Émile Durkheim April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917
Life and Influences • Born April 15, 1858 in France. • Father, Grandfather, and Great-Grandfather were all rabbis. • He believed religion could be explained from social rather than divine factors. • Entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1879. • Read and studied with classicists with a social scientific outlook while in school. • The French academic system had no social science curriculum at the time, and he finished second to last in this graduating class in 1882. • Spent a year studying sociology in Germany.
Life and Influences • 1887 - went to Bordeaux to teach pedagogy and social science to new teachers. • Through his new position, he reformed the French school system and introduced social science into its curriculum. • 1893 - published The Division of Labor in Society. • 1895 - published Rules of the Sociological Method, and founded the European Department of Sociologique at the University of Bordeaux. • 1896 - founded the journal L'Année Sociologique, the first journal of sociology in France.
Life and Influences • 1897 - published Suicide • 1902 - awarded a prominent position in Paris as the chair of education at the Sorbonne. • 1912 - published Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. His position became permanent and he renamed it the chair of education and sociology. • His son died in World War I, and he never recovered emotionally. • Suffered a stroke in Paris in 1917, briefly recovered and resumed work but later that year, on November 15, he died at age 59 from exhaustion.
Contributions and Theories • He sought to construct one of the first scientific approaches to social phenomena. • Said that traditional societies were held together by the fact that everyone was more or less the same. • Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first to conceptualize the idea of social functionalism: – Functionalism views society as a system of interdependent parts whose functions contribute to the stability and survival of the system as a whole. • Thought that society was more than the sum of its parts, and coined the term social facts: – Social Facts have an existence all their own, and are not bound to the action of individuals.
Contributions and Theories • Durkheim’s Anomie: – Anomie is the breakdown of social norms regulating behavior. – Durkheim and other sociological theorists coined the term anomie as ‘a reaction against, or retreat from, the social controls of society. ’ – All deviant behavior stems from a state of anomie, including suicide. • Durkheim on Crime: – Crime serves a social function, meaning that it has a purpose in society. – He saw crime as being able to release certain social tensions and so have a cleansing or purging effect in society. – His views on crime were unconventional at the time.
Contributions and Theories Durkheim on Education: Believed that education served many functions: q To reinforce social solidarity Pledging allegiance: makes individuals feel part of a group and therefore less likely to break rules. q To maintain social roles School is a society in miniature: it has a similar hierarchy, rules, expectations to the “outside world, ” and trains people to fulfill roles. q To maintain division of labor School sorts students into skill groups, encouraging students to take up employment in fields best suited to their abilities. He was professionally employed to train teachers, so he used his ability to shape France’s curriculum to spread the instruction of sociology.
1893
The Division of Labor • In The Division of Labor in Society Durkheim examined how social order was maintained in different types of societies. • Traditional societies were held together by the fact that everyone was mostly similar to one another. The collective consciousness is highly isomorphic with individual consciousness. • In modern societies, the highly complex division of labor resulted in people with different occupational specializations. This created dependencies that tied people to one another since no one person could fill all of his/her needs by themselves. • Increasing division of labor leads to rapid change in a society. This can produce a state of confusion regarding norms and a growing impersonality in social life. This, in turn, may lead to a breakdown in the norms regulating behavior and a sense of anomie.
TYPES OF SOCIETIES GEMEINSCHAFT GESELLSCHAFT • Small • Large • Isolated • Interconnected • Rural • Urban • Agrarian • Industrial • Homogeneous • Heterogeneous • Religious • Secular • Self-Sufficient • Interdependent • Stable • Static • Mobile • Changing
Human Dualism “There are in each of us…two consciences: one which is common to our group in its entirety…the other, on the contrary, represents that in us which is personal and distinct, that which makes us an individual” - Division of Labor in Society (1893) “Because society surpasses us, it obliges us to surpass ourselves, and to surpass itself, a being must, to some degree, depart from its nature—a departure that does not take place without causing more or less painful tensions. ” - Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1914).
