripheral areas.

For many purposes, it may be preferable to avoid these categories altogether. ‘‘Suburban’’ may be intended to reflect distance from the city center, recency of development, residential density, or commuting patterns—all of which can be measured directly. The main substantive rationale for accepting definitions tied to the juridical boundaries of cities is to emphasize the differences between cities and suburbs (and among suburbs) that are related to municipal governance. An important class of issues revolves around disparities in public resources: In what parts of the metropolis are taxes higher, where are better schools available, where is police protection greater? What are the effects of these differences on the opportunities available to people who live in different parts of the metropolis? Another dimension concerns local politics: How do localities establish land use and budget policies, and what are the effects of those policies on growth?

Because many suburban residents have worked in central cities while paying taxes in the suburbs, John Kasarda has described the city–suburb relationship in terms of ‘‘exploitation.’’ Political scientists in particular have studied this issue in terms of arguments for the reform of structures of metropolitan governance. The normative implications of their arguments have explicit ideological underpinnings. Some, such as Dennis Judd, emphasize the value of equality of life chances and interpret differences between cities and suburbs as disparities; others (public choice theorists such as Elinor Ostrom) emphasize freedom of choice and interpret differences as opportunities for the exercise of choice.

Sociologists on the whole have been less willing to be proponents of metropolitan solutions and have shown more interest in the causes than in the consequences of suburbanization. Nevertheless, there are differences in theoretical perspective that closely parallel those in political science,

and they hinge in part on the importance of political boundaries and the political process. The main lines of explanation reflect two broader currents in sociological theory: Structural functionalism is found in the guise of human ecology and neoclassical economics, and variants of Marxian and Weberian theory have been described as the ‘‘new’’ urban theory.

Ecologists and many urban economists conceptualize suburbanization as a process of decentralization, as is reflected in Burgess’s (1967) con- centric-zone model of the metropolis. Burgess accepted the postulate of central place theory that the point of highest interaction and most valued land is naturally at the core of the central business district. The central point is most accessible to all other locations in the metropolis, a feature that is especially valuable for commercial firms. At the fringes of the business district, where land is held for future commercial development, low-income and immigrant households can compete successfully for space, though only at high residential densities. Peripheral areas, by contrast, are most valued by more affluent households, particularly those with children and a preference for more spacious surroundings.

The key to this approach is its acceptance of a competitive land market as the principal mechanism through which locational decisions are reached. More specific hypotheses are drawn from theories about people’s preferences and willingness (and ability) to pay for particular locations or structural changes (e.g., elevators, transportation technology, and the need for space of manufacturers) that affect the value of a central location. Many researchers have focused on gradients linking distance from the center to various compositional characteristics of neighborhoods: population density (Treadway 1969), household composition (Guest 1972), and socioeconomic status (Choldin and Hanson 1982). Comparatively little research has been conducted on the preferences of residents or the factors that lead them to select one location or another.

Other sociologists have argued that growth patterns result from conscious policies and specific institutional interventions in the land and housing markets. Representative of this view is the study done by Checkoway (1980), who emphasizes the role of federal housing programs and institu-

tional support for large-scale residential builders in the suburbanization process of the 1950s. The move to suburbs, he argues, was contingent on the alternatives offered to consumers. The redlining of inner-city neighborhoods by the Federal Housing Administration, its preference for large new subdivisions, and its explicit discrimination against minority home buyers are among the major forces structuring these alternatives.

There have been few studies of the housing market from an institutional perspective, although the restructuring of real estate financing and the emergence of new linkages between large-scale developers and finance capital have begun to attract attention. More consideration has been given to the explicitly political aspects of land development (Logan and Molotch 1987). Following Hunter (1953), who believed that growth questions are the ‘‘big issue’’ in local politics, later studies found that the most powerful voices in local politics are the proponents of growth and urban redevelopment and, in this sense, that a city is a growth machine.

In applying this model to suburbs, most observers portray suburban municipalities as ‘‘exclusionary.’’ Suburban municipalities have long used zoning to influence the location and composition of land development. Since environmentalism emerged as a formidable political movement in the early 1970s, it has become commonplace to hear about localities that exercise their power to preserve open space and historic sites by imposing restraints or even moratoriums on new development. The ‘‘no-growth movement’’ is a direct extension of earlier exclusionary zoning policies.

