Emile Durkheim (Empirical
approach to Society)
I.
Introduction
After the French Revolution and the
Enlightenment, some writers were concerned with how social order could be
maintained in the face of progress, revolution, disorder, and rule by the
people. Early sociology is often considered to have emerged out of
this conservative reaction to the Enlightenment and the French Revolution –
writers such as Saint-Simon, Comte, and
Spencer looked on the emergent capitalist society as generally good and
progressive, but were concerned about how society holds together given the
individualism that emerged and the changes in political order.
According to Adams
and Sydie, there were three main approaches
i.
Positivism
ii.
Evolutionism
iii. Functionalism
Rather than discuss each of the early conservative sociological approaches, we will move directly to Emile Durkheim, one of the major influences in twentieth century sociology. Durkheim adopted an evolutionary approach in that he considered society to have developed from a traditional to modern society through the development and expansion of the division of labour. He compared society to an organism, with different parts that functioned to ensure the smooth and orderly operation and evolution of society. He is sometimes considered a structural functionalist in that he regarded society as composed of structures that functioned together – in constructing such an approach, he distinguished structure and function. While he considered society to be composed of individuals, society is not just the sum of individuals and their behaviours, actions, and thoughts. Rather, society has a structure and existence of its own, apart from the individuals in it. Further, society and its structures influence, constrain, and even coerce individuals in it – through norms, social facts, common sentiments, and social currents.
While all of these were
developed from earlier or current human action, they stand apart from the
individual, form themselves into institutions and structures, and affect the
individual. Emile Durkheim was especially concerned with the issue of social
order, how does modern society hold together given that society is composed of
many individuals, each acting in an individual and autonomous manner, with
separate, distinct, and different interests.
His first book, The Division of
Labour in Society, was an exploration and explanation of these issues, and
he finds the answer in the concept of social solidarity, common consciousness,
systems of common morality, and forms of law.
Because these forces and structures are not always effective in
producing and maintaining social order, and because there is social change as
the division of labour and society develop, there can be disruptions in social
solidarity and common consciousness.
Durkheim connects these to what he calls the forced division of labour
(eg. slavery) and to periods of confusion and chaos, i.e. what he calls
anomie. He also considers anomie to be
one cause suicide – in his book Suicide
he explores the causes different suicide rates at different places and times in
Europe, and explains why they differ.
II.
Durkheim’s life
Emile Durkheim
(1858-1916) was born in Epinal in Lorraine, France. He was a contemporary of Weber (1864-1920),
but probably never met Weber, and lived his adult life after Karl Marx died.
Durkheim came from a Jewish background. He taught for a number of years, and
then received an appointment to a position in philosophy at the University of
Bordeaux in 1887. There he taught the
subject of moral education and later taught the first course in sociology at a French university. In
1902 he was appointed to a professorship at the Sorbonne, in Paris, where he
remained until he died. Durkheim's most
famous works are The Division of Labour
in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912).
Durkheim is often
considered a conservative within the field of sociology, being concerned
primarily with order, consensus, solidarity, social morality, and systems of
religion. His theoretical analysis helped provide a basis for relatively
conservative structural functional models of society. In contemporary terms, he
might be considered a social democrat, in that he favoured social reforms,
while opposing the development of a socialist society. In his theoretical
model, he advocated the development of “professional groupings” or
“occupational groups” as the means by which the interests of special groups
could be promoted and furthered. Durkheim was not generally involved in
politics, and can be considered a more academic sociologist than either Weber
or Marx.
In terms of the
development of the field of sociology, Durkheim is especially important. He was
the first to offer courses in sociology in French universities, at a time when
sociology was not well known or favoured. His writings are important within the
field of sociology, in that several of them are basic works that sociology
students today are expected to read and understand. Much of the manner in which sociology as an
academic discipline is carried on follows Durkheim's suggestions and
approach. French sociology, in
particular, follows Durkheim, and some of Durkheim's books are likely to serve
as texts in French sociology. Much
American sociology is also heavily influenced by Durkheim. In recent years,
there has again been much attention paid to his writings. Durkheim became
interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career,
which meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which
had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies
uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology
and philosophy to ethics and eventually, sociology.
III.
Durkheim main works
1.
Social facts
2.
The Division of
Labour in society
3.
Suicide
4.
Forms of Religious
life
IV.
Social facts
i.
Social
facts are an idea or things.
ii.
This
means that we must study social facts by acquiring data from outside from our
own mind through observation and experimentation.
iii.
Durkheim
himself gave several examples of social facts, including legal rules, moral
obligations, and social convention. He also refers to language as a social
facts, and it provide an easily understood example. Language is a thing that
must be studied empirically.
