Towards a Push– Pull Theoretical Understanding in the Sociology of Suicide: Revisiting What We Know and What We Can Explore

Abstract

The increasing prevalence of suicide in the Philippines necessitates the utilization of various disciplines to understand the phenomenon. This article attempts to contribute to this endeavor from a sociological perspective. The paper starts with a review of the wealth of theories that Sociology has to offer in explaining suicide from centuries past to the
present, covering pre-Durkheimian theories all the way to Durkheim’s contemporaries and those coming from the Interpretivist paradigm. The paper then proceeds to propose a new framework with which to explain the phenomenon borne from the synthesis of two theories not of suicide but rather of criminology: Agnew’s General Strain theory and Hirschi’s
Social Bonds theory.