Durkheim 2/3

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Durkheim 2/3

• Functionalism in sociology
• The culture of poverty
• Durkheims Suicide

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What is due in the 1st Draft ? Due 2/17
(contract 2/10)

• Workbook containing
• 3 greats 3 work sheets Exercise 1 and some
  substantive research
• A Draft consisting of
• Abstract Introduction Review of Literature
  (Bibliography)
• Follow the format in the web-page on the paper,
  and use the style of the sociology journals.

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Workbook

• 1. Three entries applying insights of Marx,
  Durkheim and Weber to your topic.
• 2. The three discussion work sheets cover some
  of the same ground.
• 3. Your Annual Review of Sociology article may
  not be your main review article.
• 4. Your paper must refer to a contemporary
  article, written since 2000, but this might be
  different from either your Exercise 1 or your
  main review article.
• 5. Your substantive research is connected to the
  review of the literature.

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Draft 1

• Abstract 200 300 words anticipating the main
  line of your argument.
• Introduction 1-3 pp. stating the main issue.
• Review of the Literature a description,
  discussion, and analysis of a stream of theory.
• At least one article should be current
  (post-2000).
• Your Annual Review article must be cited, but it
  does not necessarily play a central role.
• The same goes for the literature cited by your
  journal of record article.
• Bibliography Use standard form to list all works
  you will be referring to in the paper.

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Origins the Chicago school

• U.S. sociology began (1895-1940) from the
  discovery that different neighborhoods had
  different rates of social problems.
• For example rates of homicide, suicide, divorce,
  illegitimacy, crime, academic failure,
  alcoholism, juvenile delinquency.
• They concluded that the differences were rooted
  in the social structure even when the people or
  groups in the neighborhood were replaced by
  others, the rates remained high (or low.)
• There were 2 main explanations for these rates
• Class (Marx poverty)
• Norms (Durkheim anomie)

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Binocular vision

• 2 viewpoints allows 3D vision
• There are functional and conflict theorists
  working in virtually every subfield on every
  topic in sociology.
• Durkheim and Marx are the founding theorists of
  these perspectives.
• For many purposes, Weber is best viewed as a
  combination of Durkheim and Marx.
• Thus Durkheim and Marx are the 2 main viewpoints
  to be clarified.

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The Culture of Poverty

• The culture of poverty and the relation of
  culture to social structure is a royal road into
  sociological theory
• Poor neighborhoods often have broken families and
  deviant culture.
• Is it that brutal conditions are brutalizing?
• Or that the culture produces the poverty?

Poverty
Culture of Poverty

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Durkheim and Marx

• Durkheim was writing in the generation after Marx
  and in reaction to him.
• Many of his ideas are those of conservatives,
  particularly on the issues of gender roles.
• But Durkheim was not an ordinary conservative,
  any more than Marx was an ordinary liberal.

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Both?

• The two causal influences are not mutually
  exclusive.
• Nevertheless, important implications follow from
  the question which is most important most of the
  time.
• They have been the focus of much theory and
  research debate.
• One importance of Durkheims theory was to
  provide a way of conceptualizing the breakdown of
  families and moral regulation

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The Culture of Poverty Today

• W.J.Wilson is one of the most important conflict
  theorists today.
• The Truly Disadvantaged (1987)
• When Work Disappears (1996)
• His main argument is that job-flight produces
  culture of poverty as an adaptation poverty
  culture of pov.
• But he also argues that the culture is
  self-maintaining c. of pov poverty.

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Simple (simplistic) differences between Marx and
Durkheim

• Marx
• Who gets what and why?
• Class and class struggle.
• Opposed interests of different groups.
• Measures of social class, such as income
• Class class culture

• Durkheim
• What holds society together?
• Solidarity, norms and integration.
• Functional needs of the society
• Measures of family and religious ties.
• Culture class

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The liberal and the conservative Durkheims

• The more liberal or radical Durkheim is evident
  from
• His role in the Dreyfus Affaire
• His analysis of The Division of Labor
• Especially the forced division of labor
• And his relations to Kant and to Marx in the
  Prefaces
• We will look as such issues on Wednesday
• The conservative Durkheim is an analyst of the
  importance of family and religious solidarity
  and of the effectiveness of a conventional,
  small town moral system.

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Durkheims most important empirical study Suicide

• The prediction and explanation of suicide.
• Seeing the forest for the trees rates are social
  facts .
• Suicide rates are social facts.
• Durkheim argued that social facts must be
  explained by other social facts.

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The concept of egoistic suicide

• Some groups have consistently higher rates.
• Basic idea of egoistic suicide lack of social
  integration.
• Eg. Men, singles, Protestants, peace time.
• The concept of egoistic suicide is similar to
  individualism, and Durkheims analysis
  highlighted the importance of bonds to solidary
  groups.
• Similar to the Social Control theories of
  juvenile delinquency and crime.

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The concept of altruistic suicide

• High rates in the military, Japan, India and
  preliterate societies.
• Basic idea excess of social integration.
• Sometimes the presence of solidarity and solidary
  groups, rather than their absence is viewed as
  the problem.
• Possible extension to other areas.
• Bonds to the military
• Al Quaeda as a social bond

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Anomie

• Durkheims most important contribution to
  sociology was the analysis of norms and normative
  integration.
• Talcott Parsons made that analysis the basis of
  structural-functionalism.
• Some groups that were neither too bonded not to
  individualist had high suicide rates because they
  had weak norms.
• The weakening of norms is called anomie.
• Merton made the analysis of structural strain
  leading to anomie the basis of many theories of
  crime and delinquency.

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The concept of anomic suicide

• There are high suicide rates during periods of
  prosperity, among the educated, among
  professionals, in urban areas, among those mobile
  geographically or socially.
• Durkheim argued that these groups lack normative
  (moral) regulation.
• The weakening of normative systems is called
  anomie, and it is one of the fundamental concepts
  of functional sociology.

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The concept of fatalistic suicide

• Fatalistic suicide is defined as suicide
  resulting from an excess of normative
  integration.
• Durkheim argued that it is rare in modern society
• But there may well be contemporary examples.
• Intense moral commitment often leads to group
  suicides.
• Massada, Thermopolae, Jonestown, Islamic Jihad,
  Al Quaeda.
• E.g. religious conflicts often generate people
  willing to die for their beliefs.

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Implications of Durkheims analysis

• Durkheims analysis of suicide had several
  different kinds of implications
• Methodological social facts
• Substantive social and normative integration.
• Political-normative the balance of self and
  society

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Methodological social facts

• One of the primary implications of his analysis
  was complementary to the Chicago schools
  observation that different neighborhoods had
  different rates of social problems
• Durkheim argued that social facts need to be
  explained by other social facts.
• The distinct rates in different social positions
  or social structures cannot be explained by
  psychology.

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Social and Normative integration.

• Many people prior to Durkheim had stressed the
  importance of moral values or of family and
  religious ties.
• Durkheim showed how to get at them rigorously and
  quantitatively
• their interconnection
• and their social structural roots that are as
  real as a rock.

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The balance of self and society

• Durkheim believed that solidary groups and social
  norms are what make humans human.
• But he believed that both group bonds and
  normative ideals could be excessive as well as
  inadequate.
• He welcomed modern society and individual
  freedom.
• His central problem was the reconciliation of
  freedom and diversity with norms