Memos Emile Durkheim

Memos Emile Durkheim
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Memos Emile Durkheim
In the first reading, section 2.2.2 on Durkheim, the document explores the autobiography of the French Sociologist, Emile Durkheim. In the reading, the author credits Durkheim as among the founding fathers of the sociology discipline. Like Karl Marx, he dared to comprehend changes in his surroundings during a modest period in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In trying to answer how societies would progressively function amidst these changes, he believed that sociologists were solely responsible for addressing the variations and equated them to doctors treating patients. He opined that just like doctors treated patients, sociologists equally needed to remedy the social disorders that emanated from rapid industrialization. Durkheim evidentially had numerous contributions towards sociology discipline. Still, section 2.2.2 document focuses on his three significant inputs comprising roots of social solidarity analysis, social facts concept development, and analysis of religion as a force in modern life.
In his book, The Rules of Sociological Method (Durkheim [1895] 1982), Durkheim likened sociology to sciences like Physics and Biology in defining social facts. For instance, he posited that just like gravity, which is a natural external force, social forces similarly occur independently in the world. In the same breath that we cannot defy gravity, we cannot defy Durkheim's social facts, which he referred to as those everyday life rules and regularities that every human community possesses. After his definition of social facts, the term gained traction among other sociologists giving it a broader term as social forces. Durkheim explained that human behavior is learned and does not occur naturally, in what he dubbed the socialization process, which entails how we learn to behave in society. The most crucial among the social forces that impact us are norms. They act as physical barriers that constrain our actions.
In his next book, Suicide (Durkheim [1897] 1997), Durkheim tested the importance of social forces' impact on an individual's behavior. It was a typical validation of sociological analysis power and a milestone in the social theory and empirical research integration. After numerous observations and studies of the causes of suicide, he concluded that the act is greatly influenced by social factors like marital status, religious beliefs, economic and political stability of one's country, and one's educational level.
As much as Durkheim's insights about social forces influencing the possibility of suicide exhibit an apparent weakness since th...