Category: American Sociological Association (ASA) Style Guide, 6th Edition

Question To Answer:
So, what do you think of Bourdieu?
Any concepts that you find especially intriguing?
And/or how might these concepts be applied in the field in which you work?

Notes:
Born in a small French town, Denguin, the current population of about 1,600, Bourdieu rose to become a star of the French intelligentsia. In fact, a few years before his death in 2002, the French equivalent of Time magazine carried his picture on the cover under a headline proclaiming him Frances leading intellectual. His was a meteoric rise, but not one achieved without struggle. His family was not well to do, nor were his parents well educated.

His father was a share-cropper who became a postman. The family spoke Gascon, a regional language. But Bourdieu was a brilliant student who attracted the attention of his teachers. He won a scholarship to attend Lyce Louis-le-Grand in Paris, a preparatory school for the French elite. From there he went on to study at the prestigious Ecole Normal Suprieure. Basically, a country boy with a funny accent had been dropped into the middle of the training ground for the French business, political and academic elite. Most of his fellow students at the Lyce were Parisian and came from educated and cultured families in a milieu where that mattered a lot. Things were probably pretty tough for him, especially when the children of the privileged realized Bourdieu was the smartest one in the room. Academically, however, he excelled. In the late 1950s, he was in the military and was posted to Algeria, arriving there during that countrys war for independence from France. The conflict was extremely brutal, and Bourdieu came to disagree with the repressive way the French were responding to the liberation movement. In Algeria be began a serious anthropological/sociological study of the Kabyle, a Berber ethnic group, and he began documenting what he saw as part of a photographic study.

In 1960, he returned to France and became an assistant to Raymond Aron, a controversial academic and journalist who angered much of the French intelligentsia with his anti-Marxist stands. In fact, one of his most famous books is entitled The Opium of the Intellectuals, in which he argued that Marxism was, as the title suggests, the opium of French intellectuals. He said they criticized democracy and capitalism but were blind to the oppression of Marxist governments. Like Bourdieu, Aron was something of an outsider to the French intellectual establishment who was too brilliant to dismiss. Over the course of his career, Bourdieu seemed to follow a pattern. First, he was a bit at the margins of the intellectual world. Although as his work for Aron shows, he was not a fringe figure but a man recognized for his intellectual talent. It is just that he was just not initially part of the charmed circle. In response, through sheer brilliance and force of will, he began to build his own circle. He served as an editor for an academic publisher ensuring a platform for focusing attention on work that he felt important. In 1968, he took over the Center for European Sociology, a position previously held by Aron. Under his leadership the center grew; today it has 32 researchers and 28 associate members. In the 1970s, he began his own sociology journal, ensuring that his work and the work of friends and followers were published. Eventually, Bourdieu was the center of his academic field and of broader intellectual life in France. The International Sociology Association even named his major work,

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste, the sixth most important sociological work of the 20th century. Not bad for the kid from Denguin who never talked about his personal life.

Field:
The field is one of the concepts for which Bourdieu is well known. He argues that an organized sphere of activity academia, business, art, medicine or whatever operates in much the same fashion as a game. There are rules (formal and informal) to which the players are expected to adhere. These rules are inherent in the nature of the game; bankers for instance follow a set of protocols necessary to maintain the trust needed for their business. The players are also driven by similar motivations; they want to win recognition, money, power, or prestige (or some combination of them). To be engaged in the game is to be engaged in practice, a term used in the same sense that we say someone practices medicine. Bourdieu would probably be the first to disagree, but I cant help but see the influence of his own life on this concept. He is the outsider who falls into the game (field) of academia, bumping into the unwritten and informal rules that distinguish a player from a wannabe. He learns and masters the rules, emerging as the champ and winning the recognition, maybe even acceptance that he longed for when he entered the game. 

Capital:
Bourdieu developed a very sophisticated concept of capital that went way beyond anything Marx envisioned. Bourdieu saw capital as a resource that could be used for advantage in the field, and he recognized that money was not the only thing that fits that description. In fact, he described four types of capital:

Social capital:
who you know, your social connections, etc.

Financial capital money
Cultural capital education, intellect, style of speech, dress, or physical appearance (think about the person who has a good education, knows how to dress for success in their field, speaks eloquently and in a fashion congruent with their field, knows the right wine to order, the best music to listen to, etc.)

