Week 3 Readings

Durkheim & DuBois

Durkheim
- Sociology
- Social facts: examples are social norms and laws
- Society created humans; it is the basis of authority
- Modernization: cause greater individuation and greater deviance
- Solution = reform through educational institutions
- Solidarity
- Social norms and laws: rules that guide the behaviour and thinking of the members of society
- Civil law (seeks restitution on behalf of the victim) vs. Penal law (exacts harsh punishments from the offender)
- Institutions: education, religion, economy
- Culture, symbols and rituals: unite members of society
- Division of labour: furnishes the basis for cementing and solidifying the character of society = integrative function
- Opposition: deviance from the general norms of society
- State: police force
Alexis de Tocqueville
- Democracy in America: citizens’ equality, suffrage, born free, free press + freedom of speech
- Organizations + associations ensured that democracy would continue
- Threats to democracy
- Race
- Manufacturing
- Tyranny of the majority: only the greatest number could gain an advantage
- Civil society

W.E.B Du Bois
- Was an activist for social and racial justice
- He was a pioneer in these disciplines/themes:
- Urban sociology
- Rural sociology
- Criminology
- Religion
- Race
- Social problems
- Sociology must combine broad generalizations and data → put science into sociology
- Racial inequality: the result of social, economic, historical, and political forces
- Race = social construct
- Double-consciousness: when one’s social identities and social roles are at odds with one another

Foucault
- Our being (as conscious and active creatures) is composed through regimes, relations, and practices of knowledge
- Genealogy: anti-science
- Importance of culture and knowledge for power
- Knowledge is crucial to the formation of the real material world
- We must take responsibility for our relations to the production of truth and different truth regimes
- Challenged universalism, determinism, and scientific method
- Modern episteme: the organizing structure of knowledge of modern Western Europe
- Biopolitics: concerned with the collective (society, race, nation, population)

Democratic requirements
- Effective participation
- Voting equality
- Enlightened understanding
- Control of the agenda
- Inclusion of all adults
Benefits of democracy
- Avoiding tyranny and cruel + vicious autocrats
- Essential fundamental rights
- General freedom
- Self-determination: protecting of own fundamental interests
- Moral autonomy and responsibility
- Human development
- Protecting essential personal interests
- Political equality
- Peace-seeking: no wars between democracies
- Prosperity