Kushner and Sterk Respond

We thank Carpiano and Kelly for restating, albeit in their own words, some of the arguments we made. We are, however, a bit perplexed by the concerns they raise. We did not dispute that Durkheim constructed the categories of altruism and fatalism. Rather, we demonstrated that, given Durkheim’s typology, he misclassified military suicides as altruistic and trivialized women’s suicidal behavior. He could have used his data on military suicide to reveal the importance of social integration in suicide. In addition, he could have examined the high rate of suicidal behavior among women as further evidence of the importance of fatalistic suicide. But Durkheim did neither. His belief that egoism and alienation were responsible for the decline in what he labeled “social cohesion” led him to ignore the role of social integration in the majority of suicides. No reader of his Suicide could possibly conclude that Durkheim believed that social integration was an important cause of modern suicide or suicidal behavior. We agree that social cohesion and social capital should not be conflated—thus our title, “The Limits of Social Capital.” We did report the extent to which recent public health writers have conflated the 2 concepts, and we criticized that conflation throughout our article. We are also skeptical of the way social capital has been constructed in many recent public health studies, because this construct has been the basis for downplaying the crucial role of class and of political and financial capital in influencing population health. That Durkheim made many useful contributions to social theory is not in dispute. However, the way his work has been cited, unquestioned, to buttress vague constructs such as “social capital” cannot be ignored. We are confident that when Carpiano and Kelly reread our article they will be relieved to find the extent to which their concerns about our interpretations are unfounded

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