Symbolic capital honor, and prestige
Now, the thing is, each of these forms of capital is somewhat exchangeable for one another. A person with great symbolic capital might find themselves able to move in a social circle comprised of people with far more financial capital. Likewise, a person with financial capital might travel in high society circles, even though they otherwise would lack the social capital to move into that clique. Fans of old TV shows might remember the Beverly Hillbillies when Jed the millionaire hillbilly moves into the social whirl of Beverly Hills. These four forms of capital are very important to the field and different forms may play a greater role in one field than another. For example, cultural capital might be more important than financial capital in education. But again, to an extent, these forms can be substituted for one another. A person with high social, cultural, and symbolic capital might be able to maneuver into a berth on Wall Street.

Social-Space:
Collectively, the four forms of social capital function much like a stock portfolio, creating some quantity of resources we have at our disposal. That portfolio is a dominant factor in determining the position we occupy in social space. Grenfell has a great little diagram on page 88 that illustrates this point. Essentially it shows a divide between economic and cultural capital. My own take on it is a bit different. I like to think of a three-dimensional space in which clusters of people are floating about. Each of those clusters is composed of people with similar levels of the various types of capital, thus constituting a social class.

Doxa:
Doxa is a term for the stuff that is so much a part of our world that we dont even question it. We take it for granted that it is just the way things are. It becomes an embodied assumption about the world around us; i.e., a part of our habitus. For example, the kid who thinks that kids from his or her neighborhood dont grow up to lead successful lives because that is just the way things are. Or the assumption that people are competitive by nature. Are they, or is it that people in our little slice of the world are all competitive so we assume that this is the way things are?

Ghassan Hage on Pierre Bourdieu:
https://youtu.be/vn9daX6Jt4g

Pierre Bourdieu
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre_Bourdieu

References:

Grenfel, Michael. 2014. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. London: Routledge.

Ghassan Hage on Pierre Bourdieu:
https://youtu.be/vn9daX6Jt4g

Pierre Bourdieu
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Pierre_Bourdieu

Respond to the following discussion prompts

What items in the sociological tool kit might prove especially useful in conducting a needs assessment for a school?

Discuss the difference between program evaluations that measure progress against goals and those that measure capacity development.

Which type do you think is most needed for the schools in your community — and why?

Helpful Links:
https://www.betterevaluation.org/en/themes/capacitydevelopment

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology2ndedition/chapter/chapter-2-sociological-research/

https://opentextbc.ca/introductiontosociology/chapter/chapter2-sociological-research/

How do sociologists use theory?
And what do you think about Lieberson’s ideas about the use of evidence in testing sociological theory?

Notes for answering the questions:
Einstein, Renoir, and Greeley: Some Thoughts about Evidence in Sociology: 1991 Presidential Address (UPLOAD)

BARKING UP THE WRONG BRANCH: ScientificAlternatives to the Current Model of sociological Science (UPLOAD)

Chapter 3, The Role of Theory in Sociological Practice in Doing Sociology.
(UPLOAD)

Reference(s):
Chapter 3, The Role of Theory in Sociological Practice in Doing Sociology.

Lieberson, Stanley. 1991. Einstein, Renoir, and Greeley: Some Thoughts About Evidence in Sociology. American Sociological Review 57 (1): 1 15.

Liberson, Stanley, and Freda B. Lynn. 2002. Barking up the Wrong Branch: Scientific Alternatives to the Current Model of Sociological Science.  Annual Review of Sociology 28: 1 19.

Questi9on(s):

Respond to one of the following discussion prompts.
What are your thoughts on the tools of sociology (perspective, theories, concepts, methods) and their impact on sociological practice?

Discuss the applied sociological enterprise in the information age and the role played by applied sociologists and basic researchers.

Answering Material:

https://plato.stanford.edu/index.html

Applied Sociology in an Information Age
Most of us toss around the term information age when describing the contemporary world, but as sociologists, our interest in this term should go much deeper than mere semantic shorthand for the times in which we live. For, this is an age where information has truly become a commodity. Our economic and social structures depend upon it, just as they relied upon iron, coal, and later petroleum in the industrial age.

