Durkheim Flashcards
Examples of social facts
Religion, language, legal system
How to study social facts
with methodological holism
society as….
sui generis reality
Emergent property
society as a living organism
Cause and function (5 - D’s focus, how they dip in relation to each other, how you need to identify them)
They may develop together in the beginning but they will diverge he's more interested in function Cause: constant Function: can vary Need to identify them separately
Solidarity (4 characteristics)
Stability, coherence, morality and continuity
Mechanical solidarity (6)
- Homogeneity
- cohesion
- Conscience collective
- low division of labour
- based on shared sentiments and responsibilities
- penal law and repressive sanctions
Organic Solidarity (6)
- Heterogeneous
- more secular and individualistic
- more complex, higher division of labour
- interdependencies between people
- cult of individuals
- no penal law but restrictive sanctions
Cult of the individual
act and think as an individual but depend on the different functions that society provides
Self-interest properly understood
Transitional stage
Increase in specialization and individual consciousness
Change in economic arrangements
Need a new set of morality adapted to modern society to create solidarity
Natural vs. forced division of labour
external vs. internal inequalities
How is religion created
Not because of god, emerged from society, from need to form a collective solidaire unity
Distinction between sacred and profane
Society worshipping itself
2 factors that determine the nature of the suicide
Regulation and integration
4 types of suicide
Egoistic
Altruistic
Anomic
Fatalistic
Egoistic (+ex)
not enough integration
isolation, no moral integration, low conscience collective
Protestantism: religion of loneliness
Altruistic (+ex)
too much integration
linked to honour
ex. suicide bombers
Anomic
not enough regulation
disruption in norms
Fatalistic (+ex)
too much regulation
ex. Roxanne in the Persian Letters
Anomie (+ex)
State of normlessness
ex. In modern societies: not enough morals regulation to counteract the individualism with the complex division of labour
His view on communism
Too utopian
based on collective consumption but private production
His view on socialism
It’s terrible
Based on communal production but private consumption
“If, as we may accept, the synthesis sui generis which every society constitutes yields new phenomena, differing from those which take place in the individual consciousness, we must also admit that these facts reside exclusively in the very society itself which produces them, and not in its parts - that is, its members.”
The idea of emergent property, in order to understand society we can’t look at parts that create it (i.e. individuals), rather we should look at interactions and how they’re taking place within society. The sum (society) is greater than the parts (individuals) and only emerges as interactions of the parts.
The function of a social fact can only be social, that is to say, it consists in the production of socially useful effects. No doubt it may and does happen that it also serves the individual. But this fortunate outcome is not its immediate cause. We can thus complete the preceding proposition by saying: The function of a social fact must always be sought in its relation to some social end.
“Social facts serve a function and are a cause at the same time. Although cause and function may develop together at the beginning, the function will diverge later on.
Durkheim is more concerned with the function of social facts.”
“The social molecules which cohere in this way can act together only in so far as they have no action of their own, as with the molecules of inorganic bodies… The individual consciousness, considered in this light, is a simple appendage of the collective type and follows all of its actions, as the possessed object follows those of its owner. In societies where this type of solidarity is highly developed, the individual is not his own master. “
Mechanical solidarity/society, the individuals in this form of society don’t act separately, they’re a part of the group. It’s the group that acts, it’s inorganic and mechanical.
“To achieve any other result, the passions first must be limited. Only then can they be harmonised with capacities and satisfied. But since the individual has no way of limiting them, this must necessarily be accomplished by some force outside him. A regulative force must play the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs. This means that the force can only be moral.”
Durkheim on morality; we need an external force to regulate/constrain our desires and passions. He thinks that one of the key roles that society plays is that it gives us morality.
“Men did not begin by imagining gods; it is not because they conceived of them in a given fashion that they became bound to them by social feelings. They began by linking themselves to the things which they made use of, or which they suffered from, in the same way as they linked each of these to the other – without reflection, without the least kind of speculation.”
Durkheim on the emergence of religion; religion stems from having strong social sentiments, we practice it because we want to belong to a collectivity.
Also: solidarity/cohesion of the group is maintained through religious practices.
“As a consequence of such changes, the correspondence between the aptitudes of individuals and the kind of activity assigned to them is broken in a whole large area of society; constraint alone, more or less violent and direct in character, ties them to their functions. Hence the solidarity which results is defective and strained.”
- assignment of tasks (doL), solidarity
- bc of transition from M to O - K should be morally regulated or cohesion will be lost
- DoL doesn’t contribute to solidarity
- world becomes colder
- Against forced division of labour
“It would be equally undisputed in sociology if social facts, because of their extreme intangibility, did not - mistakenly - appear to us without all intrinsic reality. Because we usually see them as purely mental constructions, it seems to us that they may be produced at will whenever we find it useful. But since each one of them is a force, which dominates the individual, and since it has its own characteristic nature, it is not true that they can be brought into existence merely by an effort of the will. “
- durkheim bc social facts
- SF—> ilustrations fo patterns taht are social
- even when we think we’re unique we still follow patterns
- individiual decisions but influenced by society
- Sex life and suicide
Collective effervescence
Causal origin