SOCIOECONOMIC DIFFERENCES BETWEEN CITIES AND SUBURBS

These two theoretical perspectives can be illustrated through their application to research on socioeconomic differences between cities and suburbs. It is well known that central cities in most metropolitan regions have a less affluent residential population than do the surrounding suburbs. There is much debate, however, whether this class segregation between cities and their suburbs represents a natural sorting out of social classes through the private market or whether its causes are political and institutional. Similar debate surrounds the phenomenon of differentiation within suburbia,

where there is great variation in economic function, class and racial composition, and other characteristics of suburbs.

Research from an ecological perspective has stressed a comparison between the older, larger, denser cities of the North and the more recently growing cities of the South and West. The principal consistent findings have been that (1) the pattern of low central city relative to suburban social status is more pronounced in older metropolitan regions but that (2) controlling for metropolitan age, there appears to be a universal generalization of this pattern over time (Guest and Nelson 1978). These sociologists propose that suburbs have natural advantages over central cities. For example, their housing stock is newer, their land is less expensive, and they are more accessible to freeways and airports. The socioeconomic differences between cities and suburbs reflect those advantages.

Others argue that disparities are generated primarily by political structures that allocate zoning control and responsibility for public services to local governments and require those governments to finance services from local sources such as taxes on real property. They propose that the typical fragmentation of metropolitan government creates the incentive and opportunity for suburbs to pursue exclusionary growth policies (Danielson 1976).

Seeking to test these theories, Logan and Schneider (1982) found greater disparities in metropolitan areas where central cities were less able to grow through annexation (thus where suburban municipal governments were more autonomous) and where localities were more reliant on local property taxes (hence had greater incentive to pursue exclusionary policies). They also found a significant racial dimension: Greater disparities were evident in both 1960 and 1970 in metropolitan areas in the North with a larger proportion of black residents. (This did not hold for the South and West, however.) This disparity is due both to the concentration of lower-income blacks in central cities and to a greater propensity of higherstatus whites to live in suburbs in those metropolitan areas. This finding is reinforced by Frey (see Frey and Speare 1988; Shihadeh and Ousey 1996), who reported that the central-city proportion of black residents is a significant predictor of white flight, independent of other causes.

If suburbs follow exclusionary growth policies, it seems counterintuitive that suburbs experienced much more rapid growth than did cities in the postwar decades. The findings on city–suburb disparities, of course, indicate that exclusion has selective effects. Nevertheless, it is surprising that in a study of northern California cities, Baldassare and Protash (1982), found that communities with more restrictive planning controls actually had higher rates of population growth in the 1970s. Similarly, Logan and Zhou (1989) found that suburban growth controls had little, if any, impact on development patterns (population growth, socioeconomic status, and racial composition). In their view, the exclusionary policies of suburbs may be more apparent than real. The more visible actions, such as growth moratoriums, often are intended to blunt criticisms by residents concerned with problems arising from rapid development. Unfortunately, few studies have looked in depth at the political process within suburbs; there is as little direct evidence on the role of local politics as there is on the operation of the land market. Most research from both the ecological and the politi- cal-institutional perspectives has inferred the processes for controlling growth from evidence about the outcomes.

SUBURBANIZATION OF EMPLOYMENT

A central problem for early studies of suburban communities was to identify the patterns of functional specialization among them. It was recognized that older industrial satellites coexisted with dormitory towns in the fringe areas around central cities. Both were suburban in the sense that they were integrated into a metropolitan economy dominated by the central city. Their own economic role and the nature of the populations they housed were quite distinct, however. The greatest population gains in the 1950s occurred in residential suburbs, communities that were wealthier, younger, newer, and less densely settled than the towns on the fringes of the region that had higher concentrations of employment. Schnore (see Schnore and Winsborough 1972) distinguished ‘‘suburbs’’ from ‘‘satellites’’ to acknowledge these different origins.