Human Dualism “It is not without reason, therefore, that man feels himself to be double: he actually is double…. In brief, this duality corresponds to the double existence that we lead concurrently; the one purely individual and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension of society. ” - Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1914) Our purely individual side seeks satisfaction of all wants and desires. It knows no boundaries. Without being constrained by the collective conscience, this side of human beings may lead to the condition that Durkheim labels as “anomie. ”
1895
Social Facts According to Durkheim, social facts are the subject matter of sociology. Social facts are “sui generis” (meaning of its own kind; unique) and must be studied as distinct from biological and psychological phenomenon. Social facts can be defined as patterns of behavior that are capable of exercising some coercive power upon individuals. They are guides and controls of conduct and are external to the individual in the form of norms, mores, and folkways.
Social Facts “A social fact is identifiable through the power of external coercion which it exerts or is capable of exerting upon individuals” - Rules of Sociological Method (1895) Through socialization and education these rules become internalized in the consciousness of the individual. These constraints and guides become moral obligations to obey social rules.
Languages are Social Facts
Social Facts… …are not self-evident
Money exists as a core Social Fact…. …. and here is someone who disturbs its reality
A poem by Maroslov Holub
1897
“Suicide” (1897): Key Concepts Suicide as a Social Fact Anomic Division of Labor (leftover from “Division of Labor”) Integration Regulation Four Types of Suicide: Altruistic Egoistic Anomic Fatalistic Anomie
Suicide • • • Suicide may be caused by weak social bonds. Social bonds are made up of social integration and social regulation. Durkheim’s 4 types of suicide: Ø Egoistic Suicide: Individual is weakly integrated into a society so ending their life will have little impact on the rest of society. Ø Altruistic suicide: Individual is extremely attached to the society and because of this has no real sense of autonomy. But alternatively, a freely chosen act of selfsacrifice. Ø Anomic suicide: a weak social regulation between society’s norms and the individual, most often brought on by dramatic economic or social changes. Ø Fatalistic suicide: Social regulation is completely imposed upon the individual. With no hope of countering the oppressive discipline of the society the only way to escape is to take one’s own life.
Suicide • Defined suicide as the act of severing social relationships. • Goal was to show that an individual act is actually the result of the social world that he would show the usefulness of sociology. • He explored the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics. He explained how socially controlled Catholics had a lower suicide rate. • Social integration: the integration of a group of people into the mainstream of society. • He concluded that abnormally high or low levels or social integration may result in increased suicide rates. • Results he found include: – Suicide rates are higher for widowed, single or divorced people rather than those who are married. – Rates are higher for those who have no children rather than those who do. – Rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics. – Coroners in a Catholic country are less likely to record a suicide as the reason of death because in Catholicism it is a sin.
Suicide as a Social Fact §Suicide rate is a social fact– social cause/social effect §Rates are stable across time §Durkheim found low rates of suicide: §When religious integration is high (Catholics < Protestants) §When domestic integration is high (Married < Unmarried) §When political integration is high (Rural < Urban) Example of US suicide rate: fairly stable over time.
Durkheim’s Argument in “Suicide” § Unlike animals, human desire is “unlimited, ” – there is no internal check on needs and desires. § The “passions… must be limited, ” but this must be done by some force exterior to the individual. § This exterior force must be the common (collective conscience) because it is the “only moral power superior to the individual, the authority of which he accepts. ” § Regulation through collective conscience is required to ensure that people will accept their position in life, because true social equality is impossible. § Anomie occurs when societies break down or “pass through some abnormal crisis, ” people are “not adjusted to the conditions forced on them, ” and social bonds/collective conscience fail to do work of regulating.
