Exam 2 Flashcards
- suicide as a social fact
- defined sociology as the study of social facts
- “ways of thinking and feeling … property of existing outside the consciousness of the individual”
Emile Durkheim
- the reason why people within a society seem to do the same basic things, such as where they live, what they eat, and how they interact
- more secure through time and change
social facts
What are common social facts?
marriage
language
religion
social structures and institutions. these could be the system of law, the economy, church and many aspects of religion, the state, and educational institutions and structures
material social facts
consist of features such as norms, values, and systems of morality
non-material social facts
- the great movements of enthusiasm, pity, or indignation in a crowd
- the are the spur-of-the-moment feelings that power a mob, even overriding some social facts
- strong but short-lived
social currents
set of shared beliefs, ideas, and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society
- diffused over society as a whole
- totally different from the consciousness of individuals, although it is only realized in individuals
collective consciousness
- suicide is caused by social facts
- about society, not about individual
Durkheim’s Social Fact of Suicide
- extent to which people feel as if they are a part of society
- egoistic suicide-low
- altruistic suicide-high
integration
- when a person commits suicide in order to benefit others
- sometimes viewed as a courageous act such as self-sacrifice
altruistic suicide
- deregulation or normlesness
- a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals
anomie
- dissatisfaction, over regulated
- too low of a degree of regulation.. without regulation, a person cannot set reachable goals and in turn people get extremely frustrated
- suicide takes place in a situation which has cropped up suddenly
anomic suicide
- so controlled they cannot seek satisfaction
- held to extreme rules and regulations
- they often live their lives under extreme rules and high expectations
- these types of people are left feeling like they’ve lost their sense of self
fatalistic suicide
Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber
What are the 2 theories that explain capitalism?
idealism and materialism
assumption that the economy and natural environment are what determine human behavior, shape society, and govern the course of history
- starts from the ground, up
materialism
assumption that people’s behavior is the outcome of how they think about the world and that changes in thought will change society and the course of history
- starts from the top, down
idealism
- sociological interpretation and understanding of the meanings people give to their social world and to their actions through experience
Verstehen
the attitude which seeks profit rationally and systematically
spirit of capitalism
a man does not “by nature” wish to earn more and more money, but simply to live as he is accustomed to live and earn as much as is necessary for that purpose
traditionalism
- Capitalism and Conflict
- Model of Society
Karl Marx
- superstructure: ideas, social institutions
- “mode of production”
- forces of production
- means of production
superstructure
economic categories of people, each class has a place in the economy
Capitalist Relation of Production
conflict in society’s classes is between
dominate class and subordinate
When the ________ became dominant, the capital system began and changed society
bourgeoisie
- class with major ownership of societies productions
- ownership and control
bourgeoisie
- class of wage-earners in an economic society whose only possession of significant material value is their labor power
proletariat
mode of production in which a class of property owners (lords) obtain their living by exploiting a class of direct producers (peasants)
feudal system (feudal system)
workers first become conscious of sharing common grievances against capitalists (thus forming a class “in itself”) and eventually developed an awareness of themselves as forming a social class opposed to the bourgeoisie (thus becoming a class “for itself”), the proletariat
class-in-itself
- the result of the revolt of the proletariat class
- dictatorship of the proletariat
- proletariat must be a dictator
- between capital and communist period
socialism
- ownership of society’s means of production
- deprives no men of appropriate power
- free association of completely free men, where no separation between “private and common interest” existed: a society where “everyone could give himself a complete education in whatever domain he fancied”
Communism
according to Marx, under socialism, government would become:
less necessary, “the withering away of the state”
set of assumption about what is important in society and the dynamics of how the social world works
sociological paradigms
the theory that social institutions and processes in society exist to meet some need of society and thereby keeping it operating and in existence
functionalism