The metaphors of suburbs and satellites reflected the reality of early postwar suburbanization, a period when established towns and small cities

were surrounded by successive waves of new subdivisions. Those metaphors are no longer appropriate. Since the late l950s, the bulk of new manufacturing and trade employment in the metropolis has been located in small and middle-sized cities in the suburban ring (Berry and Kasarda 1977, chap. 13). Downtown department stores compete with new suburban shopping malls. The highly developed expressway network around central cities frees manufacturing plants to take advantage of the lower land prices and taxes and the superior access to the skilled workforce offered by the suburbs. For the period 1963–1977, in the largest twenty-five metropolitan areas, total manufacturing employment in central cities declined by about 700,000 (19 percent), while their suburbs gained 1.1 million jobs (36 percent). At the same time, total central-city retail and wholesale employment was stagnant (dropping by 100,000). Trade employment in the suburbs increased 1.8 million (or 110 percent) in that period. Thus, total employment growth in the suburbs outpaced the growth of population (Logan and Golden 1986). This is the heart of the phenomenon popularized by Garreau (1991) as the creation of ‘‘Edge City.’’

How has suburbanization of employment affected suburban communities? According to microeconomic and ecological models, locational choices by employers reflect the balance of costs and benefits of competing sites. New employment maintains old patterns because the cost–benefit equation is typically stable, including important considerations such as location relative to workforce, suppliers, markets, and the local infrastructure. In the terms commonly used by urban sociologists, this means that communities find their ‘‘ecological niche.’’ Stahura’s (1982) finding of marked persistence in manufacturing and trade employment in suburbs from 1960 to 1972 supports this expectation. Once it has ‘‘crystallized,’’ the functional specialization of communities changes only under conditions of major shifts in the needs of firms.

In this view, to the extent that changes occur, they follow a natural life cycle (Hoover and Vernon 1962). Residential suburbs in the inner ring, near the central city, tend over time to undergo two related transformations: to higher population density and a conversion to nonresidential development and to a lower socioeconomic status. Thus, inner suburbs that gain employment are—like older satellites—less affluent than residential suburbs.

By contrast, those who emphasize the politics of land development suggest very different conclusions. A growing number of suburbs perceive business and industry as a significant local resource. Once shunned by the higher-status suburbs, they now contribute to property values and the local tax base. Prestigious communities such as Greenwich, Connecticut, and Palo Alto, California, house industrial parks and corporate headquarters. The ‘‘good climate for business’’ they offer includes public financing of new investments, extensive infrastructure (roads, utilities, parking, police and fire protection), and moderate taxes (Logan and Molotch 1987).

Competition among suburbs introduces a new factor that has the potential to reshape suburban regions. Schneider (1989) reports that location of manufacturing firms is affected by the strength of the local tax base, suggesting that wealthy suburbs are advantaged in this competition. Logan and Golden (1986) find that newly developing suburban employment centers have higher socioeconomic status, as well as stronger fiscal resources, than other suburbs; this is a reversal of the pattern of the 1950s.

MINORITY SUBURBANIZATION

The suburbanization process also increasingly involves minorities and immigrants, and the incorporation of those groups into suburban areas has become an important topic for research on racial and ethnic relations. As Massey and Denton (1987) document, the rate of growth of nonwhites and Hispanics in metropolitan areas is far outstripping the rate of growth of non-Hispanic whites. Much of this growth is occurring in suburbs. During the 1970s, for example, the number of blacks in the non-central-city parts of metropolitan areas increased 70 percent compared with just 16 percent in central cities, and the number of other nonwhites in those locations shot up 150 percent compared with approximately 70 percent in central cities. One reason for the rapidly increasing racial and ethnic diversity of suburbs may be that some new immigrant groups are bypassing central cities and settling directly in suburbs. Equally important is the increasing suburbanization of older racial and ethnic minorities, such as blacks (Frey and Speare 1988).

This phenomenon has encouraged researchers to study suburbanization as a mirror on the social mobility of minorities. Consistent with classical ecological theory, suburbanization often has been portrayed broadly as a step toward assimilation into the mainstream society and a sign of the erosion of social boundaries. For European immigrant groups after the turn of the century, residential decentralization appears to have been part of the general process of assimilation (Guest 1980).

Past studies have found that suburbanization of Hispanics and Asians in a metropolitan area is strongly associated with each group’s average income level (Massey and Denton 1987, pp. 819– 820; see also Frey and Speare 1988, pp. 311–315). Further, again for Hispanics and Asians, Massey and Denton (1987) demonstrate that suburban residence typically is associated with lower levels of segregation and, accordingly, higher probabilities of contact with the Anglo majority. However, these and other authors report very different results for blacks. Black suburbanization is unrelated to the average income level of blacks in the metropolitan area and does not result in higher intergroup contact for blacks. The suburbanization process for blacks appears largely to be one of continued ghettoization (Farley 1970), as is indicated by high and in some regions increasing levels of segregation and by the concentration of suburban blacks in communities with a high incidence of social problems (e.g., high crime rates), high taxes, and underfunded social services (Logan and Schneider 1984; Reardon 1997).