The information has become the essential raw ingredient in a chain of production that goes from information to knowledge to innovation. At each stage, imagination and creativity are the catalysts from which emerges the next step of the process. And each stage of the process has the potential to generate new information, making information a renewable resource and the chain of production self-accelerating. If not a perpetual motion machine, this chain of production is at least a perpetual information creator.

How then is knowledge generated from this torrent of information? Clearly, one answer is through the arts and humanities. Another is through basic research. Science has become a huge force connecting bits of information to create patterns of meaning (i.e., knowledge). These patterns, in turn, become blueprints for innovations that change our lives in ways big and small. For example, advances in physics are translated into cell phones which not only make it easier for friends to communicate on the go but connect people on the periphery to commercial institutions at the core of the world system.

Granted, processing Barclays credit card hardly makes a street vendor in Tunis or Addis Ababa a major player in the global financial system. Cell phones alone seem an unlikely tool with which to overturn the world system envisioned by people like Immanuel Wallerstein. However, as the Arab Spring and other recent events have shown, in the hands of a radical it can be a rebellious instrument. In the information age, the revolution wont be televised, it will be Tweeted.

Where does sociology stand?

What is the role of sociology in this new chain of production? Judging from most presentations at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association, the majority of articles published in the journals of the discipline, and the zeitgeist of most sociology departments, sociology has firmly planted its flag in the knowledge stage of the process. After all, thanks to microcomputers vast arrays of information are available to us in digital form; indeed, entire constellations of data points electronically beckon to us from cyberspace. As scientists, we sociologists connect these data points, drawing meaning from them. In this paradigm, our job is to make sense of the passing parade while the task of being a drum-major falls to others.*

In its own way, this is a powerful paradigm whose roots stretch deep into modernity. However, it seems ill-fitted to the information age. As a discipline, we must cover each phase of the production process information, knowledge, and innovation to be successful in this era. In effect, we must be vertically integrated. Basic research is clearly vital to our enterprise, but basic research alone is not enough.

Sociologists should be actively engaged in the process of acquiring information. If the person generating data has a solid theoretical understanding of the field, the information they present to a basic researcher is likely to be more useful in his or her attempt to generate knowledge.

Sociologists must also take the knowledge developed by their research colleagues and transform it into innovative approaches that change organizations and/or civil society. This is often work undertaken at the behest of clients, and it can have a significant impact on the people involved. A project to improve the workplace at a company may seem rather prosaic except to individual employees who see tangible improvements in their daily life as a result. In this paradigm, the applied sociologist who affects that change is as important as the basic researcher who defined the relationship upon which that change rests and both are dependent upon the quality of that initial data. 

model showing connections between applied sociology and basic research and back to applied sociology.

If it all seems rather circular, it is. Dynamic is another word for it. As shown in Figure 1, the process becomes non-linear and constantly feeds back on itself. One of the most exciting things, I think, is that this paradigm opens new frontiers upon which to do sociology. Our greatest strength remains our sociological tool kit of the method, theory, and sociological imagination. But these tools are put to use in the information and innovation phases of the chain of production as well as the knowledge generation phase. We have two new arenas in which to play. We can be drum majors in as well as detached observers of the passing parade.

_____________________________

* Not to paint with too broad a brush, there are exceptions. The discipline has heard reports from the frontiers of other visions. As president of ASA, Michael Burawoy championed the idea of public sociology, and some leaders in the organization have sought ways to more fully incorporate applied and clinical sociologists and their interests into its proceedings, publications, and advocacy work. 

Reference(s):
Durkheim, Emile. 1997. Suicide. New York: The Free Press.

Price, Jammie, Roger A. Straus, and Jeffrey R. Breese. 2009. Doing Sociology: Case Studies in Sociological Practice. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

Steele, Stephen F. and Jammie Price. 2008. Applied Sociology: Terms, Topics, Tools, and Tasks. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

American Sociological Association (ASA) Style Guide, 6th Edition.

Questi9on(s):
So, what are your reactions to Max Weber?
Any concepts that resonate with you?
Any that seem way off base?

Answering Material:
https://prezi.com/ubbdczh9sjzq/copy-of-max-weber/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

Macfarlane on Max Weber:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CNC3Ur2Uc6A&feature=youtu.be

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber/

Reference(s):
Edles, Laura Desfor, and Scott Appelrouth. 2010. Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Grenfell, Michael James (ed). 2012. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.

pages 153 – 162 (biographical sketch, intellectual influences, and core ideas); 167 – 181 (Protestant ethic and the spirit of capitalism); and 201 – 220 (the types of legitimate domination).