Example
of social facts
i.
Material
and Non material
ii.
Material: technology, housing arrangements,
population distribution, etc.
iii.
Nonmaterial: norms, values, roles (ways of
acting, thinking and feeling), systems (language, currency, professional
practices)
V. Sociology as a Study of ‘Social Facts’
In defining the subject matter of sociology two tasks are involved (a) defining the total field of study and (b) defining the sort of ‘thing’ which will be found in this field. In his book, The Rules of Sociological Method, published in 1895, Durkheim (1950: 3) is concerned with the second task and calls social facts the subject matter of sociology. Durkheim (1950: 3) defines social facts as “ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion by reason of which they control him”. To Durkheim society is a reality suigeneris (That which generates itself; that which exists by itself; that which does not depend upon some other being for its origin or existence. Durkheim considered society as sui generis. It is always present and has no point of origin.)
Society comes into being by the association of individuals. Hence society represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics. This unique reality of society is separate from other realities studied by physical or biological sciences. Further, societal reality is apart from individuals and is over and above them. Thus the reality of society must be the subject matter of sociology. A scientific understanding of any social phenomenon must emerge from the ‘collective’ or associational characteristics manifest in the social structure of a society. While working towards this end, Durkheim developed and made use of a variety of sociological concepts. Collective representations are one of the leading concepts to be found in the social thought of Durkheim. Before learning about ‘collective representations’ (subject matter of Unit 12) it is necessary that you understand what Durkheim meant by ‘social facts’.
VI.
Social Facts
Durkheim based his
scientific vision of sociology on the fundamental principle, i.e., the
objective reality of social facts. Social fact is that way of acting, thinking
or feeling etc., which is more or less general in a given society. Durkheim
treated social facts as things. They are real and exist independent of the
individual’s will or desire. They are external to individuals and are capable
of exerting constraint upon them. In other words they are coercive in nature.
Further social facts exist in their own right. They are independent of
individual manifestations. The true nature of social facts lies in the
collective or associational characteristics inherent in society. Legal codes
and customs, moral rules,
Types of Social Facts
i.
First,
on one extreme are structural or morphological social phenomena. They make up
the substratum of collective life.
ii.
Secondly,
there are institutionalised forms of social facts. They are more or less
general and widely spread in society. They represent the collective nature of
the society as a whole. Under this category fall legal and moral rules,
religious dogma and established beliefs and practices prevalent in a society.
iii.
Thirdly, there are social facts, which are
not institutionalised. Such social facts have not yet acquired crystallised
forms. They lie beyond the institutionalised norms of society. Also this
category of social facts has not attained a total objective and independent
existence comparable to the institutionalised ones.
Also their externality to
and ascendancy over and above individuals is not yet complete. These social
facts have been termed as social currents. For example, sporadic currents of
opinion generated in specific situations; enthusiasm generated in a crowd;
transitory outbreaks in an assembly of people; sense of indignity or pity
aroused by specific incidents, etc. All the above mentioned social facts form a
continuum and constitute social milieu of society.
Externality
and Constraint
A. There
are two related senses in which social facts are external to the individual.
i.
First,
every individual is born into an ongoing society, which already has a definite
organisation or structure. There are values, norms, beliefs and practices which
the individual finds readymade at birth and which he learns through the process
of socialisation. Since these social phenomena exist prior to the individual
and have an objective reality, they are external to the individual.
ii. Secondly, social facts are external to the individual in the sense that any one individual is only a single element within the totality of relationships, which constitutes a society.
B. The second criterion by which social facts are defined is the moral ‘constraint’ they exercise on the individual. When the individual attempts to resist social facts they assert themselves. The assertion may range from a mild ridicule to social isolation and moral and legal sanction. However, in most circumstances individuals conform to social facts and therefore do not consciously feel their constraining character. This conformity is not so much due to the fear of sanctions being applied as the acceptance of the legitimacy of the social facts.
VII. Suicide
Ø
The
act of killing yourself because you do not want to continue living
Ø
A
person who commits suicide • An action that ruins or destroys your career,
social position, etc
Types
of suicide:
i.
Egoistic
suicide
ii.
Altruistic
suicide
iii.
Anomic
suicide
iv.
Fatalistic
suicide
Egoistic suicide: Egoistic Suicide occurs in a society
where there is too much individualism, that is, low social integration.
Egoistic suicide is committed by people who are not strongly supported by
membership in a interconnected social group. • People who would be most likely
to commit this type of suicide feel extremely detached from their community.
