SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY
Take Home Exam One Questions 5 and 6
By
Shylynn E. Calbert
MW 5:45-7pm
DR. FORD
5. Discuss abortion using applications of Durkheim?s conception of social facts. How would Durkheim research the issue and explain it in sociological terms?
Durkheim describes social facts as anyway of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual and something that can be measured whether fixed or not (Johnson). Examples of social facts according to Durkheim were social institutions, such as kinship and marriage, political organizations and all other institutions of society that require that we take them into account in our everyday interactions with other members of our societies (Coser). Deviating from the norms
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The first type of suicide that can be correlated with abortion is egoistic. Durkheim labels egoism as the low end of the integration scale (Coser), for instance unmarried people. Egoistic or individualistic suicide transpires when conscience is weak, few common principles and sentiments are present, interaction is limited, detached from society, and commitment is to self-interests rather than to those of the collectivity (Coser). For example, an 18 year old is in her first trimester of pregnancy, the father has alienated himself from the equation, her peer group are continuing on with life without her and in her cognizance the only choice is to terminate the pregnancy and her standard way of living will again become normal. For some that may be of certainty, but for others not so. In a documented case, an eighteen year old committed suicide 3 days after having a suction abortion (Johnson), just like Durkheim had his participants write suicide notes so the living could understand their actions, the 18 year old wrote a letter stating that she could not live with the feelings of guilt for killing her baby (Johnson) and the only way to recompense herself and her unborn child is to compel suicide on self. Adolescent girls are ten times more likely to attempt suicide, if they have …show more content…
Post-Modern American society is predominantly anomic. Explain why Durkheim would either agree or disagree with this statement. Give specific examples to back up your points. Durkheim introduced the term anomic, which is a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideas. When a social system is in a state of anomie, the social structure (common values and common meanings) (Coser) are no longer in understandings or accepting, and new values and meanings are not developing (Coser). Durkheim would agree that postmodern America is more anomic than modern American. Social change might generate anomie either in the whole society or only some parts of an individual?s life (Coser), for example cohabitating households and divorced couples. In addition, the realization of human desires depends upon the resources at hand; the poor are limited to necessities of life (Coser), like Flint, Michigan?s water crisis. Anomie is most popular in lower class and absolute poverty. Modernism was the belief that all systems were working toward a goal (Coser) and postmodernism was the response to modernism for better systems and structures
In contrast, Durkheim’s social methodology relied on the treatment of social facts as objective facts (Durkheim in Calhoun 2012: 201), discounting subjective interpretation. He emphasized that social facts exist prior to thoughts, in other words, social facts existed before being defined and judged, and were produced organically. Under his methodology, social scientists were to observe the essence of these social facts directly, before eliminating traditional and general values in any attempt to study the
Sociology is the study of society and the interactions that occur within society itself. There are numerous methods of analyzing societies and the way the function, nonetheless, most methods fall in micro and macro level theories. Micro level theories allow sociologist to study smaller relationships such as individual or compact groups of people. On the other hand, macro level studies permit for larger scale investigations to take place. With both of these theories there are three theoretical perspectives used in sociology. Micro level theories include symbolic interactionism which focuses in interactions done with language and gestures and the means which allow such interactions to take place. Macro level theories include structural functionalism
The concepts I have learned about throughout the first half of this class have been interesting, some more than others. There are five that are the most meaningful to me. They are global perspective, culture, society, peer group, and reference group.
One of the sociological theories is conflict theory. The conflict theory deals with people's level on wealth, or class. The conflict theory says that social change is beneficial, contrary to focuses on social order. In the story of the woman and her children, the conflict theory plays a big role on the situation. Police of higher class are threatening the homeless woman. The conflict theory is a constant struggle of people of higher class over powering people of lower class, or the weaker. The police are trying to over power the woman by telling her to leave. Even though the woman and her children were doing nothing wrong, the police used their power to tell her to leave. Also the people of the area showed their conflict theory by telling the police officers to come. They must have felt embarrassed to have a woman of such lower class to be around them. They used their power of class to have the woman removed from their community. The woman wants to be there because she has no home and it is a good community to be in, but the people look at it as an embarrassment to them because it makes their area look bad for someone of such lower class to be around them. The conflict theory is unique to all other theories because it separates people into categories determined by their wealth and standards. Their status is the element that categorizes them, weather it is class, race, or gender. The conflict theory do not always use class, race, and gender all at once. In this situation race and gender is not a main issue, although gender could be a reason, but it would fall under the feminist theory. This story is mainly dealing with class. Through all this conflict the woman feels over powered and domina...
