Week 1 Flashcards
Anomie
-“Normlessness”; Contrasting or conflicting norms and values. (Durkheim).
- Social condition that occurs when a society’s previously common norms disappear or disintegrate
- Typically causes people to feel a lack of belonging and that they are disconnected from their society.
- A condition in which society loses its moral power to orient individual lives, produce meaning, and regulate individuals’ ambitions and life expectations; a condition that increase the likelihood of suicide (Sorhabi)
Association
= Interactions
- Association creates something new; social phenomena are emergent properties, which cannot be reduced to the sum of all individual components: “Society is not a mere sum of individuals” (Durkheim 1895)
- Associations generate SOCIAL FACTS.
Collective Consciousness (and crime)
- “Totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of society” Durkheim
- Relate to MORAL ORDER: Consensus about what is right and wrong.
- “Crimes” are acts which are rejected by the collective consciousness.
-Crime type 1: Manifest directly a too violent dissimilarity between the one who commits them and the collective type.
-Crime type 2: Offend the organ of the common consciousness.
Collective Particularism
- “Fragmented collective consciousness within a society.
- Multitude/diversity of values and morals within a society.
- When the division of labor increases too fast, “collective particularism” may develop -> “secondary groups (family, professional groups) gain mastery over their members and shape them at will. (Sohrabi on Durkheim)
- Collective particularism may UNDERMINE the collective consciousness, separating members of these groups from the collective consciousness.
Colonial Episteme
“Dominant ways of thinking that produce and reproduce COLONIAL DIFFERENCE (the idea that colonized peoples were inherently different from (and inferior to) the Western colonizer)”
Coloniality of Time
The idea that different cultures, nations and regions of the world live in “different temporal stages of human development” -> Essential ontological differences.
Coloniality of Being
Term coined by Sylvia Wynter (2003) to describe her argument that “colonial difference relied on the premise that only the white Westerner achieved the full status of “man”, while the colonized peoples of the world were all varying degrees of sub-human”
Compouding
- Make up (a composite whole); Constitute. Ex: A dialect COMPOUNDED of Spanish and Dutch. (Google def.)
- Related to Spencer’s theory of EVOLUTION.
- Competition results into COMPOUNDING social units, which result in an increasing amount of individuals and size of territory.
Consequences:
1) Increasing HETERONEITY of functions - regulation, production and distribution.
2) Increasing DEFINITIVENESS (a whole with definite parts - Ex. Court society to Modern society).
3) Increasing INTEGRATION - Heterogeneity creates extensive INTERDEPENDENCIES.
Emergent Property
- Biology: An emergent property is a characteristic an entity GAINS when it BECOMES part of a bigger system.
Emergent properties help living organisms better ADAPT to their environment & increase their chances of SURVIVAL. - General: In philosophy, SYSTEMS THEORY, science and art, emergence occurs when an entity is observed to have properties and behaviors that emerge ONLY when the parts INTERACT IN A WIDER WHOLE.
- Sociology VS Biology & Psychology: Sociology explains higher levels of ASSOCIATION (social phenomena) not by reducing them to lower levels (organism, individual). This is the EMERGENT PROPERTY argument.
Concepts
- Theories describe “some part” of empirical reality, they do so with CONCEPTS -> Formal & generalized (abstract) ideas. Ex: “Division of labor” = Specialization in tasks. “Social solidarity = the hanging together of society.
- The description of reality is about relationships between concepts: if/when… then… (Ex: When the division of labor increases, then organic solidarity emerges)
Definitiveness
A whole with definite/permanently established parts. Ex: State organs, judicial, military, etc.
Functionalism
Theory that all aspects of society serve a function and are necessary for the survival of that society.
Compte, Spencer, Durkheim.
Interdependency
- Mutual dependency between people.
- SOCIAL INTERACTIONS give origin and ensure the continued existence of interdependencies.
- Once generated, interdependencies also exist without “direct” social interaction -> strong degree of division of labor.
- 4 basic types that bind people to each other, individually and collectively:
1) Cognitive: Knowledge and culture.
2) Affective: Positive and negative emotions.
3) Political: Physical coercion and protection - force.
4) Economic: Material resources.
Repressive Law
- Related to MECHANICAL SOLIDARITY.
- Intend to harm the perpetrator of a crime, depriving of liberty, property, honor, or life.
- Crimes are acts that are rejected by the collective consciousness.
Restitutory Law
- Related to ORGANIC SOLIDARITY.
- “Reestablishes relationships that have been disturbed from their normal form”
- Reflects greater Division of Labor and Interdependencies. Think of all the different judicial bodies for ex.