These findings regarding black suburbanization have been interpreted in terms of processes that impede the free mobility of racial minorities: steering by realtors, unequal access to mortgage credit, exclusionary zoning, and neighbor hostility (Foley 1973). Home ownership indeed may be one of the gatekeepers for suburban living. Stearns and Logan (1986) report that blacks were less likely to live in suburban areas where higher proportions of the housing stock were owner-occupied.

Further evidence is offered by Alba et al (1999), who based their conclusions on an analysis of individual-level data from the 1980 and 1990 censuses. They find that suburban residence is more likely among homeowners and persons of higher socioeconomic status. There are strong effects of

family status (marriage and the presence of children in the household), but for many immigrant groups, measures of cultural assimilation (English language use, nativity, and period of immigration) have declining relevance for suburban location. Assimilation traditionally has been a major part of the suburbanization process for most groups, especially those arising out of immigration, but large pockets of relatively new immigrants have now appeared in the suburban ring.

Parallel results are found for the racial and ethnic sorting process within a suburban region (the New York–New Jersey suburban region, as reported by Logan and Alba 1993; Alba and Logan 1993). Two sorts of analyses were conducted. First, members of different racial and ethnic groups were compared on the average characteristics of the suburbs in which they resided. Second, regression models were estimated for members of each major racial or ethnic group to predict several of these indicators of place advantages or community resources.

There are important differences between whites, blacks, Hispanics, and Asians in regard to the kinds of suburbs in which they live. As some researchers have suspected, suburban Asians have achieved access to relatively advantaged communities that are similar in most respects to those of suburban non-Hispanic whites. Hispanics in the New York region have not. Suburban Hispanic by and large live in communities that are about the same as black suburbs: communities with low average income levels and low rates of home ownership and, perhaps more important, high crime rates (Alba et al. 1994).

Is the disadvantage of blacks and Hispanics attributable to individual qualities of group members, or do these groups face collective disadvantages? Analysis of individual characteristics that may predict the quality of the suburb in which one resides shows that the same location process does not apply equally to all minorities. The pattern for whites, who are relatively advantaged in terms of access to community resources, lends clear support to assimilation theory. Human capital and indicators of cultural assimilation are strongly associated with access to higher-status suburbs. The same can be said of Asians (who are relatively advantaged overall), with the exception that cul-

tural assimilation variables seem not to be important for Asians.

The results for blacks call attention to processes of racial stratification. Even controlling for many other individual characteristics, blacks live in suburbs with lower ownership and income levels than do non-Hispanic whites. Further, most human capital and assimilation variables have a smaller payoff for blacks than they do for whites. The findings for Hispanics are supportive of the assimilation model in several respects. Hispanics gain more strongly than whites do from most human capital characteristics; therefore, at higher levels of socioeconomic achievement and cultural assimilation, Hispanics come progressively closer to matching the community resources of whites. It should be noted, however, that Hispanics begin from a lower starting point and that black Hispanics face a double disadvantage that is inconsistent with an assimilation perspective.

LOOKING TO THE FUTURE

Suburbanization continues to be a key aspect of metropolitan growth and is perhaps of growing importance in the global era (Muller 1997). The political boundaries between cities and suburbs accentuate interest in substantive issues of metropolitan inequality. They also create special opportunities for theories of urbanization to go beyond economic models and incorporate an understanding of the political process. Research on suburbanization has been most successful in describing patterns of decentralization and spatial differentiation. The movements of people and employment and the segregation among suburbs by social class, race, ethnicity, and family composition have been well documented. However, these patterns are broadly consistent with a variety of interpretations, ranging from those which assume a competitive land market (human ecology) to those which stress the institutional and political structuring of that market.

