Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)Division of Labour in SocietyRules of Sociological Method and Study of...

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Jack (0863549), William (0863591), Lydia (0659193)

• similarity of individuals same beliefs + DOL (basic level)• associated with repressive laws

• acts repressed by punishments• crimes offend individuals ‘universally’ • Conscience collective: collective values (social norms)• act criminal “because” it offends conscience collective • defined in terms of conscience collective

• emotional reaction

• Individual: basis of the passionate vengeance vs. most crimes came from religion

• E.D.: offenses to religion = offenses to society itself

• Legal repression is organized.

• submitting criminal activity a collective body judgment (development of a criminal court)

• a reaction of passionate feeling, graduated in intensity, society exerts mediation of an organized body over members (who violated rules of conduct)

• repressive law vs. civil law (Restitutory)• crimes affect conscience collective• types of offenses (repressive law) offend transcendent values• criminal activity reinforces the conscience collective • organization into courts a division of labor response

• Restitutory laws: restore what was previously • Not part of the common consciousness specific areas (e.g.

contract law)

• 1) Negative Laws: link people to things not people to people

• stock market trading floor?• needs other laws to govern the transactions

• 2) Positive Laws: link people to one another uniting from DOL (e.g. domestic law)

• - WHAT can happen • - NORMAL form of FUNCTION • Positive law clearest (for E.D.) CONTRACTS.

- Simple: do the same thing- Composite: a task divided into dissimilar things - contract = exchange one person + what they do another

person + what they do DOL interdependencies

• links individual to society DIRECTLY• beliefs and sentiments common to all • collective type • Strong: ideas common to all people outweigh ideas common

to individuals. • Maximum: collective consciousness completely envelops our

total consciousness • individual does not belong to himself • the Borg (Star Trek): part of a collective.

The Borg (Star Trek) - Bill Bishop

Organic Solidarity • links individual to society via sub-parts of society • "system of different and special functions united by definite

relationships." • "higher animals. each organ special characteristics

and autonomy: greater the unity of the organism more marked the individualization of the parts." (p.85)

2 types of solidarityI<----------------------------------------------------------------------------------->I

Mechanical (Hunters, gatherers) Vs. Organic (modern industrial sectors)

The division of labor transformations in social solidarity (mechanical

organic)

• expansion of DOL increase in social interaction (functional differentiation)

• more individuals in contact with one another able to mutually act + react upon one another = drawing together and active exchange = dynamic density

• division of labor (directly proportional to) dynamic density of society

• 1) Dynamic Density (increase) 2) VOLUME (increase) *a fundamental cause a particular mechanism (darwinian competition)

1) Population concentration 2) transformation and development of towns 3) speed and means of communication and transmission - cyclic process

(matters when increase in density)DOL progresses continuously (social development) societies more dense + voluminous

room for technological shiftsBut WHY does this occur? Darwinian competition?

Durkheim’sRules of Sociological Method and the Study of Suicide

CollectivenessExternalityConstraints

—not the other way around—e.g. collective emotion

1. Existing organization or structure E.g.: “the church-member finds the beliefs and

practices of his religious life ready-made at birth”

2. Existing Relationships/Systems Language, currency, profession, etc.

——Legal system

——Moral obligation

1. All preconceptions must be eradiated 2. Objective, clear definition The definition does not depend on the

researcher, but on the nature of things E.g: Crime as “punished actions”

3. Investigate social facts from collective characteristics

Family: legal structure--the right of succession

Customs and popular beliefs: proverbs and epigrams

• “There is for each people a collective force of a definite amount of energy , impelling men to self-destruction. The victim’s acts which at first seem to express only his personal temperament are really the supplement and prolongation of a social condition which they express externally”

• Egoistic , Altruistic, Anomic, Fatalistic

Pre-dominantly Catholic countries < protestant ones.

married persons < Unmarried individuals (of comparable age)

The greater the number of children in the family, the lower the suicide rate.

In times of national political crisis and war, Suicide rates decline.

