Martineau's Synthesis Essay

The author Martineau might lean more towards the perspective of approaching the problems of society without an inherent bias and making hasty assumptions of people who tend to “generalize on morals and manners as hastily as they do... [and this] will probably be impossible to establish a general conviction” asserting the idea that no nation is inherently better than any other nation (Morals and Manners, 8.) As long as people approach society’s problems while taking into account a variety of factors that could have a ranging effect on the issues a particular society may face, people must set aside their prejudice in order to obtain an accurate truth as this becomes an essential factor in the service of people’s observations. Durkheim goes on …show more content…
From an example from Martineau, she is able to convey that behaviors are learned over time, even if she doesn’t explicitly say that they are. With her radical notions in questioning the validity of enslaving African Americans, she frequently gives examples of slaves desperately trying to seek out their freedom. Consequently, she asks the reader, “Would you be happy with their means?” assuming that the person reading her writing is coming from the perspective of a white, southern male (Morals of Slavery, 332). There are other scenarios early on in the stories where she stresses the importance of relating to the ideas from a foreign view of a differing society. Rather than addressing the immediate, domestic problems within our society, she attempts to shift the reader’s understanding so that they don’t possess any immediate generalizations when approaching society’s problems. In a similar notion, Durkheim comes from a similar stance to Martineau in addressing the fact that many of the morals we hold and many of the concepts we deem to be “bad” is something people have learned from socialization over a period of