The principal gaps in knowledge concern the processes that are central to these alternative interpretations. Few sociologists have directly studied the housing market from the perspective of either demand (how do people learn about the alternatives, and how do they select among them?) or

supply (how does the real estate sector operate, how is racial and ethnic segmentation of the market achieved, how is the complex of construction industries, developers, and financial institutions tied to the rest of the economy?). Rarely have sociologists investigated government decisions (at any level) that impinge on development from the point of view either of their effects or of the political process that led to them. Of course, these observations are not specific to research on suburbanization. It is important to bear in mind that neither the theoretical issues nor the research strategies in this field distinguish suburbanization from other aspects of the urban process.

(SEE ALSO: Cities; Community; Urbanization)

Foley, Donald 1973 ‘‘Institutional and Contextual Factors Affecting the Housing Choices of Minority Residents.’’ In Amos Hawley and Vincent Rock, eds.,

Segregation in Residential Areas. Washington, D.C.: National Academy of Sciences.

Frey, William, and Alden Speare 1988 Regional and Metropolitan Growth and Decline in the United States. New York: Russell Sage Foundation.

Garreau, Joel 1991 Edge City: Life on the New Frontier. New York: Doubleday.

Guest, Avery M. 1972 ‘‘Patterns of Family Location.’’

Demography 9:159–171.

——— 1980 ‘‘The Suburbanization of Ethnic Groups.’’

Sociology and Social Research 64:497–513.

———, and G. Nelson 1978 ‘‘Central City/Suburban Status Differences: Fifty Years of Change.’’ Sociological Quarterly 19:723.

REFERENCES

Alba, Richard and John R. Logan 1993 ‘‘Minority Proximity to Whites in Suburbs: An Individual-Level Analysis of Segregation’’ American Journal of Sociology

98:1388–1427.

———, ———, and Paul Bellair 1994 ‘‘Living with Crime: The Implications of Racial and Ethnic Differences in Suburban Location’’ Social Forces 73:395–434.

———, ———, Brian Stults, Gilbert Marzan, and Wenquan Zhang 1999 ‘‘Immigrant Groups and Suburbs: A Reexamination of Suburbanization and Spatial Assimilation.’’ American Sociological Review

64:446–460.

Baldassare, Mark, and William Protash 1982 ‘‘Growth Controls, Population Growth, and Community Satisfaction.’’ American Sociological Review 47:339–346.

Berry, Brian, and John Kasarda 1977 Contemporary Urban Ecology. New York: Macmillan.

Burgess, Ernest W. 1967 ‘‘The Growth of the City.’’ In R. E. Park, E. W. Burgess, and R. D. McKenzie, eds., The City. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Checkoway, Barry l980 ‘‘Large Builders, Federal Housing Programmes, and Postwar Suburbanization.’’ International Journal of Urban and Regional Research 4:21–44.

Choldin, Harvey M., and Claudine Hanson 1982 ‘‘Status Shifts within the City.’’ American Sociological Review

47:129–41.

Danielson, Michael 1976 The Politics of Exclusion. New York: Columbia University Press.

Farley, Reynolds 1970 ‘‘The Changing Distribution of Negroes within Metropolitan Areas: The Emergence of Black Suburbs.’’ American Journal of Sociology

75:512–529.

Hoover, Edgar, and Raymond Vernon 1962 Anatomy of a Metropolis. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday.

Hunter, Floyd 1953 Community Power Structure. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.

Liska, Allen, John R. Logan, and Paul Bellair 1998 ‘‘Race and Violent Crime in the Suburbs.’’ American Sociological Review 63:27–38.

Logan, John R. and Richard Alba 1993 ‘‘Locational Returns to Human Capital: Minority Access to Suburban Community Resources.’’ Demography 30:243–268.

———, and Reid Golden 1986 ‘‘Suburbs and Satellites: Two Decades of Change.’’ American Sociological Review 51:430–437.

———, and Harvey L. Molotch 1987 Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place. Berkeley: University of California Press.

———, and Mark Schneider 1982 ‘‘Governmental Organization and City-Suburb Income Inequality, 1960– 1970.’’ Urban Affairs Quarterly 17:303–318.

——— 1984 ‘‘Racial Segregation and Racial Change in American Suburbs: 1970–1980.’’ American Journal of Sociology 89:874–888.

———, and Min Zhou 1989 ‘‘Do Growth Controls Control Growth?’’ American Sociological Review

54:461–471.