Anomic Division of Labor • How can we be more bonded to one another when we are further splintered by division of labor and specialization? • Rules emerge from the DOL because it sets up definite ways of acting that are repeated on a daily basis, turning into regular, stable habit. “Then the habits, as they grow in strength, are transformed into rules of conduct. ” • This produces a real form of solidarity, interdependence built on shared, regular expectations (duties, rights, obligations) that are built up and extended across time. • “If the division of labor does not produce solidarity, it is because the relationships between the organs are not regulated; it is because they are in a state of anomie. ”
Altruistic Suicide – Excessive Integration Jonestown Massacre, 1978 Kamakazi pilots, 1945 Suicide bombers, 2013
Egoistic Suicide – Low Integration
Fatalistic Suicide – Excessive Regulation Unnamed slave woman, who on Dec. 19, 1815, jumped out of the garret window of a three-story brick house and survived. 1838 issue of American Anti-Slavery Almanac, which illustrated a passage from Charles Ball’s “Slavery in the United States” (New York, 1837) that describes Ball’s encounter with the slave Paul had “suffered so much in slavery, that he chose to encounter the hardships and perils of a runaway. ”
Anomic Suicide – Low Regulation Anomic Suicide – Low Regulation
COMPARATIVE RATES OF ANOMIC SUICIDE HIGHER LOWER compared across cells Men Women Protestants Catholics Jews Urban Rural Single Married w/o Married c Children Officers Enlisted Personnel Military in Peace Military in War Adolescents Adults Native-Americans Euro-Americans Middle Aged Elderly Durkheim Modern Day
Anomic or Fatalistic Suicide? We are broke. Last April I was worth $100, 000. Today I am $24, 000 in the red.
ANOMIE -a lack of regulation occurring with breakdown of (mostly economic) order in modern life- • Anomie is a constant feature of modern life • “Since this disorder is greatest in the economic world, it has most of its victims there. ” • Industrial and commercial functions have the greatest number of suicides – and – “the possessors of most comfort suffer most. ” • Durkheim’s general argument: When economic order is functional, it “reins in individual passions” by setting limits on desires and socializing people to be comfortable in their position
1912
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life Key Concepts § § § Definition of Religion Totemism Sacred V. Profane Collective Effervescence ~ Collective Conscience Collective Representations Use of the evolutionary metaphor – and functionalist view of religion
Durkheim’s Definition of Religion A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into one single moral community called a Church, all those who adhere to them. This system of conceptions is not purely imaginary and hallucinatory, for the moral forces that these things awaken in us are quite real—as real as the ideas that words recall to us after they have served to form the ideas.
Since religious force is nothing other than the collective and anonymous force of the clan, and since this can be represented in the mind only in the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is like the visible body of the god. That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but its right to dogmatize upon the nature of things and the special competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As a matter of fact, it [religion] does not know itself. It does not even know what it is made of, nor to what need it answers. …[religions] are grounded in and express the real…. The reasons the faithful settle for in justifying those rites and myths may be mistaken, and most often are; but the true reasons exist nonetheless…. Fundamentally, then, there are no religions that are false.
COMING TO GRIPS WITH THE SACRED THE ABSOLUTE, THE ULTIMATE, THE REALLY REAL, THE WHOLLY OTHER, THE BEYOND WHICH ONE CANNOT GO - - MADE PRESENT IN THE FORM(S) OF THE SACRED TO WHICH ONE WANTS, NEEDS TO BE IN THE “RIGHT” RELATIONSHIP.
Religion presents these dimensions, these forces, to human beings in forms— symbols, stories, myths, practices—that bring them under tenuous human control.
Elementary Forms of Religious Life • Religion is the basic form of social cohesion, which holds complex societies together. • Totemism was the original form of religion, because it was the emblem for the social group, the clan. • The function of religion is to make people willing to put the interests of others ahead of themselves. • The model for relationships between people and the supernatural is the relationship between individuals and the community. thus “God is society, writ large. ” • Religion is a mechanism that sustains and protects a threatened social order.
Religion: The Origins of Collective Conscience • Durkheim studies religion as the fundamental institution of social life, upon which the collective identity is structured. • Religion unites members through the creation of a Collective Conscience. All religious expression is founded on the identification of members to a group. • Shared religious beliefs and values establish and reinforce the strength of the Collective Conscience.