Durkheim was concerned with studying and observing the ways in which society functioned. His work began with the idea of the collective conscious, which are the general emotions and opinions that are shared by a society and which shape likeminded ideas as to how the society will operate (Desfor Edles and Appelrouth 2010:100-01). Durkheim thus suggested that the collective ideas shared by a community are what keeps injustices from continuing or what allows them to remain.
Durkheim wanted to better understand the value of cultural and social traits and wanted to show how they met their own biological needs. His hypothesis was better understood when two forms of functionalism were being developed in between the years
1 Most sociologists interpret social life from one of three major theoretical frameworks or theories: symbolic interactionism, functional analysis, or conflict theory. Describe the major points and key concepts of each framework. List at least one sociologist who is identified with each of these three frameworks.
Abortion has been an ongoing issue since the 1820s where people have been debating should abortion be acceptable or should be banned this issue has caused two different groups of form. These two groups are know...
A Study of Suicide: An overview of the famous work by Emile Durkheim, Ashley Crossman, 2009, http://sociology.about.com/od/Works/a/Suicide.htm, 25/12/2013
This section of sociology focuses on the impact society has on the educational facilities and also how schooling affects individuals. Some of the well-known people for this branch include Durkheim, Sumner, and A.W.Green.
He considered social facts to "consist of representations and actions" which meant that "they cannot be confused with organic phenomena, nor with physical phenomena, which have no existence save in and through the individual consciousness (Durkheim, Émile (1982). Durkheim says that a social fact is a thing that many people do very similarly because the socialized community that they belong to has influenced them to do these things(Emile Durkheim, 1982). His studies are also an entry point into the study of social meaning and the way that apparently identical individual acts often cannot be classified empirically. Social acts such an apparently private and individual act such as suicide, in this modern view, are always seen and classified by social actors. Discovering the social facts about such acts, it follows, is generally neither possible nor desirable, but discovering the way individuals perceive and classify particular acts is what offers insight.
This type of society Durkheim believed would not lead to “Anomie”. Organic is more complex because of specialization. Modern Industrial society became more specialized in their laws, jobs and technology. This requires society to depend on others for ones existence which causes strains in ones relationships and unity becomes more difficult. Durkheim believed that this phenomenon increased the division of labor in society which led to “Anomie”.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. (J. A. Spaulding, & G. Simpson, Trans.)
Comparing Weber's and Durkheim's Methodological Contributions to Sociology This essay will be examining the methodological contributions both Durkheim and Weber have provided to sociology. It will briefly observe what Positivists are and how their methodologies influence and affect their research. It will also consider what interpretative sociology is, and why their type of methodology is used when carrying out research. It will analyse both Durkheim's study of Suicide and also Webers study of The Protestant work ethic, and hopefully establish how each methodology was used for each particular piece of research, and why. Emile Durkhiem, in sociology terminology is considered to be a Functionalist, in addition to also being a Positivist, however, strictly speaking, Durkheim was not a Positivist.
The film Modern Times directed by Charlie Chaplin is a silent era film filled with sound effects that shows the struggles and challenges of living in a modern industrial society. The Director Charlie Chaplin happens to be the central character referred to as Little Tramp along with his friend Ellen also known as Gamine, an orphan and homeless young lady. The technical code of the film is black and white but very humorous. The film portrays social issues such as slavery, poverty, unemployment, strikes, and economic imbalances just to name a few. These issues occurred during the period of the great depression in America.