ASA FORMAT/CITATION

Question:
Learning to express complex ideas in a short, easily understood fashion is an important skill for applied sociologists. And that is precisely what this assignment calls upon you to do. Give me your quick take (250 words maximum) on what you’ve read about Max Weber in this section.
What do you think is the most troubling aspect of The Freiburg Address? Do you see any parallels between the nationalism expressed in this speech and attitudes in our own time? And is Weber a good role model for applied sociologists?
Be sure to draw upon at least one scholarly source (such as a journal article or books) beyond the material assigned for this section to support your argument. Answer in the space below.

Answer Reference(s):
A Look at Max Weber:
https://youtu.be/ICppFQ6Tabw

Bio Max Weber:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Max_Weber

Modernist Anti-Pluralism and the Polish Question:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/488244?seq=1

The national state and economic policy (Freiburgaddress):
PDF Uploaded

Note(s):
Among the many contributions Weber makes to sociology are:

his ideas about the nature of authority in society,
his exploration of different religions and their impact upon societies,
his insights into modernity and the power of bureaucracy,
and his more subtle understanding of social class and status.
Weber also explores the power of ideas to shape human behavior — which is one of the things I find especially valuable in his work. I think Weber also advances a human-centered form of sociology in which people play a major role in the construction of a society that stands somewhat in contrast to Durkheim’s view of a world shaped by social facts and Marx’s economic determinism.

Still, there is an ominous spirit in the Freiburg address, all the more ominous when you think that in a little over a decade after Webers death, the Nazis would come to power with their fusion of racism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism.

Did Weber fan flames that fed the latter fire of National Socialism? Perhaps. From our perspective today it at least looks like he was playing with fire. However, I don’t think this was his intention. In fact, his latter work stood in direct counterpoint to what the Nazis stood for. However, the currents of racism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism ran deeply in the west at the time the Freiburg address was written and provided among other things a justification for colonialism.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Weber was quite the nationalist, volunteered for national service, and was put in charge of organizing army hospitals in Heidelberg. As the war drug on his attitude changed dramatically. By the end of the war, he had rejected this nationalistic impulse, was calling for greater democracy and universal suffrage. He co-founded the German Democratic Party and would help write the Weimar Constitution that created the republic which Hitler overthrew.

Nevertheless, these awful themes which Weber echoes in the Freiburg Address, themes that were so ingrained in German and indeed Western intellectual circles certainly fed the ideology and propaganda of the National Socialists, providing inspiration and intellectual cover. Having planted these seeds, the world was about to reap a terrible whirlwind.

So in this section, we’re going to be taking a look at Max Weber. You’ll learn a lot more about Max Weber in the Applied Sociological Theory class where we take a deeper dive into his writings. But in this one, essentially, we will be introducing the last of the three people that are considered to be the sociological trinity — Marx, Durkheim, and now Max Weber. Weber was very much a product of his time. A brilliant German scholar, he was a sociologist, an attorney, very active in the political movements of his day. He was in fact a member of the German equivalent of the German Parliament, and one of the authors of the Weimar Constitution which were the constitution, that guided Germany as a democracy between the end of World War One and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Weber, himself died before the rise of the Nazi party. But Weber was very concerned about the ways in which how we think influences the way we act — and how society reflects and changes and shapes the way we think. As you read through these readings, I think it is a really good exposure to Weber as an applied sociologist. Much of the work he did, he worked outside of academia for most of his career.

Some of his most important work actually was done outside of academia. One of the papers that you’ll read is called “The Freiburg Address.” This was something done early in Weber’s career. It touches on some very unsettling themes of German nationalism. Racial superiority, the idea of different ethnicities, actually being different races. Things that are now completely discredited. They were very much, part of the western intellectual firmament of this time. So he’s reflecting, he’s reflecting a sentiment that’s pretty common among German scholars of his era. If anything, he’s probably a bit liberal for his time. But he undergoes a huge evolution in his thought as his career progresses. And he becomes more, for lack of a better word, more liberal. Not liberal in the sense of conservative-liberal as we describe it in the United States, but liberal in the sense of supportive of liberal democracy. So, as you’re reading through this material, watching these videos, keep this in mind. Keep at the forefront of your mind the idea that Weber is very much in the mold of an applied sociologist, and at the same time is considered one of the founding fathers of the discipline, which I think really highlights this idea that there is a strong applied tradition that runs through the heart of sociology. Interestingly of the three people, we’re discussing here. Weber is the only one that ever visited the United States.