Play recording
Why did Durkheim study “primitive” society to understand religion? – Early development can be observed, and change traced over time. (Evolutionary model) – Durkheim looked for “the elements which constitute that which is permanent and human in religion; they form all the objective contents of the idea which is expressed when one speaks of religion in general. ”
Why did Durkheim study “primitive” society to understand religion? • Simplicity allows for analysis of “essential” features. • “Everything is common to all. Movements are stereotyped; Everybody performs the same ones in the same circumstances, and this conformity of conduct only translates to the conformity of thought” (from Elementary Forms). • These societies are different enough from our own experience that we are able to see important features. Totemism
Sacred V. Profane • Religion is defined by the cultural distinction between the sacred and profane. • Sacred – objects extraordinary and set apart. • Profane – everyday, ordinary objects. • Notions of the sacred are given external representation through objects or symbols, called collective representations.
Durkheim’s Model of religious evolution Temporary gatherings occur Interaction escalates Psychological need to represent “mana” with a material object Structural need for clan solidarity Cultural need for resulting permanent groups Powers are attributed to “mana” Crowd stimulation, heightened emotions, and collective contagion occur “Mana” is symbolized by the totem and by sacred objects of the totem Sense of common sentiments that are external and constraining Totems promote a sense of unity and solidarity among members
The Black Stone (in Arabic: ﺍﻷﺴﻮﺩ ﺍﻟﺤﺠﺮ al-Ḥajar al-Aswad) is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the ancient stone building toward which Muslims pray, in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to the time of Adam and Eve. The stone was venerated at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. It was set intact into the Kaaba's wall by the Islamic prophet Muhammad in the year 605 A. D. Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as part of the Tawaf ritual of the Hajj. Many of them try, if possible, to stop and kiss the Black Stone, emulating the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad. If they cannot reach it, they point to it on each of their seven circuits around the Kaaba.
COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE is when we feel we are a part of something bigger than ourselves: “Vital energies are over-excited, passions more active, sensations stronger… A man does not recognize himself; he feels himself transformed, and consequently he transforms the environment that surrounds him. ” Is this -The Collective Conscience?
Collective Effervescence occurs when we collectively share an ecstatic experience. In Greek ek-stasis literally means stepping outside reality as commonly defined. We might say we are “besides ourselves. ” Is this -The Collective Conscience?
Religion and Collective Conscience • These social categories shape how we think and orient ourselves to world: time, space, quality. . . • Establish our basic categories of thought! – “If men did not agree upon these essential ideas at every moment… all contact between their minds would be impossible, and with that, all life together. Thus societies could not abandon the categories to the free choice of the individual without abandoning itself. ” • Collective conscience guides human action! – “We have the feeling that we cannot abandon them if our whole thought is not to cease being fully human. ”
Function of Religion? Religion is a way of expressing and reaffirming shared social beliefs, a functional element of society. “There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and collective ideals… This moral remaking cannot be achieved except by the means of reunions, assemblies, and meetings where individuals reaffirm their common sentiments. ”
• Historically, religion has been the cement of society - the means by which men had been led to turn from the everyday concerns in which they were variously enmeshed to a common devotion to something greater than themselves It was a unified system of beliefs and practices in response to the Sacred that united into one single moral community all those who adhere to them. ” • Durkheim described religion as serving 4 major functions: 1) Disciplinary: establishing, enforcing and administrating an externally imposed legitimate sense of order 2) Cohesive: bringing people together with a strong shared strong bond 3) Vitalizing: energizing, making the group more lively or vigorous, vitalize, boosting spirit 4) Euphoric: creating a positive feeling, sense of happiness, confidence, well-being
Durkheim’s Legacy • Durkheim helped make the study of sociology mainstream. Sociology today has gained tremendous popularity in Europe, the US, and across the world. • Many of Durkheim’s students pursued his ideas in their own studies. • Founded the academic journal, L'Annee Sociologique. • In recent decades, Durkheim’s philosophies have been more influential in the US and Britain than in France, his native country. • Durkheim’s ideas influenced several major theoretical movements in the twentieth century. – His work was strongly present in the emergence of ‘structuralism’ through the work of Jean Piaget and Claude Levi-Strauss, in British anthropology, and mid-century American sociology.
Скачать презентацию Émile Durkheim April 15 1858 — November 15
ac62c2be02417ec21eed1e316e1ed8da.ppt