Emile Durkheim Sociology Summary

Durkheim describes sociology by a study of social facts. He believes that you cannot define a society by just looking at individual parts; you have to look at things as a whole, and while you are doing that you have to look at moral and mental behaviors. It is a matter “of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested by a coercive power…” (QUOTE 1). With Durkheim’s views on sociology we can start to better understand why young people do not vote, as explained in the article, through different forms of social behavior and why people act in certain ways. When it comes to Social Facts, which according to Durkheim is “the way of thinking and feeling that is external to the individual” (QUOTE 1) we can relate it …show more content…
Although we do technically have Legal-Rational authority, which is authority that is ““resting on a belief in the legality of enacted rules and the rights of those elevated to authority under such rules to issue commands” (QUOTE12), so basically authority where there are rules set into place and people understand why the rules are there, I fell as though young people are starting to feel like it is Traditional authority. Traditional authority is authority that is “resting on an established belief in the sanctity of immermorial traditions and the legitimacy of those exercising authority under them” (QUOTE 13) so basically authority that people do not question, they just go with it because that is they way it has always been. When a young person starts to feel as though their vote is not important and wants to do something about it this can lead to Charismatic authority, authority that is “resting on devotion to the exceptional sanctity, heroism or exemplary character of an individual person, and of the normative patterns of order revealed or ordained by him.” (QUOTE 9). So in other words, it is someone who rises up and starts to question the way things are for the better of the