(2) Durkheim

What sort of theorist was Emile Durkheim?

functionalist

When did Emile Durkheim live?

1858 - 1917

How did Emile Durkheim view crime and deviance, and how did he relate this to industrial societies?

• crime + deviance threaten social order, but their levels can be restrained by social control (formal + informal) which function to restore order eg. positive + negative sanctions encourage conformity

• ‘The Division of Labour in Society’: argues industrial societies are more prone to crime + anomie than traditional societies

  • traditional societies were held together by strong, religious “collective conscience” which impeded criminal/deviant behaviour

  • communities were smaller & there was little geographical mobility, making informal social control more effective

    INDUSTRIALISATION:

  • industrialisation —> urbanisation in which people became strangers —> informal social control less effective

  • division of labour became more complex & jobs ceased to be passed down; people were competing for work

  • societies became more secular

  • increased geographical mobility + urbanisation brought together people from dif. backgrounds with dif. outlooks, undermining social norms

How did Durkheim argue that crime is an inevitable aspect of social life?

• ‘The Rules of Sociological Method’: not all members of society can be equally committed to the collective sentiments of society so crime = inevitable

• individuals are exposed to dif. influences + circumstances so it is “impossible for all to be alike”

• imagined “society of saints” populated by perfect individuals ~ would be no murder/ robbery etc. but still deviance as general standards of behaviour would be so high that the slightest transgression would be regarded as a serious offence

How did Durkheim argue that crime is a functional aspect of social life (in ‘The Rules of Sociological Method’)?

• crime only becomes dysfunctional when its rate is unusually high/ low

• all social change begins with deviance of some form ~ yesterday’s deviance must become today’s normality

• if collective sentiments are too strong, there will be little deviance, but no progress

• collective sentiments must have “moderate energy” only so they don’t crush originality

  “in order that the originality of the idealist whose dreams transcend this century may find expression it is necessary that the originality”

• eg. Nelson Mandela was considered a terrorist in South Africa for leading the campaign against apartheid, but went on to become the 1st president of post-apartheid South Africa & was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1993

• punishment = functional eg. a criminal trial reminds people where the boundary between unacceptable + acceptable behaviour lies & “heals the wounds done to the collective sentiments”

• without punishment, collective sentiments would lose their power to control behaviour & crime rate would become dysfunctional

How might Durkheim’s view of crime be criticised?

• Durkheim under-emphasises dysfunctional consequences of crime & offers no way of gauging what crime rates are “too high” or “too low”

• view that law is an expression of “society’s” moral sentiments would be challenged by conflict theorists who would see it as an expression of the interests of powerful groups

• interactionists would argue that Durkheim’s theory is too deterministic, underplaying people’s agency

KEY TERM

a situation in which social norms are unclear, conflicting or integrated

anomie