Emile Durkheim

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Emile Durkheim

• The Man
• Society and the Social Fact
• Social Solidarity
• The Sacred and the Profane

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Emile Durkheim 1858-1917

• Born 1858 in Epinal France
• Originally Studied to be a Rabbi
• Studied at the Ecole Normale in 1879.
• Taught philosophy in France 1882-1887
• Traveled to Germany in 1887, then obtained a post
  at the University of Bordeaux (France)
• Married the former Louise Dreyfus, and played an
  active role in defending Alfred Dreyfus (1894)
• 1885 published The Rules of Sociological Method
• 1897- Suicide
• 1898 Founded Journal Lannée sociologique.
• 1906 named professor of the Science of Education
  at the Sorbonne
• 1912- The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• 1913 changed to professor of Education and
  Sociology.
• 1915- his son is killed in WWI
• Died November 15, 1917.

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Progressive/Evolutionary Thinking

• Based on assumptions of predictable, cumulative
  change from one stage to another. Usually more
  complex and in the direction of increasing
  adaptability.
• The Fitness of Sociocultural Traits
• Emile Durkheim

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The Influence of Organicism

• Organicism-The concept that society or the
  universe is analogous to a biological organism,
  as in development or organization.

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Durkheims Basic Assumptions Reflect the Views of
the Organicists

• 1) Society was to be viewed as an entity in
  itself that can be distinguished from and is not
  reducible to its constituent parts. Analytic
  priority is given to the whole.
• 2) Durkheim gave causal priority to the whole-
  system parts fulfill the needs and requirements
  of the whole.
• 3) The frequent use of the notion functional
  needs is buttressed by Durkheims
  conceptualization of social systems as normal
  and pathological states.
• 4) When we view systems as normal and
  pathological, as well as by functions, the
  additional implication is that systems have
  equilibrium points around which normal
  functioning occurs.

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The Hedge

• When, then, the explanation of social phenomenon
  is undertaken, we must seek separately the
  efficient cause which produces it and the
  function it fulfills. We use the word function
  in preference to end or purpose, precisely
  because social phenomena do not generally exist
  for the useful results they produce. Durkheim,
  1895

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Durkheim on Society

• "Social life comes from a double source, the
  likeness of consciences and the division of
  social labor."Every aggregate of individuals
  who are in continuous contact form a society.
• The interests of the individual are not those of
  the group he belongs to and, indeed, there is
  often a real antagonism between one and the
  other... There should be...a code of rules that
  lays down for the individual what he should do so
  as not to damage collective interests and so as
  not to disorganize the society of which he forms
  a part.

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Society is Prior to the Individual

• 1) We are all born into pre-existing societies.
  We learn values, norms and expected behaviors.
• 2) At any one moment in time, a societys ways of
  acting, thinking, and feeling exist independently
  of any one person. A pattern of behavior that
  expresses values and norms will continue if some
  or even many members of a society are ignorant
  about how to act or are rebelling by purposely
  acting in a deviant way.

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Durkheim on Socialization

• Is what glues society together.
• Two Levels of Socialization
• Regulation
• Integration

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Regulation

• Institutional levels of socialization perform the
  process of regulation.
• Society controls our animal appetites by
  giving us a sense of duty and clear guidance
  about what goals to seek and the proper means to
  follow in seeking our goals. Hornsby P. 90

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Different Institutions in Modern Societies
Regulate Individuals Through One or More of the
Following Mechanisms

• 1) Defining Moral Rules
• 2) Communicating and clarifying Moral Rules
• 3) Enforcing Moral Rules

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Integration

• Refers to the level of socialization that occurs
  in the everyday life experiences of interacting
  in groups. Integration depends on the level and
  quality of group activity.
• Collective activity- reinforces over and over
  again strong social ties, shared beliefs, values
  and norms, and shared emotions that let members
  feel duty and attachment to the group.

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• A Collective Consciousness- Moral Unity can only
  be attained if All members of society share
  common sets of symbolic representations and
  common assumptions about the world around them.
• If you lack these things, the society will
  degenerate and decay.

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Durkheims Typology of Normal Versus Pathological
States of Social Groups
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Understanding Anomie

• Normlessness in a whole society or in some of its
  component groups. It is not a state of mind, but
  a property of the social structure. The desires
  of individuals are no longer being regulated by
  social norms, and as a consequence individuals
  lack moral guidance in pursuit of their goals.
• Any rapid movement in the social structure that
  upsets previous networks in which lifestyles are
  embedded carries with it a chance of anomie.

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Egoism

• When one becomes detached form society. In this
  case, the norms still exist, but one has become
  detached from them.

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Using Hornsbys Example-

• What are the mechanisms for regulation in
  electronic gatherings?
• Is integration facilitated through electronic
  gatherings? What are the mechanisms for
  integration in Electronic Gatherings?

