Midterm II Flashcards
Durkheim and Social Change: Main Intellectual Concern
to analyze the possibilities of securing social solidarity in the face of rapid social and economic change
Durkheim and Social Change: What is Social Solidarity
how people within a society feel connected to one another
Durkheim and Social Change: Major Research Question
What will provide social solidarity in modernity
Features of Modernity: Industrialization
-Increased production by the mechanization of labor
and the use of inanimate energy
-Industrial revolution
—Shift from agrarian to industrial economic
——–Feudalism to capitalism
Features of Modernity: Urbanizations
–Increase in proportion of the total human population living in major cities vs rural areas
–Moving to industrialized areas
Features of Modernity: Secularization
–Social, cultural, and political significance of religion diminishes
–Separation of the church from (state, personal, professional, etc) affairs
–Diminishing of religious authority
–Weber: disenchantment, scientific understanding becomes more important than religious belief, people want evidence
Features of Modernity: Division of Labour
–Increase in occupational differentiation
–Durkheim argues with Adam Smith, the division of labor has increased production
What are the forms of Social Solidarity?
Mechanical & Organic
4 Features of Modernity
Industrialization, Urbanization, Secularization, Division of Labor
Social Solidarity: Mechanical Solidarity
–Characterizes premodern societies
–Some level of worker specialization
–Low degree of occupational differentiation
–Solidarity based on homogeneity
—-People are bound together by ‘commonalities, similitudes, and likenesses’
–Identity of economic interests and pursuits
–Identity of language, customs, and beliefs
Social Solidarity: Organic Solidarity
–High degree of occupational differentiation
–High level of worker specialization
–Solidarity based on heterogeneity
—-People are bound together by functional complementarity and interdependence
—-Society is an organism, everyone has distinct roles that help the society function
–Diversity of language, customs, and beliefs
–Anonymity, superficiality, and segmentation (fractured) of social relations
Durkheim on Anomie: Division of Labour (1883); Anomie is a physical societies:
–Temporary consequence of the division of labor
–Historically specific problems of societies in transition to modernity
–Not a necessary symptom of modernization
–Describes it as a stage of moral or normative deregulation
–Social condition that produces high rates of suicide and crime
Durkheim on Anomie: Division of Labor (1883); Anomie is a psychological state of:
–A malady of infinite aspiration
–Troubling sense of limitless possibility
–Disturbance, agitation, and discontent
–‘Weariness and disillusionment’
–Emotional emptiness and despair
–Sense of futility and a lack of purpose
Durkheim on Anomie: Key Takeaways
–Crime and deviance are, in part, the product of weak moral integration and poor social regulation
–Social change, such as the transition to modernity, can generate anomie and with this an increase in levels of crime and deviance
Merton on Anomie: Book
Merton (1938) Social Structure and Anomie
Merton: Social Structure and Anomie; Research Aims
–Sought to develop a sociological examination for deviant conduct as corrective to biological positivist explanations
–Aimed to demonstrate “how some social structures exert a swiftie pressure on certain persons in the society to engage in a non-conforming rather than conforming conduct”
Merton: Social Structure and Anomie; Arguement
–Argues that high rates of criminal behavior on certain grounds are a normal response to the social situation in which members of the group find themselves rather than indicators of biological pathology
Merton: Social Structure and Anomie; Two Elements of the Social System
Culturally Defined Goals and the Means to achieve those Goals
Merton: Social Structure and Anomie; Merton’s America
the cultural goal is ‘material success,’ ‘financial prosperity,’ and ‘accumulated wealth’
Merton: Social Structure and Anomie; Anomie is the result of:
the lack of symmetry between the cultural and structural components of the social system
Merton: Social Structures and Anomie; Anomie is a symptom of:
–A strain between culturally prescribed aspirations and the socially strucutred avenues for realizing then
–A discrepancy between socially engendered goals and the opportunity structures by which the goals might be achieved
–A contradiction between normative aspirations and lack of access to legitimate means to realize such aspirations
Assessing Merton: Important Features
–Draws attention to the social, cultural, nd economic circumstances that lead to crime
–Points to the necessary relation between forms of social organization and levels of crime
–Highlights the unintended consequences of the overvaluation of individual economic achievement
–Took special interest in the vulnerability of working-class and poorer communities
Assessing Merton: Criticisms
–Exaggerate level of consensus and ‘universal’ normative aspirations
–Tendency to focus on lower-class crime
–Does not explore the structural causes of strain
–Over-predicts lower-class crime
–Overlooks barriers to achievement other than lack of opportunity
–Definition of Anomie changes
–Not well-tested
–Atomistic and individualistic
Durkheim and Criminology: Crime is:
actions that offend against collective feelings or sentimental
Not something that is unchanging
Nation of irm reflect particular social convention which vary according to time and place
Best understood as violation of moral life (conscience collective of society)