How did Emile Durkheim explain inequality in society?

Answer 1

He believed that we should study social facts as "things". He also defined the concept of anomie which is that "in modern societies traditional norms and standards become undermined without being replaced by new ones." (Intro to Soc, Giddens). He thought that inequality was a natural result of society and he did not spend too much time focusing on inequality. He did make a number of gains in crime and deviance, as his anomie theory provides. His primary focus was that of functionalist theories and most of my text describe his work in criminology. He believed that deviance is a necessary evil in society in that it introduces new ideas and challenges and is an "innovative source" in that it can bring about changes.

Answer 2

I believe Emile Durkheim looked for inequalities in the sources of power, and that power was in the hands of the government. He also believed that society was the basis of people's well being, and people who committed suicide were those who could not cope with society's standards.

Answer 3

Erroneously; you can be sure of that.

Answer 4

Oooh, two of my favorite nobles throughout history! Well here, -Durkheim- Durkheim was concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such as shared religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed. In order to study social life in modern societies, Durkheim sought to create one of the first scientific approaches to social phenomena. Along with Herbert Spencer, Durkheim was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in maintaining the quotidian, and is thus sometimes seen as a precursor to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts. Thus unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he focused not on what motivates the actions of individuals (methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts, a term which he coined to describe phenomena which have an existence in and of themselves and are not bound to the actions of individuals. He argued that social facts had an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that composed society and could only be explained by other social facts rather than, say, by society's adaptation to a particular climate or ecological niche. -Marx- (brace yourself) Marx's philosophy hinges[citation needed] on his view of human nature. Fundamentally, Marx assumed that human nature involves transforming nature. To this process of transformation he applies the term "labour", and to the capacity to transform nature the term "labour power." For Marx, this is simultaneously a physical and a mental act: “ A spider conducts operations that resemble those of a weaver, and a bee puts to shame many an architect in the construction of her cells. But what distinguishes the worst architect from the best of bees is this, that the architect raises his structure in imagination before he erects it in reality. ” — (Capital, Vol. I, Chap. 7, Pt. 1) Marx did not believe that all people worked the same way, or that one works in an entirely personal and individual way. Instead, he viewed work as a social activity and saw the conditions and forms under and through which people work as socially determined and apt to change over time. Beyond these basic points, Marx made no claims about human nature. Marx's analysis of history focuses on the organization of labor and depends on his distinction between: the means / forces of production, literally those things such as land, natural resources, and technology, that are necessary for the production of material goods; and the relations of production, in other words, the social relationships people enter into as they acquire and use the means of production. Together these compose the mode of production, and Marx distinguished historical eras in terms of distinct modes of production. For example, he observed that European societies had progressed from a feudal mode of production to a capitalist mode of production. Marx believed that under capitalism, the means of production change more rapidly than the relations of production (for example, we develop a new technology, such as the Internet, and only later do we develop laws to regulate that technology). For Marx this mismatch between (economic) base and (social) superstructure is a major source of social disruption and conflict. Marx understood the "social relations of production" to comprise not only relations among individuals, but those between or among groups of people, or classes. As a scientist and materialist, Marx did not understand classes as purely subjective (in other words, groups of people who consciously identified with one another). He sought to define classes in terms of objective criteria, such as their access to resources. For Marx, different classes have divergent interests, which provides another source of social disruption and conflict. Conflict between social classes he regards as something inherent in all human history: “ The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles. ” — (The Communist Manifesto, Chapter 1) Marx had a special concern with how people relate to that most fundamental resource of all, their own labour power. He wrote extensively about this in terms of the problem of alienation. As with the dialectic, Marx began with a Hegelian notion of alienation but developed a more materialist conception. Under capitalism, social relationships of production, such as among workers or between workers and capitalists, are mediated through commodities, including labor, that are bought and sold on the market. For Marx, the possibility that one may give up ownership of one's own labor — one's capacity to transform the world — is tantamount to being alienated from one's own nature; it is a spiritual loss. Marx described this loss in terms of commodity fetishis