They do not feel a part of the greater whole or a sense of belonging.
Typically, elderly people who have lost communication with their community due
to inability to get out of their homes would be defined as those who commit
egoistic suicide.
Altruistic suicide: The term 'altruism' was used by Emile Durkheim to describe a
Suicide committed for the benefit of others or for the community: this would
include self-sacrifice for military objectives in wartime. Altruistic suicides
reflect a courageous indifference to the loss of one's life.
Anomic suicide: This kind of suicide is related to too low of a degree of regulation. This type of suicide is committed during times of great stress or change. Without regulation, a person cannot set reachable goals and in turn people get extremely frustrated. Life is too much for them to handle and it becomes meaningless to them. An example of this is when the market crashes or spikes.
Fatalistic suicide: The final type of suicide is Fatalistic suicide. People commit this suicide when their lives are kept under tight regulation. They often live their lives under extreme rules and high expectations. These types of people are left feeling like they’ve lost their sense of self. • People who commit fatalistic suicide feel oppressed by the society around them. They feel constantly repressed, both physically and mentally, by those who enforce power over them. People who live in very oppressive countries or prisoners would be most likely to commit fatalistic suicide.
VIII.
Division of labour
The division of labour is the specialization of cooperating individuals who perform specific tasks and roles. Why Divide Labour? Division of labour is essential to economic progress because it allows people to specialize in particular tasks. This specialization makes workers more efficient, which reduces the total cost of producing goods or providing a service. Additionally, by making people become skilled and efficient at a smaller number of tasks, division of labour gives people time to experiment with new and better ways of doing things.
i. Traditional society
®
Based
on Hunting and gathering
®
Based on commonly shared belief and strong
group identity
® Simply division of labour
ii.
Modern society
®
Based
on industries and new technology
®
Society
become complex due to industrialization
® Based on class level upper, middle and lower
iii.
Role of state and occupational groups
Having said that Durkheim was generally very
optimistic concerning the development of the division of labour in developing
an organic solidarity, Durkheim was also concerned with the state of modern
society. The development of the division
of labour did have the tendency to split people, and the organic solidarity
might not be sufficient to hold society together. One solution for regulation
that Durkheim discusses is the state. In
some senses, Durkheim was a socialist, although not of the same type as
Marx. Ritzer notes that for Durkheim,
socialism “simply represented a system in which moral principles discovered by
scientific sociology could be applied.” While
the principles of morality had to be present in society, the state could embody
these in structures, fulfilling functions such as justice, education, health,
social services, etc., and managing a wide range of sectors of society. The
state “should also be the key structure for ensuring that these rules are moral
and just. The appropriate values of individualism, responsibility, fair play,
and mutual obligation can be affirmed through the policies instituted by the
state in all these fields.” The second major hope that Durkheim held was for
what he called occupational groups. The state could not be expected to play the
integrative role that might be needed, because it was too remote. As a solution, Durkheim thought that
occupational or professional groups could provide the means of integration
required. These would be formed by
people in an industry, representing all the people in this sector. Their role would be somewhat different from
Weber's parties, in that they would not be concerned with exercising power, and
achieving their own ends. Instead, they
would “foster the general interest of society at a level that most citizens can
understand and accept.”
What we especially see in the occupational group is a
moral power capable of containing individual egos, of maintaining a spirited
sentiment of common solidarity in the consciousness of all the workers, of
preventing the law of the strongest from being brutally applied to industrial
and commercial relations. (p. 10).
Ritzer notes that these associations could “recognize ... common
interests as well as common need for an integrative moral system. That moral system ... would serve to
counteract the tendency toward atomization in modern society as well as help
stop the decline in significance of collective morality.” (pp. 98-99).
IX.
Functionalism
Functionalism
emphasizes a societal equilibrium. If
something happens to disrupt the order and the flow of the system, society must
adjust to achieve a stable state. According to Durkheim, society should be
analyzed and described in terms of functions. Society is a system of
interrelated parts where no one part can function without the other. These
parts make up the whole of society. If one part changes, it has an impact on
society as a whole. On the other hand, as a functionalist, Émile Durkheim’s (1858–1917) perspective on society stressed
the necessary interconnectivity of all of its elements. To Durkheim, society
was greater than the sum of its parts.
He asserted that individual behaviour was not
the same as collective behaviour and that studying collective behaviour was
quite different from studying an individual’s actions. Durkheim called the
communal beliefs, morals, and attitudes of a society the collective conscience.
In his quest to understand what causes individuals to act in similar and
predictable ways, he wrote, “If I do not submit to the conventions of society,
if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my
class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept,
produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment” (Durkheim 1895). Durkheim also believed
that social integration, or the strength of ties that people have to their
social groups, was a key factor in social life.