He came in the early 1900s, made a visit to the US prior to this was prior to the First World War, traveled to a meeting of the American Sociological Association, traveled out to the west coast. And actually traveled to North Carolina to a tiny town where he had cousins living in a small rural area in North Carolina. Visited with them, attended the Baptist Church which was sort of interesting. Weber was one of the preeminent scholars of religion at the time. So again, as you go through the material, pay some attention to the idea that Weber’s underlying assumptions and ideas about the world may be shifting somewhat as his career moves forward. Think about what these early ideas say about predominant intellectual currents in western Europe at the time, and think about Weber as sort of an embodiment of an applied sociologist, and whether you think he’s a good role model for applied sociologists today.

Reference(s):
A Look at Max Weber:
https://youtu.be/ICppFQ6Tabw

Bio Max Weber:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Max_Weber

Modernist Anti-Pluralism and the Polish Question:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/488244?seq=1

Max Weber & Ben Fowkes (1980): The national state and economic policy (Freiburg address)Preview the document, Economy
and Society, 9:4, 428-449 (UPLOADED AS PDF)

Durkheim, Emile. 1997. Suicide. New York: The Free Press.

Price, Jammie, Roger A. Straus, and Jeffrey R. Breese. 2009. Doing Sociology: Case Studies in Sociological Practice. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

Steele, Stephen F. and Jammie Price. 2008. Applied Sociology: Terms, Topics, Tools and Tasks. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

ASA FORMAT/CITATION

Question:
Politician, lawyer, and a sociologist — does Max Weber provide a good role model for applied sociologists? Why or why not? How do the ideas expressed in the Freiburg Address influence your opinion?

Answer Reference(s):
A Look at Max Weber:
https://youtu.be/ICppFQ6Tabw

Bio Max Weber:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Max_Weber

Modernist Anti-Pluralism and the Polish Question:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/488244?seq=1

The national state and economic policy (Freiburgaddress):
PDF Uploaded

Note(s):
Among the many contributions Weber makes to sociology are:

his ideas about the nature of authority in society,
his exploration of different religions and their impact upon societies,
his insights into modernity and the power of bureaucracy,
and his more subtle understanding of social class and status.
Weber also explores the power of ideas to shape human behavior — which is one of the things I find especially valuable in his work. I think Weber also advances a human-centered form of sociology in which people play a major role in the construction of a society that stands somewhat in contrast to Durkheim’s view of a world shaped by social facts and Marx’s economic determinism.

Still, there is an ominous spirit in the Freiburg address, all the more ominous when you think that in a little over a decade after Webers death, the Nazis would come to power with their fusion of racism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism.

Did Weber fan flames that fed the latter fire of National Socialism? Perhaps. From our perspective today it at least looks like he was playing with fire. However, I don’t think this was his intention. In fact, his latter work stood in direct counterpoint to what the Nazis stood for. However, the currents of racism, nationalism, and anti-Semitism ran deeply in the west at the time the Freiburg address was written and provided among other things a justification for colonialism.

At the outbreak of the First World War, Weber was quite the nationalist, volunteered for national service, and was put in charge of organizing army hospitals in Heidelberg. As the war drug on his attitude changed dramatically. By the end of the war, he had rejected this nationalistic impulse, was calling for greater democracy and universal suffrage. He co-founded the German Democratic Party and would help write the Weimar Constitution that created the republic which Hitler overthrew.

Nevertheless, these awful themes which Weber echoes in the Freiburg Address, themes that were so ingrained in German and indeed Western intellectual circles certainly fed the ideology and propaganda of the National Socialists, providing inspiration and intellectual cover. Having planted these seeds, the world was about to reap a terrible whirlwind.

