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Name/date: Major
work: Keywords: Key
figures: Aphorism: Political
aspect: Associations: |
Emile
Durkheim
(1858-1917) On
Suicide (1897) Sociology,
social facts, division of labour, anomie, mechanical/organic solidarity,
fuctionalism (structural functionalism) "The
first and fundamental rule [of sociology] is to consider social facts as
things...a social fact is every way of acting which is capable of
exercising an external constraint upon the individual" |
Durkheim
was concerned with functional interrelations between systems of beliefs and
thought and the underlying social structure.
Whilst
Comte was
preoccupied with finding laws of social physics, (dynamic and static), Spencer
thought he had individuated laws determining the organic kind of social forms,
Durkheim tries to specify what the object of sociology is. However, according to
Martin Jay (1984), like Comte, Durkheim was concerned with social reality sui
generis. Indeed, both Comte and Durkheim were praised by Althusser
for creating the “groundwork for critique of the subjective origins of the
social whole”. In What is a
social fact? sociology is limited to the analysis of only those laws that
govern and constrain the individual externally. The social is definitively
extra-individual.
According
to Durkheim, system sociology is in a crisis.
Sociology
is NOT a philosophy of history that claims to discover general laws of
progressive development for the whole humanity.
Sociology
is NOT a metaphysics claiming to determine the nature of
society.
Sociology
is NOT scientia scientarum.
Sociology
is the study of SOCIAL FACTS.
Durkheimian
thought was recently revived by the Annales
School through their notion of histories of mentalities.
“The
concept of totality is only the abstract form of the concept of society: it is
the whole which includes all things, the supreme class which embraces all other
classes” – ‘The elementary forms of religious life’.
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The
Durkheim
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on Durkheim (Chicago, edu) |
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Bibliography |
Major
works: 1915.
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life 1933.
The Division of Labor in Society 1938.
The Rules of Sociological Method 1951.
Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Durkheim
and Women: .The
Elementary forms of the Religious Life. New York: Free
Press. 'Introduction';
book 1, ch. 1 ('Definition of Religious Phenomena and
of Religion');
book 2, ch. 7 ('Origins of the Idea of the Totemic Principle
of Mana's');
'Conclusion'. ·
On the Division of Labor - From: Emile Durkheim [1947] The Division
of Labor
in Society (Translated by George Simpson). New York:The Free
Press. ·
Types of Suicide - TS, pp. 213-18. ·
Anomic Suicide - TS, pp. 916-29. ·
On the Normality of Crime - TS, pp. 872-76. What
is a social fact? - From: Emile Durkheim [1982] The Rules of
the Sociological
Method (Ed. by Steven Lukes; trans. by W.D. Halls). New
York: Free
Press, pp. 50-9. |
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