Hindu: widows commit ritual suicideHigh rates of suicide among the army

--Both a quick downward or uplift mobility lead to loss of norms in previous life status

--Rich people are affected more --“poverty protects against suicide because it

is a restraint in itself”

Integration

Regulation Change in Society

Solidarity

Egoistic Low _ _ Low

Altruistic High _ _ High

Anomie _ Weak Rapid _

Fatalistic _ Strong Almost no change

_

Durkheim’sElementary Forms of Religious Life

Primary characteristic of religion: It divides the world into the two domains of sacred and profane.

Totemic emblem,

Totemic entity

Human clan members

--Such authority when experienced in group situations is able to take people beyond themselves

--The sacred is that something.

--In totemism the sacred totemic emblem symbolises the clan: the sacred reality is actually the clan itself.

• Positive: making things happen

Macro–Society V.S. Micro-Individuals Homo Duplex: “On the one hand is our individuality – and more

particularly, our body in which it is based; on the other is everything in us that expresses something other than ourselves.”

“Constitutional Duality of Human Nature”:• THE BODY = THE PROFANE• THE SOUL = THE SACRED

1. Sensory Activityo Egoistico Unique to Individualo Cannot detach sensation from organism One merely expresses our organisms and the objects around

us, it is sensory and we cannot separate ourselves from it

2. Conceptual Thoughto Can be Sharedo “Held in Common to a plurality of men.” The second originates from society and surpasses, shapes and

directs our seemingly random ends

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

• Question - what is the glue that binds society together? How is social order possible? (Durkheim: solidarity as the moral bonds)

• Key concepts - Social solidarity, social cohesion, social facts, anomie

• Focus/lens - society is possible because people share norms and values and a sense of how the different components of social life are integrated into a larger picture

• Sociology’s primary subject of study “social facts”.

• E.g. church, state, schools• E.g. morality, collective

conscience, social currents “ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual + power of coercion control

• Shared religious beliefs, values, +norms binding individuals together + formation of a society.

ConclusionConclusion

Emile Durkheim

Mechanical ties of solidarity

Organic ties of solidarity

ANOMIE

Functionalism: the whole is more than the sum of its parts

An organic model of society

• the shift towards modernity disrupts individuals’ sense of social identity and belonging

• This can lead to a loss of meaning, or social displacement

• This can be measured in social facts such as suicide, rising crime levels, social disorder, revolution

• Can we find a new social ‘glue’ that can hold us together?

The scream

Edvard Munch (1893) ‘The Scream’

• ‘ The process of change tends to develop situations in which the old norms no longer restrain individual behaviour and new norms are either absent or unacceptable. Such anomie, or normlessness, give rise to personal disorganization and a specific type of suicide that Durkheim calls anomic suicide’

• Hinkle and Hinkle, The Development of Modern Sociology, Random House, NY, 1968, 51Homer Simpson (1993)

‘The Scream’

Now that traditional externalauthorities such as religion are in decline, how will theindividual be inculcated with the compliance and sociabilitythat makes society possibleDoh!

• People: individuated Vs. more dependent on society

• Different social roles• Beliefs shared not sufficient to fulfill tasks• Vs. dependent on everyone else to fulfill our

tasks vitally dependent

• Is “organic solidarity” a different way of saying that contracts and exchange (based on self-interests) comprise the foundation of social order?

• Is Durkheim repeating the theory of Adam Smith and Spencer? Why?

• NO• Contracts self-interests transient and

external in nature• organic solidarity: prior to individual

exchanges and contracts something more than self-interests

• Social and moral authority in organic solidarity + its restitutory law

• Durkheim: analogies to biology and evolution of organism

• A social phenomena discussed in terms of its function in a society

• Some argue Durkheim is a functionalist

• Durkheim: functional arguments Vs.causal explanationsFunction of DOL does not explain its existence historical

explanationUnintended consequence remains in existence binds

societydivision of labor – Function: as the basis of organic solidarity – Cause: material and moral density (concentration of people,

transportation and communication, complexity of contact…)

• Some argue that Durkheim understated the level of interdependence and reciprocity in pre-industrial societies and greatly overstated the role of repressive law in such societies. Do you agree? Why?

• No need to regard the two models of integration as empirically existing realities.

