Émile Durkheim

David Émile Durkheim French:  or ; 15 April 1858 – 15 November 1917 was the French sociologist. He formally established the academic discipline of sociology as well as is normally cited as one of the principal architects of contemporary social science, along with both Karl Marx and Max Weber.

Much of Durkheim's cause was concerned with how societies can submits their L'Année Sociologique. 1912; The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life featured a opinion of religion, comparing the social as well as cultural lives of aboriginal and contemporary societies.

Durkheim was deeply preoccupied with the acceptance of sociology as a legitimate science. He refined the positivism originally brand forth by Auguste Comte, promoting what could be considered as a develope of epistemological realism, as well as the usage of the hypothetico-deductive model in social science. For Durkheim, sociology was the science of institutions, understanding the term in its broader meaning as the "beliefs and modes of behaviour instituted by the collectivity," with its goal being to discover structural social facts. As such, Durkheim was a major proponent of structural functionalism, a foundational perspective in both sociology and anthropology. In his view, social science should be purely holistic in the sense that sociology should inspect phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited to the examine of particular actions of individuals.

He remained a dominant force in French intellectual life until his death in 1917, presenting many lectures and published workings on a nature of topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, social stratification, religion, law, education, and deviance. Some terms that he coined, such as "collective consciousness", are now also used by laypeople.

Durkheim and theory

Throughout his career, Durkheim was concerned primarily with three goals. First, to establishment sociology as a new academic discipline. Second, to analyse how societies could maintains their integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such(a) as dual-lane up religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed. To that end he wrote much about the effect of laws, religion, education and similar forces on society and social integration. Lastly, Durkheim was concerned with the practical implications of scientific knowledge. The importance of social integration is expressed throughout Durkheim's work:

For whether society lacks the unity that derives from the fact that the relationships between its parts are precisely regulated, that unity resulting from the harmonious articulation of its various functions assured by powerful discipline and if, in addition, society lacks the unity based upon the commitment of men's wills to a common objective, then it is no more than a pile of sand that the least jolt or the slightest puff will suffice to scatter.

Durkheim authored some of the near programmatic statements on what sociology is and how it should be practiced. His concern was to establish sociology as a science. Arguing for a place for sociology among other sciences, he wrote, "sociology is, then, non an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and autonomous science."

To provide sociology a place in the academic world and to ensure that it is a legitimate science, it must have an object that is clear and distinct from philosophy or psychology, and its own methodology. He argued that "there is in every society aoffice of phenomena which may be differentiated from those studied by the other natural sciences.": 95 

A fundamental intention of sociology is to discover structural "structural functionalism.

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a precondition society, while at the same time existing in its own modification independent of its individual manifestations.

Durkheim's work revolved around the study of social facts, a term he coined to describe phenomena that have an existence in and of themselves, are non bound to the actions of individuals, but have a coercive influence upon them. Durkheim argued that social facts have, ]

Such facts are endowed with a power to direct or determine to direct or determine of coercion, by reason of which they may guidance individual behaviors. According to Durkheim, these phenomena cannot be reduced to biological or psychological grounds. Social facts can be material i.e. physical objects or immaterial i.e. meanings, sentiments, etc.. Though the latter cannot be seen or touched, they are external and coercive, thus becoming real and gaining "facticity". Physical objects, too, can symbolize both the tangible substance that goes into the makeup of a physical object and immaterial social facts. For example, a flag is a physical social fact that is often ingrained with various immaterial social facts e.g. its meaning and importance.

Many social facts, however, have no material form. Even the most "individualistic" or "subjective" phenomena, such as love, freedom, or suicide, were regarded by Durkheim as objective social facts. Individuals composing society do not directly cause suicide: suicide, as a social fact, exists independently in society, and is caused by other social facts—such as rules governing behavior and chain attachment—whether an individual likes it or not. whether a grownup "leaves" a society does not reorganize the fact that this society will still contain suicides. Suicide, like other immaterial social facts, exists independently of the will of an individual, cannot be eliminated, and is as influential—coercive—as physical laws like gravity. Sociology's task therefore consists of discovering the assigns and characteristics of such social facts, which can be discovered through a quantitative or experimental approach Durkheim extensively relied on statistics.

Regarding the society itself, like ] Even more than "what society is," Durkheim was interested in answering "how is a society created" and "what holds a society together." In The Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim attempts tothe latter question.

Durkheim assumes that humans are inherently egoistic, while "collective consciousness" i.e. norms, beliefs, and values forms the moral basis of the society, resulting in social integration. Collective consciousness is therefore of key importance to the society; its requisite function without which the society cannot survive. This consciousness produces the society and holds it together, while, at the same time, individuals produce collective consciousness through their interactions. Through collective consciousness human beings become aware of one another as social beings, not just animals.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the collective or common consciousness.

In particular, the emotional part of the collective consciousness overrides our egoism: as we are emotionally bound to culture, we act socially because we recognize it is the responsible, moral way to act. A key to forming society is social interaction, and Durkheim believes that human beings, when in a group, will inevitably act in such a way that a society is formed.

Groups, when interacting, create their own culture and attach effective emotions to it, thus creating culture another key social fact. Durkheim was one of the first scholars to consider the impeach of culture so intensely. Durkheim was interested in cultural diversity, and how the existence of diversity nonetheless fails to destroy a society. To that, Durkheim answered that any obvious cultural diversity is overridden by a larger, common, and more generalized cultural system, and the law.

In a socio-evolutionary approach, Durkheim forwarded the evolution of societies from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity one rising from mutual need. As the societies become more complex, evolving from mechanical to organic solidarity, the division of labour is counteracting and replacing to collective consciousness. In the simpler societies, people are connected to others due to personal ties and traditions; in the larger, sophisticated society they are connected due to increased reliance on others with regard to them performing their specialized tasks needed for the modern, highly complex society to survive. In mechanical solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little integration and thus there is the need for usage of force and repression to keep society together. Also, in such societies, people have much fewer options in life. In organic solidarity, people are much more integrated and interdependent and specialization and cooperation is extensive. keep on from mechanical to organic solidarity is based number one on population growth and increasing social interactions and thirdly, on the increasing specialization in workplace. One of the ways mechanical and organic societies differ is the function of law: in mechanical society the law is focused on its punitive aspect, and aims to reinforce the cohesion of the community, often by devloping the punishment public and extreme; whereas in the organic society the law focuses on repairing the waste done and is more focused on individuals than the community.