Download Durkheim`s Methodology and Theory

Three French Men and Two Americans
David Émile Durkheim (1858 –
1917) was a French sociologist and
philosopher. He formally established
the academic discipline and, with
Marx and Weber, is cited as the
father of modern social science.
Durkheim’s Methodology and Theory
•
Wanted sociology to be a legitimate science
•
Sociology should study phenomena attributed to society at large, rather than being limited
to the specific actions of individuals
•
Structural functionalism, or simply functionalism, is a framework for building theory that
sees society as a complex system whose parts work together to promote solidarity and
stability
•
This approach looks at society through a macro-level orientation, which is a broad focus on
the social structures that shape society as a whole, and believes that society has evolved like
organisms; in terms of the function of its constituent elements; norms, customs, institutions,
traditions. Elements of society are a set of "organs" that work toward the proper
functioning of the "body" as a whole
•
Today, what is called “structural law” by some sociologists is simply the phenomenon of
aggregation: formatting and standardization of a great number of copies, stabilized by
imitation and made available in a new form, such as code, dictionary, institution, custom.
OLD DEBATE – Naturalistic vs. Interpretive Social Science Research
(quantitative vs. qualitative)
• Durkheim Studied Human societies, in groups, to find “structures”
• Research on Individuals should render QUALATATIVE/ interpretive results, because
individuals might vary from the structure
• Research on Aggregate would produce quantities that point to larger pictures, the
“structures” of society through institutions, norms, customs, etc.
• Natural Sciences (biology, physics) had to use QUANTATATIVE research, because
their subject was not accessible, so they used statistical means to generate
conclusions about the structure of natural societies, or Laws of Nature
Gabriel Tarde (1843 – 1904)
was a French sociologist,
criminologist and social
psychologist who conceived
sociology as based on small
psychological interactions
among individuals (much as if
it were chemistry), the
fundamental forces being
imitation and innovation.
Forged ideas such as the
“group mind.”
Tarde’ Differences in Methodology and Theory
•
“Everything is a Society” - both natural and social can be measured QUANTITATIVELY, but in a way
where we can see them both at once. Wanted to remove the ideas of aggregate and individual.
•
Unlike biology, humans are accessible, we can study them closer, the more intimate with individual,
the more discrete quantities we will find
•
There is no Law of Nature, no overall scheme put upon us from above
•
The individual is not an atom of the whole, but a Monad, a traceable collection (like citations) of
derivations, interruptions, innovations and imitations (a picture of society contained in each of us)
•
“Impersonal collective character" does not produce a behavior; it is itself produced by a behavior of
multiple innovations, derivations, strivings that are followed by more. There is nothing more in the
accumulation of traits than there is in the multiplicity of individual components.
•
Laws of Imitation (1890) - imitation is the epidemiology of ideas, “collective self.” It is the nature of
the individual agent to imitate others. What we observe in individuals or aggregate are moments
along a trajectory, drawn by an observer, following the fate of any giving imitative ray.
Bruno Latour (1947 - )
French Sociologist, Anthropologist, Philosopher
•
With today’s digital technology, statistics can be
generated instantly, while we use media or move
through the city
•
We live in an age when statistics enable us to follow a
trajectory of some data about the social world the
way we used to follow data about the natural world
•
The whole has lost its privileged status; we can
produce out of the same data points, as many
aggregates as we see fit, while reverting back again
to the individual components
•
The Imitaive Ray has displaced the individual element
as well as the structural whole - this is why Tarde's
ideas seem current today
•
To follow those “imitative rays” (actor-networks) is to
encounter individual innovations (derivations)
followed by more and more of the same; therefore
locate an element of society
•
Science is in and of the world, it does not hang over
the world from the outside, it performs the social
together with all of the other actors
Ian Cheney and Curt Ellis, best friends from college on the east coast, move to the heartland to learn
where their food comes from. With the help of friendly neighbors, genetically modified seeds, and
powerful herbicides, they plant and grow a bumper crop of America’s most-productive, mostsubsidized grain on one acre of Iowa soil. But when they try to follow their pile of corn into the food
system, what they find raises troubling questions about how we eat—and how we farm.
1. reveals broader structure of global food through intimacy with one acre
2. the filmmakers themselves are the Monads