Durkheimian Sociology and Durkheim's Study of The Social
2018-02-26に共有
"Durkheimian sociology"
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DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.15036.90246
Music courtesy of Classical Music Discoveries, Mahler "Symphony No. 5" itunes.apple.com/us/podcast/classical-music-discov…
text:
Émile Durkheim’s intellectual life began around the time his country lost the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, and ended amid France’s destruction during World War I. These were times of fierce nationalism around Europe, when nations were forming, new collective identities were developing independently of the church, and individuals’ life stories were heading into paths different from those of their parents. The industrial revolution and capitalism gave people more choices in their careers and lifestyles. Durkheim himself broke with three generations of Jewish men in his family who had been rabbis, instead spending his twenties in search of the right calling. One question for which he wanted answers centered around nationalism: “How is it possible that people are gaining more individual freedoms yet exhibiting a growing sense of belonging to a nation?”
Committed to explaining the process of social cohesion Durkheim wanted to go beyond the well-established fields of philosophy and natural science; he looked into the emerging field of psychology, but ultimately became interested in how the group influences the individual, rather than how the individual interacts with itself. So for two years he studied in Germany, where the roots of the discipline of sociology were taking hold. Then in 1887, at age 29, he came back to his native France to become the country’s first sociology teacher. Durkheimian sociology has since become synonymous with ‘classical’ sociology.
Although initially trained as a philosopher, Durkheim’s novel approach sought distance from philosophy and its questions about theories of existence and so on. This new sociology was part psychology in its attempts to explain human behavior, but it applied methods from the physical sciences to more objectively judge the character of a society.
Durkheim used the phrase social facts to describe cultural rules that regulate individuals’ behavior. Social facts are meant to gather quantifiable data that will reveal the characteristics of a society. In one of his most famous books, Durkheim quantified suicide rates in various parts of Europe. One innovation was the cross-referencing of suicide data with many other factors such as alcoholism, family size, and religion. Durkheim reported, for example, that in comparison to Protestant societies, Catholics had more social facts regarding cohesion and inter-personal connection. Another way to say this is that Catholic societies had higher social densities, and this is one reason that they experienced lower suicide rates than Protestant societies. On the other hand, the price of being lonely had a pay-off: since the Protestant character was more individualistic, their societies could develop more quickly under capitalism. This idea was much discussed by the other great sociologist of the time, the German-speaking Max Weber.
Another aspect of the Durkheimian view is that societies share a collective consciousness. This is the set of social facts which the average person agrees to. “It’s okay to do this, it’s not okay to do that.” At first glance, it may seem that society’s collective consciousness dominates individuals as it conforms them to fit social norms. But this is not oppressive. In Durkheim’s modern society, each person’s contribution to the collective consciousness was larger than it had been in previous generations because the power of the church was gradually fading away. Although, as the study on suicide showed, religious-based social facts were still very much part of the collective consciousness.
In conclusion, Durkheimian theory helped establish a standard for collecting and analyzing social data, and has become even more widely used since the 1960s. While we may want to challenge the conclusions he drew from his data on religion and society, Durkheim’s methodology is recognized as a legitimate starting point for sociological inquiry.
Created and presented by Michael Henshaw
コメント (4)
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I appreciate the video. It makes for good supplemental material for my course this semester. I would just like to note that the music volume made it hard to hear you.
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the sound is not good I am quite disappointed
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Can I have a soft copy