So in this section, we’re going to be taking a look at Max Weber. You’ll learn a lot more about Max Weber in the Applied Sociological Theory class where we take a deeper dive into his writings. But in this one, essentially, we will be introducing the last of the three people that are considered to be the sociological trinity — Marx, Durkheim, and now Max Weber. Weber was very much a product of his time. A brilliant German scholar, he was a sociologist, an attorney, very active in the political movements of his day. He was in fact a member of the German equivalent of the German Parliament, and one of the authors of the Weimar Constitution which were the constitution, that guided Germany as a democracy between the end of World War One and the rise of Adolf Hitler. Weber, himself died before the rise of the Nazi party. But Weber was very concerned about the ways in which how we think influences the way we act — and how society reflects and changes and shapes the way we think. As you read through these readings, I think it is a really good exposure to Weber as an applied sociologist. Much of the work he did, he worked outside of academia for most of his career.

Some of his most important work actually was done outside of academia. One of the papers that you’ll read is called “The Freiburg Address.” This was something done early in Weber’s career. It touches on some very unsettling themes of German nationalism. Racial superiority, the idea of different ethnicities, actually being different races. Things that are now completely discredited. They were very much, part of the western intellectual firmament of this time. So he’s reflecting, he’s reflecting a sentiment that’s pretty common among German scholars of his era. If anything, he’s probably a bit liberal for his time. But he undergoes a huge evolution in his thought as his career progresses. And he becomes more, for lack of a better word, more liberal. Not liberal in the sense of conservative-liberal as we describe it in the United States, but liberal in the sense of supportive of liberal democracy. So, as you’re reading through this material, watching these videos, keep this in mind. Keep at the forefront of your mind the idea that Weber is very much in the mold of an applied sociologist, and at the same time is considered one of the founding fathers of the discipline, which I think really highlights this idea that there is a strong applied tradition that runs through the heart of sociology. Interestingly of the three people, we’re discussing here. Weber is the only one that ever visited the United States.

He came in the early 1900s, made a visit to the US prior to this was prior to the First World War, traveled to a meeting of the American Sociological Association, traveled out to the west coast. And actually traveled to North Carolina to a tiny town where he had cousins living in a small rural area in North Carolina. Visited with them, attended the Baptist Church which was sort of interesting. Weber was one of the preeminent scholars of religion at the time. So again, as you go through the material, pay some attention to the idea that Weber’s underlying assumptions and ideas about the world may be shifting somewhat as his career moves forward. Think about what these early ideas say about predominant intellectual currents in western Europe at the time, and think about Weber as sort of an embodiment of an applied sociologist, and whether you think he’s a good role model for applied sociologists today.

Reference(s):
A Look at Max Weber:
https://youtu.be/ICppFQ6Tabw

Bio Max Weber:
https://www.newworldencyclopedia.org/entry/Max_Weber

Modernist Anti-Pluralism and the Polish Question:
https://www.jstor.org/stable/488244?seq=1

Max Weber & Ben Fowkes (1980): The national state and economic policy (Freiburg address)Preview the document, Economy
and Society, 9:4, 428-449 (UPLOADED AS PDF)

Durkheim, Emile. 1997. Suicide. New York: The Free Press.

Price, Jammie, Roger A. Straus and Jeffrey R. Breese. 2009. Doing Sociology: Case Studies in Sociological Practice. Lanham, Maryland: Lexington Books.

Steele, Stephen F. and Jammie Price. 2008. Applied Sociology: Terms, Topics, Tools and Tasks. Belmont, CA: Thomson Wadsworth.

Question(s):
So, what are your reactions to Durkheim? Any concepts that resonate with you — or, are there any that seem way off base? Why is social cohesion such a theme in 19th-century social theory?

Answer Reference(s):
Edles, Laura Desfor, and Scott Appelrouth. 2010. Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press. pgs. 94 – 122 and pages 134 – 152.
This reading will cover a biographical and introductory sketch of Durkheim as well as excerpts from The Division of Labor, The Rules of the Sociological Method, and some introductory notes on Suicide. It will also include introductory remarks on and excerpts from The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Alan Macfarlane on Emile Durkheim:
https://youtu.be/IfjycYvlZGg

Durkheim and Social Solidarity:
https://youtu.be/3VwoihGP_i8

NOTE(s):
Durkheim’s Division of Labor is a seminal work; more than a century after publication it remains one of the most important works in sociology. Not bad for a doctoral dissertation! In the Division of Labor, Durkheim opts for evolutionary theory to explain the development of modern society. His approach is more deeply rooted in biology than that of Karl Marx and draws upon concepts such as carrying capacity to explain sociological transitions.

