Week 3 Readings

Durkheim & DuBois

Orum III

• 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

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• 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

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Zuckerman

• 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

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Foucault & Democracy

Blencowe

• 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)

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Dahl

• Democratic requirements

  • Effective participation
  • Voting equality
  • Enlightened understanding
  • Control of the agenda
  • Inclusion of all adults

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• 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

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