• Ideal types (in Weberian sense).• Possibly both forms are always present.• Different comparative weights and

relationships.

• ED has made it sounds like as if there is no problem associated with DOL. All is good, and entirely functional.

• In societies where there are highly developed DOL and a balance among system integration as well as social integration, things would work efficiently.

• But were/are there problems with DOL?• What was Durkheim’s response?

• Problems with the DOL are not systematic with the DOL result from abnormal forms of DOL

1) Class conflict: industrialization (developed too quickly) vs. economic enterprises (not yet developed values and rules)

2) Forced DOL: people positions unsuitable talents/ abilities (e.g. base on inheritance)

3) Managerial deficiency enterprise not organized to get the best out of its members (solidarity grows more skilled the workers?)

Integration VS RegulationEgoistic suicide is related to the growth of

individualism in contemporary societies, therefore it is hardly avoidable

Anomic suicide derives from the lack of moral regulation. It is pathological, and therefore not inevitable.

Social Integration and regulation are necessary for individual life

However, too strong regulation also leads to losing individual life value

Finding a balance between societal and individual claims.

• Marx – conflict between technical progress and growing alienation of working class

• Weber – benefits of rationality against stifling of human creativity (the iron cage)

• Durkheim: growing interdependence and individuality, yet more normlessness (anomie)

• concerned with many other contradictions in modernity as well.

E.g. Weber: triumph of rationality Vs. “disenchantment” of the world or our life it brought about…

• value-judgments and sociology?

• What would be the possible views among Marx , Weber and Durkheim when they look at education and crime?

Discussion: Durkheim, Weber and Marx on education

• Durkheim, appropriate human capital ensures the functioning of the social system

• Weber, Andrew Hopkins and labelling theory‘Teachers expectations can significantly affect their pupils’ performance’. As a consequence we often end up with a ‘self-fulfilling prophesy’R. Rosenthal, and L. Jacobsen (1968), Pygmalion in the Classroom, NY, Holt Rinehart and Winston.

• Marx, Andrew Hopkins and the reproduction of class from cradle to grave and Marginson on the ‘marketisation’ (or ‘commodification’) of your education

Discussion: Durkheim, Weber and Marx on crime

• Durkheim – crime is ‘an integrative element in any healthy society’ (Rules of Sociological Method, p. 98)

• Weber – ‘Deviance is not a quality that lies in behavior itself, but in the interaction between the person who commits the act and those who respond to it’ (Becker, p. 14)

• Marx - the laws of every epoch reflect the interests of the ruling class

‘Stealing the Common’The law locks up the man or womanWho steals a goose from off the common;But leaves the greater villain looseWho steals the common from the goose

Grosz, ‘The court of the ruling class’

Marx• DOL each man has a particular, exclusive

sphere of activity, which is forced upon him cannot escape.

• communist society nobody has one exclusive sphere of activity to hunt (morning), fish (afternoon), rear cattle (evening)……criticise after dinner

Durkheim determine moral character of DOL• What is “moral”? – everything that is a source of solidarity,

forces man to take account of other people, to regulate his actions (vs. his own egoism).

• DOL undermine/enhance social solidarity?

Agency Structure

Weber Durkheim

• Buddha: all distinctions are false• useful analytical devices• we can talk about the differences between

Weber and Durkheim backed up by textual evidences

• no perfect category/distinction that is the “right” one

• Economic relations and structures a society’s political and cultural structures.

• People enter economic relations: independent of their will + divided into different classes based on such relations.

• Class struggle driving force of social change

• Sociology start from understanding the individual actors + the motives and meaning they attribute to their actions

• Individuals’ actions not only driven by their material interests also by their values, beliefs, and worldviews.

• social actions have multiple motives social relationship and structure need to be understood from multiple dimensions.

• Sociology’s primary subject of study “social facts”. – church, state, schools – morality, collective conscience, social currents “ways of

acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual+ power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.

• Shared religious beliefs, values, and norms essential to binding individuals together + formation of a

society.

• It is useful and valuable to discuss the different focuses and even some of the conflicting views hold by the thinkers.

• One just needs to be also sensitive to the over-simplification that goes with it.