Massey, Douglas, and Nancy Denton 1987 ‘‘Trends in the Residential Segregation of Blacks, Hispanics, and Asians: 1970–1980.’’ American Sociological Review

52:802–825.

Muller, Peter O. 1997 ‘‘The Suburban Transformation of the Globalizing American City.: Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 551:44–58.

Reardon, Kenneth M. 1997 ‘‘State and Local Revitalization Efforts in East St. Louis, Illinois.’’ Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science 551:235–247.

Schneider, Mark 1989 The Competitive City: The Political Economy of Suburbia. Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press.

Schnore, Leo, and Hall Winsborough 1972 ‘‘Functional Classification and the Residential Location of Social Classes.’’ In Brian Berry, ed., City Classification Handbook: Methods and Application. New York: Wiley.

Shihadeh, Edward S., and Graham C. Ousey 1996 ‘‘Metropolitan Expansion and Black Social Dislocation: The Link between Suburbanization and Center-City Crime.’’ Social Forces 75:649–666.

Stahura, John 1982 ‘‘Determinants of Suburban Job Change in Retailing, Wholesaling, Service, and Manufacturing Industries: 1960–1972.’’ Sociological Focus 15:347–357.

Stearns, Linda, and John Logan 1986 ‘‘The Racial Structuring of the Housing Market and Segregation in Suburban Areas.’’ Social Forces 65:28–42.

Treadway, Roy C. 1969 ‘‘Social Components of Metropolitan Population Densities.’’ Demography 6:55–74.

Warner, Kee, and Harvey Molotch 1995 ‘‘Power to Build: How Development Persists Despite Local Limits.’’ Urban Affairs Review 30:378–406.

JOHN R. LOGAN

SUICIDE

To many people, suicide—intentional self-murder—is an asocial act of a private individual, yet sociology grew out of Durkheim’s argument ([1897] 1951) that suicide rates are social facts and reflect variation in social regulation and social interaction. The concept of suicide derives from the Latin sui (‘‘of oneself’’) and cide (‘‘a killing’’). Shneidman (1985) defines ‘‘suicide’’ as follows: ‘‘currently in the Western world a conscious act of self-induced annihilation best understood as a multidimensional malaise in a needful individual who defines an issue for which suicide is perceived as the best solution.’’ Several conceptual implications follow from this definition.

Although suicidal types vary, there are common traits that most suicides share to some extent. (Shneidman 1985). Suicides tend to

•Seek a solution to their life problems by dying

•Want to cease consciousness

•Try to reduce intolerable psychological pain

•Have frustrated psychological needs

•Feel helpless and hopeless

•Be ambivalent about dying

•Be perceptually constricted and rigid thinkers

•Manifest escape, egression, or fugue behaviors

•Communicate their intent to commit suicide or die

•Have lifelong self-destructive coping responses (sometimes called ‘‘suicidal careers’’)

Completed suicides must be differentiated from nonfatal suicide attempts, suicide ideation, and suicide talk or gestures. Sometimes one speaks of self-injury, self-mutilation, accident proneness, failure to take needed medications, and the like— where suicide intent cannot be demonstrated—as ‘‘parasuicide.’’ The most common self-destructive behaviors are indirect, such as alcoholism, obesity, risky sports, and gambling. There are also mass suicides (as in Jonestown, Guyana, in 1978 and in Masada in A.D. 72–73) and murder suicides. Individual and social growth probably require some degree of partial self-destruction.

Although most suicides have much in common, suicide is not a single type of behavior. Suicidology will not be an exact science until it specifies its dependent variable. The predictors or causes of suicide vary immensely with the specific type of suicidal outcome. Suicidologists tend to recognize three to six basic types of suicide, each with two or three of its own subtypes (Maris et al. 1992, chap. 4). For example, Durkheim ([1897] 1951) thought all suicides were basically anomic, egoistic, altruistic, or fatalistic. Freud (1917 [1953]) and Menninger (1938) argued that psychoanalytically, all suicides were based on hate or revenge (a ‘‘wish to kill’’); on depression, melancholia, or hopelessness (a ‘‘wish to die’’); or on guilt or shame (a ‘‘wish to be killed’’). Baechler (1979)

added ‘‘oblative’’ (i.e., sacrifice or transfiguration) and ‘‘ludic’’ (i.e., engaging in ordeals or risks and games) suicidal types.

