Emile Durkheim: Contributions to Sociology Essay

Emile Durkheim’s philosophies and ideas had emerged during a time that his country, had been going through a lot of instabilities. Scenarios of disequilibrium that even lead to a greater molding and shaping of such ethos. During his childhood, France was experiencing a social and political unrest. The after war with Germany and the defeat of 1870 were the major causation of such. A deep crisis it is, for such a young â€Å"sociologist to be†, which even tends towards a better establishment of his career. Politically, the rise of the Third Republic in 1875 indeed works out from conflicts between Republicans and Royalists. On the economic area, the rise of industrial capitalism made the some realization on the workers, influenced of course by the socialist theories and Marxism. Moreover, there was an immense growth of ‘secular’ spirit seeking to counter the Church’s hold on education. Also, development in the physical and natural sciences managed to develop, thus making other fields become more quantitative and less qualitative- which means less focus on theories on such (e. g. economics). The young Emile sensed that he had a role to play in the development of his country and chooses to be a teacher, contributing a progress through teaching. Truly the institutionalization of a science of education was inseparable from Durkheim’s formal definition of sociology, thus making the father of sociology be the first educational sociology (Filloux, 2001). The Condemnation As much as Marxism undergone travails and disrepute, Durkheimian philosophy also struggled towards appreciation within the realms of sociology. But then these tests of his’ soon earned its deference during the immediate post-World War II. Since, it ended up much influential in sociology than those of Marx’s or Weber’s. Conservatism and positivism are the two main grounds that his critics exceedingly reacted to. The accusation of conservatism took its force from Durkheim’s emphasis upon society as a moral unity. His concern with the social solidarity and the containment of damage to it were understood by his critics to mean that the application and development of his approach would necessarily serve the existing social order. This interpretation downplayed- in fact wholly neglected- the social criticism in Durkheim’s writings, together with his reputation in his own time as a socialist and a radical. The charge of positivism was more justifiable (Alexander, 1998). Suicide Balance between the individual and society consumes much of Durkheim’s concern in his later works. In arguing the social foundations of individualism, Durkheim recognized that a degree of individualism was natural to modern societies. He was not against individualism as such, but opposed its rampant, pathological forms. The issue therefore, was how to strike a balance between interdependence and individual freedom, on the one hand, subordination to the collective, on the other. Suicide varies according to their social ties, to their presence or absence, their strength and weakness. It is important to remember that it is differential rates between social groups that Durkheim sought to explain. Case in point, according to him, Protestants tends to commit suicide more than the Catholics and Jews do. If we meddle deeply into this context, though much of the written literatures on this argument were not elaborated, we can see that what do Protestants have to commit such kind of â€Å"irrational† acts? Maybe it is in the belief the Protestants are holding on. Or maybe it is because of the ‘closed-mindedness’ of their culture that drives the individual towards freedom from the bondage of tradition. And the condemnation they receive from such wrong doings intensifies the feeling of guilt and will end up to committing suicide. The egoistic and anomic-reflect social ties that are too weak; the altruistic and fatalistic types arise from connections that are too strong. These are the four proposed basic types of suicide from Durkheim. Egoistic suicide results from the social isolation of the individual. In this case, the person feels that sympathy from others does not exist. He is alone. By contrast, anomic suicide was occasioned by insufficient social regulation of the individual. Altruism and fatalism are at the other extreme. Altruism involves individuals seeing the pre-eminence of the group over them to the extent that the group’s needs seem greater than theirs. In fatalism, individuals are dominated by the group so intensely and oppressively that they are rendered entirely powerless over their fate (Douglas. 1967).