Until the time of Emile Durkheim (1858-1917), sociology was viewed as part of history and economics. Durkheim, who grew up in France, wanted to change this, and his major professional goal was to get sociology recognized as a separate academic discipline (Coser 1977), He achieved this goal in 1887 when the University of Bordeaux awarded him the world's first academic appointment in sociology. Durkheim's second goal was to show how social forces affect people's behavior. To accomplish this, he conducted rigorous research. Comparing the suicide rates of several European countries, Durkheim (1897/1966) found that each country has a different suicide rate-and that these rates remain about the same year after after. He also found that different groups within a country have different suicide rates and that these, too, remain stable from year to year. Males are more likely than females to kill themselves, Protestants more likely than Catholics or Jews, and the unmarried more likely than the married. From these observations, Durkheim concluded that suicide is not what it appears-simply a matter of individuals here and there deciding to take their lives for personal reasons. Instead, social factors underlie suicide, which is why a group's rate remains fairly constant year after year. In his search for the key social factors in suicide, Durkheim identified social integration, the degree to which people are tied to their social groups: He found that people who have weaker social ties are more likely to commit suicide. This, he said, explains why Protestants, males, and the unmarried have higher suicide rates. This is how it works: Protestantism encourages greater freedom of thought and action; males are more independent than females; and the unmarried lack the ties and responsibilities that come with marriage. In other words, members of these groups have fewer of the social bonds that keep people from committing suicide. In Durkheim's term, they have less social integration. Despite the many years that have passed since Durkheim did his research, the principle he uncovered still applies: People who are less socially integrated have higher rates of suicide. Even today, more than a century later, those same groups that Durkheim identified-Protestants, males, and the unmarried-are more likely to kill themselves. It is important for you to understand the principle that was central in Durkheim's research: Human behavior cannot be understood only in terms of the individual; we must always examine the social forces that affect people's lives. Suicide, for example, appears to be such an intensely individual act that psychologists should study it, not sociologists. As Durkheim stressed, however if we look at human behavior only in reference to the individual, we miss its social basis.