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The Social Fact

• The social structures, cultural norms and values
  that are external to and coercive of actors.
• Social Facts must be treated as things.
• They should be studied empirically, not
  philosophically.

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Understanding Social Facts

• A social fact is identifiable through the power
  of external coercion which it exerts or is
  capable of exerting upon individuals.
• Indeed the fact which have provided us with its
  basis are all ways of functioning they are
  physiological in nature. But there are also
  collective ways of being, namely, social facts of
  an anatomical or morphological nature.
• A social fact is any way of acting, whether
  fixed or not, capable of exerting over the
  individual an external constraint
• Which is general over the whole of a given
  society whilst having an existence of its own,
  independent of its individual manifestations.

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The Evolution of his Ideas

• Early in his work the social fact is defined by
  exteriority and constraint. Later in his career,
  the social fact evolved. He came to see it as an
  effective guide and control of conduct only to
  the extent that they become internalized in the
  consciousness of individuals, while continuing to
  exist independently of individuals. Constraint
  evolves from a simple imposition of outside
  controls on individual will, to a moral
  obligation to obey the rule.

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Levels of Social Reality Material Versus
Non-Material Social Facts

• Material Social Facts
• Society
• Structural Components of society (church, state)
• Morphological components of society (populations
  distribution, channels of communication, housing
  arrangements)
• Non-Material Social Facts
• Morality
• Collective Conscience
• Collective Representations
• Social Currents

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The Significance of the Social Fact

• The significance of the social fact is that it
  defined an area of study for sociology. It set
  it apart from biological and psychological
  studies of society.

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Durkheims Central Research Question

• How are societies Created and sustained over
  time?
• Problem of social solidarity

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Understanding Social Solidarity

• Takes different forms in different historical
  periods and varies in strength from group to
  group, even in the same society.
• It (social solidarity) is not the same in the
  family and in political societies we are not
  attached to our country in the same fashion as
  the Roman was to his city or the German to his
  tribe. Durkheim, 1893/1933 p. 66)

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Social Phenomena

• Social phenomena arise when interacting
  individuals constitute a reality that can no
  longer be accounted for in terms of the
  properties of individual actors.
• Group properties are independent of individual
  traits.

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The Division of Labor in Society

• Social Solidarity take on two forms.
• Mechanic Solidarity
• Organic Solidarity

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Mechanical Solidarity

• Social cohesion based upon the likeness and
  similarities among individuals in a society.
• It is largely dependent on common rituals and
  routines. Common among prehistoric and
  pre-agricultural societies, and lessens in
  predominance as modernity increases.
• Are small, simple. For example, traditional
  villages are composed of households organized in
  a similar manner. Each household fulfills the
  same wide range of economic, educational,
  familial, and religious functions as do the other
  households.

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Durkheim on Mechanical Solidarity

• "In societies where this type of solidarity
  mechanical is highly developed, the individual
  is not his own master...Solidarity is, literally
  something which the society possesses.
• "There is then, a social structure of determined
  nature to which mechanical solidarity
  corresponds. What characterizes it is a system of
  segments homogeneous and similar to each other.
  Quite different is the structure of societies
  where organic solidarity is preponderant. They
  are constituted, not by a repitition of similar,
  homogeneous segments, but by a system of
  different organs each of which has a special
  role, and which are themselves formed of
  differentiated parts."

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Organic Solidarity

• Social cohesion based upon the dependence
  individuals in more advanced society have on each
  other. Though individuals perform different tasks
  and often have different values and interests,
  the order and very survival of society depends on
  their reliance on each other to perform their
  specific task.
• These societies are complex, composed of
  specialized parts. No one household,
  neighborhood, town, or company can produce
  everything its members need to survive.
  Moreover, the economy depends on the family and
  educational institutions to produce dependable
  workers with a range of needed skills.
• Hence there is a high degree of economic
  interdependence

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Durkheim on Organic Solidarity

• In one case as in the other, the structure
  derives from the division of labor and its
  solidarity. Each part of the animal, having
  become an organ, has its proper sphere of action
  where it moves independently without imposing
  itself upon others. But, from another point of
  view, they depend more upon one another than in a
  colony, since they cannot separate without
  perishing."
• "...Even where society relies most completely
  upon the division of labor, it does not become a
  jumble of juxtaposed atoms, between which it can
  establish only external, transient contacts.
  Rather the members are united by ties which
  extend deeper and far beyond the short moments
  during which the exchange is made. Each of the
  functions that they exercise is, in a fixed way,
  dependent upon others, and with them forms a
  solidarity system."

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What Determines if a Society is Mechanical or
Organic?

