Durkheim

Front 1

Durkheim's influences

Back 1

Comte: Comte influences Durkheim in the way that he also thinks that we need to study the social world with principles similar to those used in natural sciences. Durkheim believes, like Comte, that the social cannot be reduced to an aggregate of what individuals are up to. Durkheim, also like Comte, believes that with the shift towards modernity, with all the problems that occurs, we need to restore social order. Evolutionary theory: Durkheim tried to use analogies with biological systems to understand society.

Front 2

Durkheim's methodology

Back 2

We need to reflect on things by using various principles, rather than thinking of what kind of society we are talking about. Importance of social facts; if you want to explain social facts you have to do it by using social variables. Things cannot be seen as the aggregate of what individuals are up to.

Front 3

Baert - Durkheim's application of methodology in Division of Labour

Back 3

In Division of Labour, Durkheim promoted methodological naturalism: the philosophical position that the methodological rules that apply in the natural sciences could and should be employed in the social sciences. He accounted for societal evolution by drawing on analogies with biological evolution.

Front 4

Division of Labour: two types of solidarity

Back 4

In traditional societies we had mechanical solidarity –religion - sense of collective consciousness in these societies. Now we have anew form of solidarity - organic solidarity –social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals have on each other in more advanced societies. It comes from the interdependence that arises from the division of labour. Weak collective consciousness - what holds us together is very abstract.

Front 5

Division of labour: influence of division of labour in changing society's solidarity

Back 5

Thing sare entirely different as labour becomes divided up. The different parts of the aggregate, since they fulfill different functions, cannot be easily separated. As we mount the scale of social evolution, mechanical solidarity becomes increasingly loose. Mechanical solidarity…enables society to hold the individual more tightly in its grip,making him more strongly attached to his domestic environment, and consequently to tradition.

Front 6

Division of Labour: anomie

Back 6

The breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society. Durkheim argues that anomie causes the continually recurring conflicts and disorders of every kind of which the economic world affords. Lack of normative regulation.

Front 7

Division of labour: law's function in society

Back 7

For Durkheim, law is the most visible symbol of social solidarity and the organization of social life in its most precise and stable form. Law plays a part in society that like that of the nervous system in organisms, regulating all the parts of society so that they work together in agreement.

Front 8

Division of labour: repressive law

Back 8

Repressive law imposes some type of punishment on the perpetrator. Repressive law corresponds to the mechanical state of society. In these lower societies, crimes against the individual are common, yet placed on the lower end of the penal ladder. An act is criminal when it offends the strong, well-defined states of the collective consciousness.

Front 9

Division of labour: restitutive law

Back 9

Restitutive law to restore the relationships that were disturbed from their normal form by the crime that occurred. Restitutive law corresponds to the organic state of society and works through the more specialized bodies of society. The more a society becomes civilized and the division of labour is introduced, the more restitutory law takes place. The nature of the restitutive sanction shows that the social solidarity to which that law corresponds is of a completely different kind.

Front 10

Baert - Suicide first part of book

Back 10

In the first part of the book,Durkheim discussed alternative theories of suicide, eliminating them one by one: psychopathic traits; race and hereditary factors; cosmic factors and imitation.

Front 11

Durkheim - egoistic suicide

Back 11

As collective force is one of the obstacles best calculated to restrain suicide, its weakening involves a development of suicide. When society is strongly integrated, it holds individuals under control. Individuals who not sufficiently bound to social groups are left with little social support or guidance, and therefore tend to commit suicide more. E.g. unmarried people, particularly men and Protestants more likely to than Jews due to less collectivity.

Front 12

Durkheim - altruistic suicide

Back 12

When man has become detached from society, he encounters less resistance to suicide in himself, and he does so likewise when social integration is too strong - individual personality has little significance;holism. E.g. Hindu women who die on funeral pyre of their husbands' and cases where a social prestige thus attaches to suicide.

Front 13

Durkheim - anomic suicide

Back 13

Anomie - condition in which society provides little moral guidance to individuals. It is the breakdown of social bonds between an individual and the community. Anomie arises from a mismatch between personal or group standards and wider social standards, or from the lack of a social ethic, which produces moral deregulation and an absence of legitimate aspirations. This is symptomatic of a failure of economic development and division of labour to produce Durkheim's organic solidarity.

Front 14

Overlapping suicides

Back 14

Two factors of suicide have a peculiar affinity to one another: egoism and anomy. It is almost inevitable that the egoist should have some tendency to non-regulation; for, since he is detached from society, it has not sufficient hold to regulate him.

Front 15

Baert - Altruistic and (econ) anomic suicide

Back 15

Altruistic suicide occurs in societies with too little individuality. Anomic suicide is attributable to the failure of society to control and regulate the individual. This explains increasing suicide rates during economic crises, when people’s means are suddenly reduced but also during economic booms, because people’s expectations and desires increase dramatically.

Front 16

Aaron - suicide types

Back 16

Egoistic emerges from the correlations between the suicide rate and integrating social contexts like religion and family. There is a preservation of individuals, both men and women, by marriage; but after a certain age the preservation is less due to marriage itself than children.Altruistic suicide: The individual chooses death in conformity with social imperatives. Anomic suicide: Social existence no longer ruled by custom.

Front 17

Lukes - Anomic suicide

Back 17

In contemporary societies, economic anomie was chronic in the industrial and commercial world - located to a greater degree among employers than workers. Conjugal anomie resulting in the suicides of men in populations where divorce is frequent, was relatively chronic and could be traced to ‘a weakening of matrimonial regulation’.

Front 18

Lukes - Criticism of Durkheim

Back 18

Durkheim’s characterization of the adverse social conditions is problematic; there is the difficulty of identifying psychological or moral health; his account of why certain individuals are suicide-prone is indecisive.Most fundamental criticism of Durkheim’s theory of suicide is that it is incomplete.

Front 19

Other criticism of Durkheim

Back 19

His type of inference, explaining micro events in terms of macro properties, is often misleading, as is shown by examples of Simpson's paradox. Committed either logical or empirical error.