Part IV EMILE DURKHEIM

 Saw sociology as a new science that can elucidate traditional philosophical questions by examining them in an empirical manner.  Must study social life with same objectivity as natural sciences (Comte).

 “Study social facts as things” Social life could be analyzed as rigorously as objects or events in the nature.  Durkheim’s themes  Sociology as an empirical science  The rise of the individual and formation of a new social order  The sources and character of moral authority in society

 Sociology is the study of social facts.  Rather than applying sociological methods to the study of individuals, sociology should examine social facts that shape our actions as individuals (such as the state of the economy or the influence of religion)  Individualism that resisted all social limits is socially and personally destructive. Individualism is a social good only when it occurs within a social and moral framework.

 There is more to society than the actions and interests of its individual members.  Social institutions and social forms (ie. social movements, family) outlive the individuals who inhabit them and have a reality of their own.  The “social” is a level of reality in its own right and cannot be reduced to mere action nor to aggregate of individual consciousnesses.  Society is more than the sum of its parts!

 Durkheim’s liberalism fused respect for individualism with moral order and civic virtue.  Economic freedom, only if socially regulated  Individualism, only if individual is rooted in social institutions  Cultural pluralism, only in a society that had a clear moral center. Social vision that integrates spirit of liberalism (individualism), radicalism (social justice) and conservatism (moral order).

 Social Facts  Ways of acting, thinking, feeling that are external to individuals and have their own reality outside the lives and perceptions of individual people.  They exercise a coercive power over individuals (though not recognized as coercive, people generally comply with social facts freely, as if they are acting out of choice).

 People follow patterns that are general to their society. What if they don’t?  How do social facts constrain human action?  Outright punishment (crime)  Social rejection (unacceptable behavior)  Misunderstanding (misuse of language)

 How can one study social facts?  Hard to observe directly  Their properties must be revealed indirectly by analyzing their effects considering attempts made at their expression (laws, religious texts, written rules)  Abandon prejudice and ideology (a mind free of preconceived ideas and open to evidence).

 Changes transforming society  Social morality and solidarity SOLIDARITY  What holds the society together and keeps it from descending into chaos  How individuals successfully integrate into social groups  How individuals are regulated by a set of shared values and customs

 An analysis of social change  The advent of industrial era meant the emergence of a new type of solidarity  Mechanical solidarity  Organic solidarity

 Traditional cultures with a low division of labor  Many members involved in similar occupations  Bound by common experience and shared beliefs  Strength of shared belief is repressive (community punishes those who challenge conventional ways of life)  Grounded in consensus and similarity of belief.

 Industrialization and urbanization lead to a growing division of labor (breakdown of former form of solidarity) in advanced societies  Specialization of tasks  Increasing social differentiation  Held together by economic interdependence  Recognition of the importance of others’ contributions  Economic reciprocity and mutual dependency replace shared beliefs in creating social consensus.

 Rapid social change gives rise to social difficulties  Disruptive effects on traditional lifestyles, morals, religious beliefs and everyday patterns  Absence of new clear values  These unsettling conditions lead to anomie (feelings of aimlessness, dread and despair provoked by modern social life)  Lack of meaning in the absence of traditional moral controls and standards (religion) due to modern social development

 A calculated and provocative decision with two main purposes:  Establish sociology as a recognized social science Suicide, an act explained by individual psychology, is actually a social fact. First ever Professor of Sociology in an academic establishment (Sorbonne, The University of Paris, 1913)  Show social dangers of unbridled individualism  Does not deny that psychological distress prompts taking of own life, however, social conditions provide the suicidal disposition.

 Even though individuals see themselves as exercising free will and choice, their behaviors are socially patterned and shaped.  Even a highly personal act like suicide is influenced by what happens in the social world.  First sociological analysis, previous explanations resorted to race, climate or mental disorder to explain likelihood of suicide.

 Suicide is a social fact that can be explained by other social facts.  Suicide rate is more than aggregate of individual suicides – a phenomenon with patterned properties.  Certain categories of people are more likely to commit suicide.  Men – women  Protestant – Catholic  Single – married  Wealthy - poor

 Lower suicide rates during times of war.  Higher rates during times of economic change or instability.  There are social forces external to the individual that affect suicide rates.  Social solidarity  Social integration  Social regulation

 People who are strongly integrated into the social groups, and whose desires and aspirations are regulated by social norms are less likely to commit suicide.  Suicide types according to the presence or absence of integration and regulation:  Egoistic  Anomic  Altruistic  Fatalistic

 Egoistic Suicide  low integration in society  individual is isolated  ties to a group are weakened or broken Religion Marriage Wartime

 Anomic Suicide  Lack of social regulation  People rendered normless as a result of rapid change or instability  Lack of a reference point for norms and desires  Loss of balance between people’s circumstances and their desires. Economic upheaval Divorce

 Altruistic Suicide  Individual is over-integrated  Social bonds too strong  Society valued more than self  Mechanical solidarity prevails Kamikaze pilots Suicide bombers

 Fatalistic Suicide  Little contemporary relevance  Individual over-regulated by society  Oppression results in feeling of powerlessness before society or fate Dictatorships

 Suicide rates vary between societies but show regular patterns within societies over time.  Durkheim took this as evidence that there are consistent social forces that influence suicide rates.  An examination of suicide rates reveals how general social patterns can be detected within individual actions.

 Critical points  Uncritical use of official statistics  Dismissal of non-social influences  Classifying all types of suicide together

 Conflict theories  Structures within society  Divisions in society  Power, inequality, struggle

 Symbolic interactionism  Details of interpersonal interaction  How that is used to make sense of behavior  Ignoring larger issues of power and structure

 Functionalism  Society is a complex system whose various parts work together to produce stability and solidarity.  Functions of institutions and social practices  Organiz analogy  Moral consensus (when most people share the same values)  Order and balance as the normal state of society  Merton (manifest / latent functions / dysfunctions)  Stressing factors that leading to social cohesion at the expense of those producing division and conlict