• -1) The extent of the division of labor
• -2) The extent to which members of a society
  share a collective consciousness (ways of
  thinking or feeling that are common to the group)
• The greater the degree of specialization, the
  lower the collective consciousness

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What Explains the Transition from Mechanic to
Organic Solidarity

• Dynamic Density- refers to the number of people
  in a society and the amount of interaction that
  occurs among them. Neither population increase
  nor an increase in interaction, when taken
  separately, is a significant factor in societal
  change.
• An increase in numbers of people and an increase
  in the interaction among them lead to the change
  from mechanical to organic solidarity because
  together they bring about more competition for
  scarce resources and a more intense struggle for
  survival among the various parallel and similar
  components of primitive society.

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Law and Solidarity

• Mechanical Solidarity- is characterized by
  repressive law. Because people are similar they
  tend to believe very strongly in a common
  morality, any offense against their shared value
  system is likely to be of significant importance
  to most individuals.
• Organic Solidarity- is characterized by
  Restitutive Law- instead of being severely
  punished for even seemingly minor offenses
  against the collective morality, individuals in
  more modern type of society are likely simply to
  be asked to comply with the law or to repay- make
  restitution.

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Collective Consciousness

• The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to
  average citizens of the same society forms a
  determinate system which has its own life one
  may call it the collective or common
  conscience... It is, thus, an entirely different
  thing from particular consciences, although it
  can be realized only through them. Durkheim,
  1893

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Collective Representation

• Specific states, or substrata of the collective
  Conscience. Collective representations are
  norms, values of specific collectivities such as
  the family, occupations, states, educational,
  religious institutions.

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Two Types of Societies
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Two Empirical Examples

• Suicide
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

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Why Suicide?

• He chose to study suicide because it was
• Concrete
• Specific
• Had good data available
• Seen as a private and personal act and if he
  could show social causes it would legitimize a
  wider area of study for the new field.

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Durkheim on Suicide

• Each social group has a collective inclination
  for the act, quite its own and the source of all
  individual inclination rather than their result.
  It is made up of currents of egoism, altruism or
  anomy running through... society... These
  tendencies of the whole social body, by affecting
  individuals, cause them to commit suicide. 1897

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The Four Types of Suicide

• Egoistic
• Altruistic
• Anomic
• Fatalistic

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Four Types of Suicide

• When Integration is too low, Egoistic suicide is
  more likely.
• When Integration is too high, Altruistic suicide
  is more likely.
• When Regulation is too low, Anomic suicide is
  more likely.
• When Regulation is too high, Fatalistic suicide
  is more likely.

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The Elementary Forms of Religious Life- 1912

• There can be no society that does not experience
  the need at regular intervals to maintain and
  strengthen the collective feelings and ideas that
  provide its coherence and its distinct
  individuality. This moral remaking can be
  achieved only through meetings, assemblies, and
  congregations in which the individuals, pressing
  close to one another, reaffirm in common their
  common sentiments. p. 429 1912
• A religion is a unified system of beliefs and
  practices which unite into one single moral
  community called a Church, all those who adhere
  to them.

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Why Study Religion?

• Religion was one of the forces that created
  within individuals a sense of moral obligation to
  adhere to societys demands.
• He saw religion as a mechanism that might serve
  to bolster a threatened social order.
• Religion took people from everyday concerns to
  experiencing a common devotion.

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The Sacred and the Profane

• Society creates religion through the definition
  of certain phenomena as sacred (set apart), or
  forbidden. The rest is deemed profane, ordinary,
  everyday, utilitarian, mundane.

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The Development of the Sacred Requires Three
Other Conditions for the Development of Religion

• 1) Development of a set of religious beliefs.
  These beliefs are the representations which
  express the nature of sacred things and the
  relations which they sustain, either with each
  other or with profane things
• 2) A set of religious rites is necessary.
• 3) A church or a single overarching moral
  community

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A New Religion

• We must discover the rational substitutes for
  these religious notions that for a long time have
  served as the vehicle for the most essential
  moral ideas. Durkheim, the Elementary Forms of
  Religious Life p. 44
• New religions can replace the older modes.

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Critique

• The focus on the function of a part for the
  social whole as always being examined sometimes
  results in teleological reasoning. (The systems
  parts function to maintain the system. Hence
  each part exists because it is required for the
  functioning of the system).

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Causal and functional statements sometimes become
fused in his arguments.

• In the Division of Labor
• Population density leads to moral density is his
  cause.
• Integration of society is his function.
• Population density increases moral density moral
  density leads to competition (threat to social
  order). Competition for resources leads to
  specialization specialization creates mutual
  obligation. Does this mean a threat to the
  social order caused the division of labor?

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Hornsbys Cyborg Society

• What is Hornsbys Hypothesis?
• Be sure to define key terms