EPIDEMIOLOGY, RATES, AND

PREDICTORS

Suicide is a relatively rare event, averaging 1 to 3 in 10,000 in the general population per year. In 1996 (the most recent year for which U. S. vital statistics are available), there were 31,130 suicides, accounting for about 1.5 percent of all deaths. This amounts to an overall suicide rate of 11.6 per 100,000. Suicide is now the ninth leading cause of death, ranking just ahead of cirrhosis and other liver disease deaths and just behind human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) deaths. Suicide also has been moving up the list of the leading causes of death in this century (Table 1).

Suicide rates in the United States vary considerably by sex, age, and race (Table 2). The highest rates are consistently observed among white males, who constitute roughly 73 percent of all suicides. White females account for about 17 percent of all suicides. American blacks, especially females, rarely commit suicide (except for some young urban males). Some scholars have argued that black suicides tend to be disguised as homicides or accidents. In general, male suicides outnumber female suicides three or four to one. Generally, suicide rates gradually increase with age and then drop off at the very oldest ages. Female suicide rates tend to peak earlier than do those of males. Note in Table 3 that from about 1967 to 1977, there was a significant increase in the suicide rate of 15to 24- year-olds and that suicide rates among the elderly seem to be climbing again.

Typically, marrying and having children protect one against suicide. Usually suicide rates are highest for widows, followed by the divorced and the never-married or single. Studies of suicide rates by social class have been equivocal. Within each broad census occupational category, there are job types with high and low suicide rates. For example, psychiatrists have high suicide rates, but pediatricians and surgeons have low rates. Operatives usually have low rates, but police officers typically have high rates.

The predominant method of suicide for both males and females in 1992 was firearms (Table 4).

Ten Leading Causes of Death in the

United States,

1996 (total of 2,314,690 deaths)

Table 1

SOURCE: Data from U.S. National Center for Health Statistics, 1998.

The second most common method among males is hanging, and among females it is a drug or medicine overdose. Females use a somewhat greater variety of methods than males do. Suicide rates tend to be higher on Mondays and in the springtime (Gabennesch 1988).

Prediction of suicide is a complicated process (Maris et al. 1992). As is the case with other rare events, suicide prediction generates many false positives, such as identifying someone as a suicide when that person in fact is not a suicide. Correctly identifying true suicides is referred to as ‘‘sensitivity,’’ and correctly identifying true nonsuicides is called ‘‘specificity.’’ In a study using common predictors (Table 5) Porkorny (1983) correctly predicted fifteen of sixty-seven suicides among 4,800 psychiatric patients but also got 279 false positives.

Table 5 lists fifteen major predictors of suicide. Single predictor variables seldom correctly identify suicides. Most suicides have ‘‘comorbidity’’ (i.e., several key predictors are involved), and specific predictors vary with the type of suicide and other factors. Depressive disorders and alcoholism are two of the major predictors of suicide. Robins (1981) found that about 45 percent of all

Rates of Completed Suicide per 100,000 Population by Race and Gender, 1996

Table 2

NOTE: *Includes American Indian, Chinese, Hawaiian, Japanese, Filipino, Other Asian or Pacific Islander, and Other.

SOURCE: Data from Centers for Disease Control, 1998.

completed suicides involved either depressed or alcoholic persons. Roughly 15 percent of all those with depressive illness and 18 percent of all alcoholics eventually commit suicide. Repeated depressive illness that leads to hopelessness is especially suicidogenic.

Nonfatal suicide attempts, talk about suicide or dying, and explicit plans or preparations for dying or suicide all increase suicide risk. However, for the paradigmatic suicide (older white males), 85 to 90 percent of these individuals make only one fatal suicide attempt and seldom explicitly communicate their suicidal intent or show up at hospitals and clinics. Social isolation (e.g., having no close friends, living alone, being unemployed, being unmarried) and lack of social support are more common among suicides than among controls. Suicide tends to run in families, and this suggests both modeling and genetic influences. Important biological and sociobiological predictors of suicide have been emerging, especially low levels of central spinal fluid serotonin in the form of 5-HIAA (Maris 1997).

