Sociological Theory from Durkheim to Weber and Mead and Hall Sociological Theory/SOC-3310 Winter 2001 Take-home Final Durkheim, Marx, Weber, Mead, Stuart Hall A. 1) According to Durkheim, what produces anomie in society? (10) Durkheim focuses on the stability of society, and discusses the social causes of suicide. His work shows how ideology contributes to stability, and he describes abnormal conditions as anomie. Durkheim states, "in normal conditions the collective order is regarded as just by the great majority of persons …[b]ut when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this influence [of limiting desires]" What this means, is the dysfunctional and unbalanced state the populous mass has when there is rapid change in society, for better of worse. Anomie is the product of transition that leads to the incapability to know what is 'right' and what is 'wrong'. This is the consequence of the people's solidarity in society, which suggests that laws benefit everyone to the same degree. Thus, the loss of laws, which is also the loss of limits, causes a loss of comprehension. Anomie, in its literal sense means "a lack of norms", a condition in which society has when society has no norms. Durkheim refers directly to a state of economic turmoil, which he describes as "juridical and moral anomie in which economic life is actually found" . Juridical and moral anomie is describing the state a society has when there is an absence of laws, or a confusion of laws (juridical), and when the masses feel they have a lack of norms in terms of morality (moral). In order to understand Durkheim, one needs to assert the fact... ... middle of paper ... ...rm to express individuality as an "I", affects the "me", and the collective representation through interaction. As Mead suggests that interaction cause one to re-create the patterns of society. As raising a child can have different effects on the child depending upon the method used to raise him. Many roads can be chosen, and they all lead to a different place. Mead's emphasis on individuality is due to his distinction that implies the "me" as the self seen in society, the "I" as a spontaneous, improvisatory and the self, and the self as an object. Thus, Durkheim believes that individual interaction leads to wide spread notions of collective representations, and the morality of jokes and that society is inherently good, and Mead suggested that one is made of three, and these components interact to provide common social understanding Bibliography:
In Durkheim’s concept of social/moral regulation, society imposes limits on humans to regulate their passions, desires, expectations, ambitions and roles. When these limits or social regulations break down, the controlling authority the society once had no longer functions and people are left on their own to make their own plans. In societies that have low levels of social regulations, a state of Anomie, or normlessness, can occur and affect the whole society or just some of its groups. Anomic suicide was more prevalent in this type of society. Anomic suicide basically involve...
Individuals often have a strong desire to pursue their aspirations and desires due to their ambitious, determined innate nature. However, through these numerous achievements they have successfully fulfilled, other people’s perception of the individual will vastly differ depending on their relationship with him/her. In the poem “Prodigal”, Bob Hicok suggests that when individuals have successfully accomplished their ambitions, others will perceive the individual’s changed identity in vastly different ways depending on their relationship with the individual. An individual’s ambitious nature will also significantly impact themselves due to their ever-changing perception of themselves, which will greatly affect their own perceptions and decisions
Kuhl wrote about how Emile Durkheims idea’s about suicide is connected with social intergation. The authors argue that individual factors may play in for youth sucide as well as the social intergation.
...eaning which individuals attribute to their actions” (Mazman 69, Weber, 1968: 29). Durkheim talks about the unfettered wants of the people, and society’s role in controlling these wants. In other words Durkheim is focusing on the society to shape the role of individual; and whatever part an individual plays is not limited to his/her own psychological or biological needs, it also bears the societal effect.
Mead believes that we have two parts to our life the I- the internal part of ourselfves and the Me- the me is created by ?
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.
Some flaws exist in Durkheim’s thought. One minor flaw is that Durkheim failed to collect his own data, using outside sources collected by others. Furthermore, Durkheim has been criticized for his failure to take individual into account properly. This can be seen in a flaw in his legendary sociological work, Suicide. Many have criticized Durkheim for trying to explain micro events using macro statistics; however, Van Poppel and Day (1996) state that this isn’t a fallacy, but rather an empirical mistake as how suicides were described by Protestants and Catholics were described differently, which Durkheim failed to account
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide: A Study in Sociology. (J. A. Spaulding, & G. Simpson, Trans.)
Mead was a pragmatist, and felt that reality does not exist but is created through actions; this demonstrates the need for interactions between the actor and the world. People, base their actions on what they remember being useful to them, and finally people have the ability to interpret the social world and act based upon the meaning of events to them rather than directly to events. (Ritzer 2000).
Durkheim was a functionalist, and theorised that a holistic social narrative could be identified which would explain individual behaviour. He argued that, whilst society was made up of its members, it was greater than the sum of its parts, and was an external pressure that determined the behaviour of the individuals within it. At that time, suicide rates in Europe were rising, and so the causes of suicide were on the agenda. Since suicide is seen as an intrinsically personal and individual action, establishing it as having societal causes would be a strong defence for Durkheim’s functionalist perspective. Durkheim used the comparative method to study the official suicide rates of various European countries. While he was not the first to notice the patterns and proportional changes of suicide rates between different groups in European societies, it was this fact that was the foundation of his theory – why did some groups consistently have much higher rates than others? This supports the idea that it was the external pressures placed on certain groups within society that induced higher rates of suicide, and is the basis of Durkheim’s work.
Durkheim, believed there is a relationship between society and the contribution to the spread of suicide. The low value placed on human life and lifestyles contributes to the spread of suicide among different societies. People who are unable to achieve economic growth and security, decide to end their issues with suicide. Economic constraints contributed to inequalities, decrease in economic stability and hopelessness among people spread of suicide. A sense of detachment from society due to thoughts and actions leads to high suicide
Durkheim’s thesis in regards to social solidarity, based upon his views, which explain individuals influenced by social facts. The social facts he outlined and referred to as a “thing” (Ritzer, p 185) are the languages spoken, buildings, and ethics. Durkheim viewed social facts being outside of the individual but yet powerful in shaping the individual. Social facts defined as material and nonmaterial. Material social facts visible such as buildings, while nonmaterial social facts difficult to see but as a society we know they exist. The nonmaterial social facts are customs, cultures and norms for any given society (Ritzer, p 188). Social facts according to Durkheim, required research. Durkheim believed studying the nonmaterial social facts as being the most significant and at the heart of his theory (Ritzer, p 188).
Trying to compare social groups to the three theoretical perspectives is the hardest part of the paper. With the functionalist perspective, groups bind people together. Every member of that group must share a working knowledge of the same aspects of life. With the conflict theory perspective, a societies groups are controlled by an high society that manipulates them in order to maintain its own position of wealth and power. With the symbolic interactionist see how groups perceive different things for example ideas and how it would affect their behavior.
Before taking this class, my understanding between each individual and the whole society is that every individuals as the gear are connected together to become a society like a machine. That is, human beings build the society. However, the class gave me bigger view of the relationship between the people and the society. Discussing about the relationship between me and the broader social world is based on how all human beings and the broader social world effect together. Thus, I am going to show my understanding from the class and reading about the interaction between each individual and the whole society.
As humans, one of the most frequent instinctive activities that we partake in is socializing. Our lives revolve around socializing with other people in our society in order to satisfy our many needs. In order for everyone’s needs to be met, we must all work together as a group. In society, there are many different types of groups that influence all types of different aspects of our lives. These groups are very influential throughout our lives because they influence as well as alter our views, choices and other factors of our lives on a daily basis.