Week 2 readings

Durkheim's Moral Discipline

A code of rules guiding individuals to act in ways that do not harm collective interests or disrupt societal order.

Mechanical Solidarity

Social cohesion based on shared beliefs and common values among all members of a society.

Organic Solidarity

Social cohesion arising from the interdependence of individuals in more advanced societies due to the division of labor.

Social Facts

Actions, thoughts, and beliefs existing outside an individual's consciousness, shaping collective behavior and societal norms.

Egoistic Suicide

Suicide resulting from excessive individualism and lack of social integration.

Anomic Suicide

Suicide stemming from societal disorganization and lack of regulation, leading to disruption and suffering.

Functionalism

interdependence and functions of various societal parts

• conformity to social norms

• against social change

Functional Imperatives

Structural commands institutions must meet to continue existing, including goal attainment, adaptation, integration, and pattern maintenance

• goal attainment

• adaptation

• integration

• latency (pattern maintenance)

Social Order

Maintained through a value consensus, structural pressures, and constraints on individual behavior, emphasizing social solidarity and cohesion.

Social Solidarity

The sense of unity and integration within a society, crucial for maintaining order and harmony among individuals.

Collective Conscience

The feeling of belonging to a common society based on shared culture and socialization.

Will of Society

The external expression of the collective will of people living in a society.

Social Forces

The forces that help bind people together in a society.

Objectivity

Studying the social world without personal biases, scientifically, and focusing on social facts over opinions.

Sacred and Profane

The sacred refers to special or powerful things, while the profane constitutes anything outside the sacred.

Totem

A representation of the sacred, which can be religious or non-religious.

Durkheim’s primary function of religion

to contribute toward the integration of society to encourage a deep sense of moral conformity

developments from division of labor

• it enhances one’s individuality through detachment from the ‘common conscience’

• it assures a higher level of social solidarity as a result of the assignment of specific functions to individual members of society

Parsonian pattern variables

the basic alternatives that, in certain combinations, orient the individual actor to his or her culture and social system

• affectivity versus affective neutrality

• self-orientation versus collectivity orientation

• universalism versus particularism

• achievement versus ascription

• specificity versus diffuseness

value-freedom

researcher keeping their own biases out of the research

organic analogy

• society is akin to a biological organism

• societies have various parts (ideas, classes, cultures, etc.) that work together like the parts of a body to form a whole society