AHSS*1130 Lecture Notes - Lecture 1: Altruistic Suicide, Social Fact, Verstehen
Sociology Week 1
Origins
Revolutions (3)
1. Scientific: encouraged evidence based conclusions about society
Geocentric vs heliocentric … church/religion to self/human control
2. Democratic: suggested people were responsible for creating society; thus human intervention
was capable of solving social problems
3. Industrial
Traditions (4)
1. FUNCTIONALISM (=order)
- Organic analogy
- Human behaviour is governed by stable patterns of social relations (“social structures”)
oEither maintain or undermine social stability
oBased mainly on shared values or preferences
oArgues that re-establishing equilibrium is the best way to solve most social problems
oMarx, Durkheim, Hobbs
- Suicide: Durkheim
oSocial fact: prior to you, influence, common to group
oEgoistic and anomic suicide vs altruistic suicide (too low or too high amount of social
solidarity)
- Merton proposed that social structures may have different consequences for different
groups of people
oManifest (obvious/intended)
oLatent (not so obvious/intended/secondary)
oLatent dysfunction (unintended & negative)
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