... through people's interactions. However, is not really suicide itself that is the real centre of the debate but the methodological issues that surround it. To begin, a functionalist's analysis of deviance, such as Durkheims, begins with society as a whole. They look for the cause of deviance in the nature of society instead of the biological or psychological nature of the individual. He believed that that crime is a basic part of healthy society because some crime helps social unity and brings about social change but nevertheless he admits too much crime is dysfunctional as society may collapse and can have damaging effects. On the other hand, we have the phenomenological approach (interpretive sociologists) and in contrast they stress the creation of the world through interaction. They examine aspects of deviance which have been largely ignored by other approaches. They look at the interaction between deviants and those who ...

See this essay or coursework document in full right now