Archives of Suicide Research 3: 133–135, 1997.c 1997 Kluwer Academic Publishers. Printed in the Netherlands.

Comment

Modernization and suicide: A comment on: ‘Anempirical examination of Thomas Masaryk’s theory ofsuicide’

STEVEN STACKWayne State University, Detroit, MI, U.S.A.

Accepted 5 February 1996

The phenomenon of modernization is a multidimensional construct. Itconsists of at least three interrelated dimensions: secularization, urbaniza-tion, and industrialization (Stack & Danigelis, 1985). Secularization refers toa transition in society’s cultural system from the realm of the unquestioned,homogeneous, religious or sacred beliefs, to a questioned, rational-scientific,heterogeneous belief system. Urbanization refers to the shift from an agrariansociety to a society where people increasingly live in large population centers.Industrialization refers to a process of an intensification in the division oflabor, of an increased reliance on machines to produce goods, and a shiftform agriculture to industry in the societal occupational structure. Lester’stest of a modernization theory focuses on the formulation by Masaryk (1970),a perspective that gives considerable weight to the process of secularization,or ‘irreligiosity’.

The measurement of secularization/irreligiosity over the course of thepresent century is a difficult task given the unavailability of data. Lester’suse of time as a substitute for trends in irreligiosity is somewhat problematic.More generally, time might be used as a substitute for the modernizationprocess per se. Time may be related to industrialization and urbanization aswell as being related to secularization. If so, we cannot say for sure if the linkbetween time and suicide is due solely to secularization, as in Lester’s paper.While historical work on suicide takes place in a climate that is not data-rich,caution does need to be exercised in measuring key social processes.

Time, or simply year, may indeed be a good substitute for irreligiosity.But this is only true to the extent that irreligiosity follows a linear trend linesimilar to time, a line with slope of one. The change in a time variable isexactly the same from year to year. It is unlikely that this would be true ofannual changes in modernization indicators.

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Modernization indicators often reach, for example, a ceiling where theirrate of change begins to approach zero. For example, percent urban reachesa ceiling point in mid modernization. Industrialization, measured in termsof the percent of the labor force in agriculture, or the stock of telephonesper capita, can also eventually flatten out. Irreligiosity, measured perhaps interms of the percentage of the population with no religious affiliation or interms of church attendance, may also reach a low point beyond which timewill bring only diminishing effects. In such contexts, a time variable may notfully capture the modernization process.

In some nations, secularization may reverse. There may be a reli-gious revival which may reverse a trend towards decreased religiosity. Thepresumed long-term downswing in religiosity can change somewhat (unlikelong-term trends in urbanization which are very unlikely to backslide). Thisand other patterns in long-term historical trends and swings may not becaptured by a simple linear time variable. If, for example, a long-term down-swing in religion is followed by a long-term upswing given a religious revival,if all else is equal, the suicide rate may go up and then down. The correlationwith time could be essentially zero. However, if annual estimates of religios-ity were available, the correlation between them and suicide would be verystrong.

This is all, essentially, speculation. Lester’s findings may very well standthe test of future analyses which might incorporate annual estimates of themodernization process. His work incorporates annual suicide data for 12nations over a long period of history. Future investigators might build on thiswork and establish whether or not the results will be replicated for more directmeasures of modernization.

His results for Finland where the correlation between time and suicide waspositive and strong (r = 0.89) are similar to past research linking urbanizationwith suicide in Finland (Stack, 1993). Using the Finish data for the twentiethcentury I computed a coefficient for a time variable in order to see how itwould compare to the index of urbanization over the same 85 years. Thesecoefficients were, for time: b = 0.208, se 0.009, t = 21.192, BETA = 0.92,and for urbanization: b = 0.316, se = 0.019, t = 16.3, BETA = 0.87. Theresults indicate a significant relationship with suicide for both indicators ofmodernization, but it is stronger for time than urbanization.

In any event, Lester’s current results, while somewhat different than thosein a previous study (Pope et al., 1984) which used a modernization indexbased on three related variables (none of which were time), have one thingin common with the previous research: the modernization process does notalways bring an increase in suicide. Sometimes it is associated with a decrease

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in suicide. Future research is needed to adequately solve this interesting splitin the findings.

References

Lester, D. (1996). An empirical examination of Thomas Masaryk’s theory of suicide. Archivesof Suicide Research, 3, 125–131.

Masaryk, T. G. (1881). Der Selbstmord als sociale Massenerscheinung der modernen Civili-sation. Vienna: Konegen. Trans. W. B. West & R. G. Bateson, Suicide and the meaning ofcivilization. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1970.

Pope, W., Danigelis, N. & Stack, S. (1984). The effect of modernization on suicide. Paper readat the annual meetings of the American Sociological Association, San Antonio.

Stack, S. (1993). The effect of modernization on suicide in Finland: 1800–1984. SociologicalPerspective, 36, 137–148.

Stack, S., & Danigelis, N. (1985). Modernization and gender suicide rates. In R. Tomasson(Ed.), Comparative social research, Vol. 8 (pp. 203–216). Greenwich, CT: GreenwoodPress.

Address for correspondence: S. Stack, Department of Criminal Justice, Wayne University,Detroit, MI 48202-0000, U.S.A.