As you know from your reading, Durkheim saw a man moving across an evolutionary arc from primitive to modern society. Each stage developed social structures suited to the environment (natural and human) in which it was rooted. Mechanical solidarity a sort of shared worldview was the glue that held more primitive societies together. If you see shades of asabiyyah in this concept, you are not hallucinating. There are indeed similarities in the two concepts. Durkheim was influenced by the work of the French philosophers Montesquieu and Rousseau both of whom addressed the concept of collective consciousness. There is strong evidence that Rousseau was familiar with the work of Ibn Khaldun, and Montesquieu probably was as well. That is not to say that Durkheim was simply lifting an idea from Khaldun with whom he may or may not have been familiar with. Rather, powerful concepts tend to pass from scholar to scholar being modified to fit their understanding of the world around them.

A chief difference between Khaldun and Durkheim, however, was that the former worked from a cyclical paradigm and the latter from an evolutionary one. Khaldoun saw asabiyyah weakening across the generations until a new tribe with strong asabiyyah conquered the existing elites, and then the cycle inevitably repeated itself. Durkheim saw a brilliant alternative. Societies adapted and grew more complex as their environment changed, progressing toward modern societies where mechanical solidarity was replaced by organic solidarity in which mutual dependence was the glue that held it all together. Thus, the fundamental structure and shape of society change. It is an incredibly modern turn, and it is all laid out in the pages of The Division of Labor.

Anomie: Durkheim also believed society could malfunction and become pathological. In his studies of the world around him, Durkheim saw the impact of rapid urbanization and modernization. The cities of Europe were growing at a rapid pace; people were often left feeling adrift and unmoored, resulting in anomie. These views were not merely the product of idle speculation on his part. He is an exemplar of applied sociology who was actively engaged in the practice of sociology with works like Suicide. He was seeing and studying a world transformed before his eyes and eventually was watching it slide into World War I, a horrible conflict that would claim the life of his son.

Religion: Even though Durkheim never followed the rabbinical tradition of his family, he remained fascinated by the impact of religion on society. His work on religion is astounding, and even if you ultimately disagree with some of his conclusions you cant help but be overwhelmed by the brilliance of the work. Here is a guy who was a positivist to the core grappling with metaphysical mysteries and the ways in which our understanding of them both shapes and is shaped by our social world.

All in all, Durkheim leaves a heckuva legacy. Hard to imagine what the discipline would be like without him.

Well, for one thing, it must have appeared that society was coming apart at the seams during this period. We sometimes forget that the industrial revolution was just that, a revolution in the way people lived that was brought about by advances in technology.

One of the most dramatic of those changes was the rapid growth of cities. In 1800 the population of Paris was about 547,000 people, and the city covered about 13 square miles. By 1900, the population was 2.7 million, and the city sprawled across about 45 square miles. Much of that population explosion occurred within Durkheim’s own lifetime. At the time of his birth in 1858, Paris had about 1.6 million people; when he died, the population was approaching 2.9 million.

Other cities across Europe experienced similar surges in urbanization as people poured in from the countryside to work in factories and in the service businesses needed to support these urban centers. These folks often found themselves adrift in the big city without the structured existence of village or farm life to guide them. Custom and convention gave way to the demands of modern industrial society. For example, their daily life was structured by the factory clock rather than the rising or setting of the sun or the demands of the season.

With this increased population density came social problems like crime, prostitution, and alcohol and drug use. And people down on their luck often realized they lacked their old social network of kinfolk to whom they could turn for immediate help.

Placed in this context, it is clear that in his work Durkheim is struggling to make sense of — and perhaps find solutions for — the social problems of his day. His interest in social solidarity and anomie is not a purely academic exercise, but an attempt to address very real concerns

Reference(s):
Edles, Laura D. and Scott Appelrouth. 2010. Sociological Theory in the Classical Era. Thousand Oaks, CA: Pine Forge Press.

Grenfell, Michael James (ed). 2012. Pierre Bourdieu: Key Concepts. New York: Routledge.

Alan Macfarlane on Emile Durkheim:
https://youtu.be/IfjycYvlZGg

Durkheim and Social Solidarity:
https://youtu.be/3VwoihGP_i8

Scott, John. 2014. A Dictionary of Sociology. Oxford: Oxford University Press.