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Book No. – 25 (Sociology)
Book Name – Masters of Sociological Thought
What’s Inside the Chapter? (After Subscription)
1. THE WORK
1.1. GENERAL APPROACH
1.2. INDIVIDUAL AND SOCIETY
1.3. THE SOCIOLOGY OF RELIGION
1.4. THE SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE
1.5. FUNCTIONAL EXPLANATION
2. THE MAN
2.1. DURKHEIM’S ACADEMIC CAREER
2.2. PUBLIC INVOLVEMENT
3. THE INTELLECTUAL CONTEXT
3.1. DURKHEIM’S ROOTS IN FRENCH INTELLECTUAL HISTORY
3.2. CONTEMPORARY INFLUENCES
3.3. EXTRA-FRENCH INFLUENCES
4. THE SOCIAL CONTEXT
4.1. THE GENERAL SCENE
5. DURKHEIM’S BACKGROUND
5.1. GATHERING DISCIPLES AND FINDING AN AUDIENCE
5.2. PATTERNS OF INFLUENCE
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LANGUAGE
Emile Durkheim
Chapter – 4
Table of Contents
THE WORK
GENERAL APPROACH
- Durkheim’s doctrine emphasizes that the study of society must avoid reductionism and consider social phenomena as sui generis.
- He rejected biologistic or psychologistic explanations and focused on social-structural determinants of social problems.
- Social phenomena are “social facts” and should be the focus of sociology, having distinctive social characteristics and determinants.
- Social facts are external to individuals, enduring over time, and possess coercive power, imposing constraints on individuals, regardless of their will.
- Constraints, such as laws or customs, arise when social demands are violated, channeling desires and actions.
- Early Durkheim defined social facts by their exteriority and constraint, with a focus on the legal system’s operation.
- Later, Durkheim emphasized that social facts and moral rules become effective guides when internalized by individuals, while still existing independently of them.
- Constraint is now seen as a moral obligation to obey rules, making society both “beyond us” and “in ourselves.”
- Durkheim aimed to study social facts as phenomena in the world and as facts known by actors and social scientists.
- Social phenomena arise when interacting individuals create a reality that can’t be reduced to individual properties; the determining cause of social facts lies in prior social facts, not individual consciousness.
- For example, a political party is a structural whole explained by social and historical forces, not by the individual members constituting it.
- Durkheim focused on group characteristics rather than individual traits, studying cohesion in groups rather than individual behaviors.
- He examined differences in suicide rates within groups to indicate the cohesion or lack thereof in those groups.
- Suicide rates are higher in groups with weakened social cohesion and normlessness.
- Durkheim used the study of rates to avoid ad hoc explanations, making comparative analysis of social structures possible.
- He concluded that cohesion or integration explains varying suicide rates, with higher integration correlating with lower suicide rates.
- Well-integrated individuals are better protected from frustrations and tragedies, making them less likely to commit suicide.
- One major element of integration is interaction, such as shared participation in rituals or work activities, which bind individuals together.
- Value integration, or shared values and beliefs, contributes to social cohesion. Groups with stronger consensus exhibit less behavioral deviance.
- In some cases, like Protestantism, a greater focus on individualism can lead to higher deviance like suicide, not due to lack of consensus, but as a response to autonomy.
- Durkheim distinguished between mechanical and organic solidarity in terms of the degree of individual similarity and dependence.
- Mechanical solidarity exists where common ideas and tendencies are stronger than individual differences; it’s characterized by minimal personal individuality.
- Organic solidarity develops out of differences in a society due to the division of labor, leading to interdependence among individuals performing specialized roles.
- In organic solidarity, members of society are less alike but more interdependent, requiring less common belief yet stronger interdependence through specialization.
- Durkheim revised his view to stress that even societies with high organic solidarity still need a common faith to avoid decay.
- Without a shared set of symbolic representations and assumptions about the world, Durkheim argued that societies, whether primitive or modern, would disintegrate.