SOC 371 02/27/02

1) Paper Guidelines

2) Overview

3) Division of Labor

4) Suicide

5) Function of Religion

6) Guidelines

Higher social integration brings down the suicide rate.

Suicide

A very important work by Durkheim

Suicide and social context are related; Suicide is related to the level of social integration

Durkheim did not study individuals but studied aggregates.

- Definition of suicide –

All causes of death that are directly attributed to the individual that is dead.

The elementary forms of religious life.

- Animism

- Naturism

- Totemic

- Religion and science

Homo Duplex is the internalization of norms.

Mechanical and organic solidarity

Division of labor in society

- How are societies organized

- How is the individual w/in the collective

- How are wants and desires constructed

How are patterns of social organization created or evolve?

1) Durkheim asserted that people are born into the collective conscience. All social systems include a system of ideas, beliefs, norms, and values. All of these things constrain the thoughts and actions of the individual.

Human nature is an insatiable abyss.

Collective Conscience has four variables

Define clearly your concepts

1) Volume – degree to which values

2) Intensity

3) Determinateness

4) Religious vs. secular ness

03/04/02

Divisoion of Labor in society

Mechanical Solidarity (primitive)

1. Primitive traditional society
2. Cultural system is high in volume, intensity, determinism
3. Legal codes are repressive. Justice is punitive sanctions
4. Deviation form the conscience collective is considered a crime against all members of society and against god
5. Morphology, independent kinship units w/ very little movement between the units.
6. Interrelation between kinship units limited to marriages and trades
7. Individual freedom, autonomy choice à low
8. Actions are constrained for conscience collective and kinship units.

Organic Solidarity

1. Collective Conscience becomes more abstract
2. Cultural system is low in volume, intensity and determinism
3. Based on norms, contracts, exchange, law, reformation
4. Morphology – diverse, dominated by economic and governmental functions, contact
5. Large in size
6. Emphasis on individual, individual freedom is extensive
7. C.C. is dominated by values that stress respect for the personal dignity of the individual

Suicide

Anomie –

- State of normlessness

- Condition of deregulation

- Assorted anomie was occurring

All societies have suicide rate, and most societies have a constant rate over time

- Normal rates of suicide = it occurs on the same scale

- Abnormal = there is a jump in the rate in a certain group, culture, or in total society.

Durkheim felt that sudden jumps in suicide were related to anomie.

Egoistic, altruistic, anomic, fatalistic are the types of suicide

Fatalistic – Persons w/ futures so hopelessly blocked and passions violently choked by oppressive discipline.

Altruistic – Excessively high regulation of the individual, society demands that the individual commit suicide for some transgression or to keep honor.

Egoistic – People that become detached from society and thrown on their own devices are susceptible to this type.

Anomic – When the normative regulations surrounding individual conduct relax and fail to provide guidance

Religion is structure that is conducive to a cohesive society.

Functionalism is comparative to biology; all parts are interdependent and serve an individual purpose.

Rules of the sociological method

- make it respectable as a science

- differentiate between it and psychology and biology

- social facts are external to the individual

- associated with education also constrain the individual. People are born under a system of acceptable behavior as in laws and religion.

Education of children

Teaching a child behavior