For example, the state provides public education for
children. The family of the children pays taxes, which the state uses for
public education. The children who learn from public education go on to become
law-abiding and working citizens, who pay taxes to support the state
X.
Religion: The Origins of Collective Conscience
According to
Durkheim religion mean “A unified system of beliefs and practices relating to
sacred things … which unite into one single moral community called a church all
those who adhere to them.”
Durkheim studies religion as the fundamental institution of social life, upon which the collective identity is structured. Religion unites members through the creation of a collective conscience. All religious expression is founded on the identification of members to a group. Shared religious beliefs and values also reinforce the strength of the collective conscience.
Why did Durkheim study “primitive” society to
understand religion?
Simplicity allows for analysis of “essential” features. These societies are different enough from our own experience that we are able to see important features. Durkheim looked for “the elements which constitute that which is permanent and human in religion; they form all the objective contents of the idea which is expressed when one speaks of religion in general.”
Religion and
Collective Conscience
These social categories
shape how we think and orient ourselves to world: time, space, quality . . .
Establish our basic
categories of thought! “If men did not agree upon these essential ideas at
every moment… all contact between their minds would be impossible, and with
that, all life together. Thus societies could not abandon the categories to the
free choice of the individual without abandoning itself.”
In summary, Durkheim argued that there were various
means by which individual and society could be connected. Among these are education, social programs
through the state, occupational groups, and laws. Together these could assist in regulating
individuals and integrating individuals with society.
XI.
Durkheim’s Methods
Since all religions can be compared to each other, and since all are species of the same class, there are
necessarily many elements which are common to all.”
“At the foundation of all systems of beliefs and of all cults there ought necessarily to be a certain
number of fundamental representations or conceptions and ritual attitudes
which, in spite of the diversity of forms which they have taken, have the same
objective significance and fulfill the
same functions everywhere. These
are the permanent elements which constitute that which is permanent and human
in religion; they form all the objective contents of the idea which is
expressed when one speaks of religion in general.
ii.
Primitive
“In this book we propose to study the most primitive and simple religion
which is actually known, to make an analysis of it, and to attempt an
explanation of it. A religious system
may be said to be the most primitive which we can observe when it fulfills the
two following conditions: in the first
place, when it is found in a society whose organization is surpassed by no
others in simplicity; and secondly, when it is possible to explain it without
making use of any element borrowed from a previous religion.”
“But primitive religions do not merely aid us in disengaging the constituent
elements of religion: they also have the great advantage that they facilitate
the explanation of it.”
iii.
Society
“The general conclusion of the book which the reader has before him is that religion is something eminently social. Religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities; the rights are a manner of acting which take rise in the midst of the assembled groups and which are destined to excite, maintain or recreate certain mental states in those groups.”
XII.
Conclusion
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is best remembered for his efforts in making sociology accepted as an autonomous academic discipline. He won recognition for the idea of a science of society, which could contribute to the study of moral and intellectual problems of modern society. To sum up Durkheim’s conception of sociology we may say that Durkheim clearly considered sociology to be an independent scientific discipline with its distinct subject matter. He distinguished it from psychology. He identified social facts, laid down rules for their observation and explanation. He stressed on social facts being explained through other social facts. For him explanation meant the study of functions and causes. The causes could be derived through the use of the comparative method. He demonstrated the nature of these studies through the study of division Sociology as Science of labour in different types of solidarities, of suicide-rates in different types of societies, and the study of Religion in a single type. His life and works are regarded as a sustained effort at laying the legitimate base of sociology as a discipline. Further, it follows the empiricist method, which is valid in the natural sciences, biology in particular, observation, classification and explanation through the help of ‘laws’ arrived by means of the comparative method.
References
1. uregina.ca/~gingrich/250j1503.htm
2. slideshare.net/nelofarrozi/emile-durkheim-56373875
3. https://slideplayer.com/slide/4545397/
5. http://egyankosh.ac.in/bitstream/123456789/18936/1/Unit-10.pdf
- (1984) Review article by Emile Durkheim (1899), Economy and Society, 13:3, 386-394, DOI: 10.1080/03085148400000015 (https://www.tandfonline.com/action/showCitFormats?doi=10.1080%2F03085148400000015)
- Filloux Jean-Claude,
Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) ‘UNESCO: International Bureau of Education,
2001’ vol. 23, no.1/2, 1993, p. 303–320. (http://www.ibe.unesco.org/sites/default/files/durkheie.pdf)
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