Unit 3 - Durkheim and Weber

Question 1

social fact

Answer 1

Durkheim
- society is more than a collection of individuals
- set of rules that exist separately from the individual - constrains them
- “a category of facts which present very special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him”
- example: social roles, norms, laws, values, beliefs, rituals, and customs

Question 2

rationalization

Answer 2

Weber
1. a movement from magic toward abstract, ethical concepts
2. making life more routine, efficient, planned, systematic (“instrumental rationalization”)
- rationalization diagram
- Weber’s concern is that the rationalization of modernity had left behind the bigger questions of meaning, stripping the world of a sense of purpose
- rationalization of society: replacing traditions and values as concepts of behavior, with rationality and reason
- the terms is seen in the context of people, their expressions, and/or their reactions
- problem as modernity progresses - you start to lose beliefs/meaning
- reasoning religion out of existence

Question 3

anomie

Answer 3

Durkheim
- desire is endless
- limits lessen anomie, loss of limits increase it
- lawlessness - a loss of orientation/change
- sudden change: loss of a job, divorce
- dissatisfaction leads to anomie
- lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group
- a condition of instability resulting from a breakdown of standards and values or from a lack of purpose or ideals
- example: people engage in organized theft because they do not have other ways of accumulating wealth
- D is all about social integration (how communities stick together) - when that doesn’t happen you get anomie, anomic suicide, etc.

Question 4

ethos

Answer 4

Weber
- a certain (prototypical) feeling or disposition toward the world - influenced by strata
- social “strata” share a common ethos arising out of shared practical interests - ethos will differ from stratum to stratum - stratum determines ethos
- each stratum’s ethos will differ based in how they see the world
- underlying sentiment that informs the beliefs, customs, or practices of a group or society
- the social practices performed by an individual to survive in the society with dignity
- the collective sociologic of ethical thinking
- who was Weber interested in? Puritans - mercantile class - ethos - self-denying but wanted to engage in the world - “Protestant Ethos/Protestant work ethic” - developed into capitalism

Question 5

Verstehen

Answer 5

Weber
- human sciences - for studying human culture/history/society you can’t break them down like a mechanism - needed to understand the people you are studying and their relationships (Verstehen)
- the subjective understanding of a society on its own terms, rather than from an outside perspective
- Weber believed that understanding why people do the things they do is the basic building block of sociology - believed that sociologists should not just study a group of people but also try to gain an empathetic understanding for the individuals in that group
- trying to understand, not break it down into explanation - transfer yourself into their shoes - for Weber, the Puritans’ shoes - imagine yourself into “ideal types”
- can predict how they would act - create theories that way

Question 6

Iron Cage

Answer 6

Weber
- described the increased rationalization inherent in social life, particularly in Western capitalist society - the “iron cage” thus traps individuals in systems based purely on teleological efficency, rational calculation, and control
- material desires and (bureaucratic) rules to a far larger degree than a century ago - these bureaucratic rules are a product of rationalization
- example: a person feeling compelled to receive a raise or promotion within a short time frame
- metaphor - the Protestant Ethic (end of) - self-denial became a pattern and worked - pattern of making money and investing it into your business became a prison - that’s capitalism - lost its meaning for the Puritans - Puritans were the genesis of modern capitalism