Chapter 5 Flashcards
Describe Mechanical Solidarity
- This is cohesion among individuals because of their overall similarity in activities and responsibilities
- divided by sex and age only
Describe Organic Solidarity
-The industrial society is held together through interdependence of people occupying many different, but complementary social roles and occupation.
Who is Emile Durkheim?
- Concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the modern era
- Read from Comte and adopted his sense of positivism and use of an organismic analogy
- Marx focused on what would cause modern society to fall apart and Durkheim attempted to show why it would hold together.
- Equilibrium theorist not conflict
- Durkheim viewed industrial society as a stable, self-renewing entity
- Durkheim argues by analogy from Darwin’s Origin of species, that complex division of labor reduces conflict among people.
- Religious belief and participation were an expression of society’s hold over an individual.
- The truth is out there! It is external to any individual person.
- There is no dynamic in Durkheim’s model for oppression, injustice, and struggle. This is a direct consequence of taking the society rather than the individual as the object of study.
Describe “social Facts”
- Those cultural rules and practices that have a binding or coercive effect on the individual
- the principal test that something is a “social fact’ is the “coercive effect” that it exerts over an individual.
Who is Max Weber?
- A naturalist
- The naturalistic tradition denies that there is a cause of behavior other than those causes that can be understood by the human agent.
- Naturalistic explanations start from the agents own state reasons for behavior and try to account for how particular cultural setting give rise to the individual desires and beliefs.
- 3 factor model of where people stood in social order. Socioeconomic status, prestige, party (association)
Describe Verstehen
- A deeper understanding of the specific historical and cultural circumstances that give rise to it.
- This indicates empathetic identification with those whom one studies to better understand their motives and the meaning of their behavior
- Contrasts with the positivist approach that tend to dismiss or at least diminish peoples state motives for their action.
- Originated from Weber
Describe “Collective Consciousness”
- society imposes tremendous force on individual behavior
- This is society’s shared system of beliefs and values which shapes and directs human behavior.
Describe “Reification”
- A model is created to describe the workings of society and then is given a real force of its own.
- what starts out as an abstraction designed to help theorists understand society ends up being viewed as a real determinant of people’s behavior.
Describe “Human Agency”
- meaning the deliberate, purposive action understood by the individual.
- Anthony Gidden proposed that the logical problems and inconsistencies of positivist explanations of behavior among them that most positivist explanations are dehumanizing
- If behavior is accounted for in terms of general laws, then there has to be a corresponding reduction in the role of human agency.
Describe “Anomie”
- lack of the usual social or ethical standards in an individual or group.
- feeling of disconnect, not incorporated into the collective conscious
Functionalism
- Different aspects of society function together,
- It is there because it functions and it functions because it is there.
- Equilibrium model
- very different from the struggle model.
- Critique is that is employs circular reasoning
The primary assumptions of functionalism.
1) A society is the system of integrated parts.
2) Social systems tend to be stable because they have built-in mechanisms of control.
3) Dysfunctions exist, but they tend to resolve themselves or become institutionalized in the long run.
4) Change is usually gradual.
5) Social integration is produced by the agreement of most of the members of the society on a certain set of values.
Functionalism addresses the question of how social organization is maintained so they often bring the three major assumptions to their researchers.
1) Stability: The chief evaluative criterion for any social pattern is whether it contributes to the maintenance of the society.
2) Harmony: Like the parts of an organization, the parts of society typically work together harmoniously for the good of the whole.
3) Evolution: Change occurs primarily through evolution- the most peaceful adoption of social structures to new needs and demands the elimination of unnecessary or outmoded structures.
Durkkheim vs. Marx
Emile Durkheim was a French Functionalist, meaning he looked at society in a scientific way. He believed that members of society were in concensus with one another, they all wanted the same goals and had the same attitudes (eg we all supposedly want to work hard, get a good job, have children) and that everyone in society and everything in society has a perfect place and does a job- everything ‘functions’. So institutions like the family, education, the legal system and religion all work together nicely to create a functional society in which we are socialised into a consensus of values. He looked at things like religion, which he thought (from studies of tribal socities) was actually the worship of society, which solidates and strengthens societal bonds.
Marx on the other hand, brought around conflict theory. Karl Marx was a German philosopher/ economist/ activist and became the head of the sociological discipline of Marxism. He believed that society is not a happy place and that members are constantly in conflict with one another. He believed that the bourgeousie (the owners of the means of productions or middle - upper middle ruling class) exploited and dominate the proletariat (the workers or working class), by paying them a poor wage in monotonous jobs. He believes that this leaves society in constant turmoil. He concentrates on the middle class monopoly of society- they rule society by inflicting their values upon others. Working class will never succeed in a middle classs dominated society. He is very critical of capitalism and believes it is unjust and discriminatory- benefitting the middle class and depriving the working class. He theorised that one day the proletariat would overcome the evils of capitalism by forming together under unions to shake off the vicious system. He believed that only in a socialist society in which all were equal and had equal resources, that all could be happy.
Durkheims Assumptions
Positivist – believed that the dynamics of human societies followed laws that could be discovered empirically and tested (nomothetic)
Object of study – societies, not individuals
Social solidarity (order and cohesion) is the normative state of affairs, arising from “the collective conscience” (shared values and beliefs)
Describe Acculturation
instills succeeding generations with the values and beliefs derived and reinforced by ritual and religion