HISTORY, COMPARATIVE STUDIES, AND

SOCIAL SUICIDOLOGISTS

The incidence and study of suicide have a long history and were fundamental to the development

of sociology. The earliest known visual reference to suicide is Ajax falling on his sword (circa 540 B.C.). Of course, it is known that Socrates (about 399 B.C.) drank hemlock. In the Judeo-Christian scriptures there were eleven men (and no women) who died by suicide, most notably Samson, Judas, and Saul. Common biblical motives for suicide were revenge, shame, and defeat in battle. Famous suicides in art history include paintings of Lucretia stabbing herself (after a rape), Dido, and work by Edvard Munch and Andy Warhol.

Suicide varies with culture and ethnicity. Most cultures have at least some suicides. However, suicide is rare or absent among the Tiv of Nigeria, Andaman islanders, and Australian aborigines and relatively infrequent among rural American blacks and Irish Roman Catholics. The highest suicide rates are found in Hungary, Germany, Austria, Scandinavia, and Japan (Table 6). The lowest rates are found in several South American, Pacific Island, and predominantly Roman Catholic countries, including Antigua, Jamaica, New Guinea, the Phillipines, Mexico, Italy, and Ireland.

The sociological study of suicide started with Durkheim ([1897] 1951) and has continued to the present day primarily in the research and publications of the following sociologists: Short, (1954), J.P. Gibbs (1964), J.T. Gibbs (1988), Douglas (1967), Maris (1969, 1981), Phillips (1974), Phillips et al. (1991), Stack (1982), Wasserman (1989), and Pescosolido and Georgianna (1989). It is impossible in an encyclopedia article to do justice to the full account of the sociological study of suicide. For a more complete review, the reader is referred to Maris (1989).

Durkheim ([1897] 1951) claimed that the suicide rate varied inverely with social integration and that suicide types were primarily ego-anomic. However, Durkheim did not operationally define ‘‘social integration.’’ Gibbs and Martin (1964) created the concept of ‘‘status integration’’ to correct this deficiency. They hypothesized that the less frequently occupied status sets would lead to lower status integration and higher suicide rates. Putting it differently, they expected status integration and suicide rates to be negatively associated. In a large series of tests from 1964 to 1988, Gibbs confirmed his primary hypothesis only for occupational statuses, which Durkheim also had said were of central importance.

NOTE: Suicide not reported for individuals under 5 years of age.

SOURCE: Data from Centers for Disease Control, 1995.

Short (Henry and Short 1954) expanded Durkheim’s concept of external and constraining social facts to include interaction with social psychological factors of ‘‘internal constraint’’ (such as strict superego restraint) and frustration-aggres- sion theory. Short reasoned that suicide rates would be highest when external restraint was low and internal restraint was high and that homicide rates would be highest when internal restraint was low and external restraint was high.

A vastly different sociological perspective on suicide originated with the work of enthnomethodologist Douglas. Douglas, in the tradition of Max Weber’s subjective meanings, argued that Durkheim’s reliance on official statistics (such as death certificates) as the data base for studying suicide was fundamentally mistaken (Douglas 1967). Instead, it is necessary to observe the accounts or situated meanings of individuals who are known to be suicidal, not rely on a third-party official such as a coroner or medical examiner who is not a suicide and may use ad hoc criteria to classify a death as a suicide. There are probably as many official statistics as there are officials.

Maris (1981) extended Durkheim’s empirical survey of suicidal behaviors, but not just by measuring macrosocial and demographic or structural

variables. Instead, Maris focused on actual interviews (‘‘psychological autopsies’’) of the intimate survivors of suicides (usually their spouses) and compared those cases with control or comparison groups of natural deaths and nonfatal suicide attempts. Maris claimed that suicides had long ‘‘suicidal careers’’ involving complex mixes of biological, social, and psychological factors.

Phillips (1974) differed with Durkheim’s contention that suicides are not suggestible or contagious. In a pioneering paper in the American Sociological Review, he demonstrated that front-page newspaper coverage of celebrity suicides was associated with a statistically significant rise in the national suicide rate seven to ten days after a publicized suicide. The rise in the suicide rate was greater the longer the front-page coverage, greater in the region where the news account ran, and higher if the stimulus suicide and the person supposedly copying the suicide were similar. In a long series of similar studies, Phillips et al. (1991) expanded and documented the suggestion effect for other types of behavior and other groups. For example, the contagion effect appears to be especially powerful among teenagers. Nevertheless, contagion accounts only for a 1 to 6 percent increase over the normal expected suicide rates in a population.