●Final exam:
○Bring bluebooks
○Essay formats
○Think of main themes for Weber and Durkheim
●Durkheim
○Society: reality
■Moral order
■Individuality
○The first sociologist to make the concept of society as a framework
○French man, from alsace lorraine, born in 1858, died in 1917
■Virtually exact contemporaries with Weber
■Never wrote one word about each other
○Believed that sociology was not a value-free detached enterprise
■Weber believed this is what sociology should achieve to be
○Sociology could be like medicine, could understand the health of a society
■Could be used to restore society
○Division of Labor in Society, 1983
○Dreyfus - French Jewish army officer convicted of treason
■Most french argued even if Dreyfus was innocent, he should still be found
guilty bc French army had already established their prestige
■The french should not take back their rule
■They were more concerned with punishing minorities rather than catching
the real criminals
○Stuck in a society that disregarded individual rights
○Changed his focus to anthropological religion
○Less directly politically involved, more of an academic
■Work is directed to the support of society and recognizing individuals and
rights
■Believes what he is doing can be an assist to social and political struggle
■If there is a moral crisis, what can sociology do to heal society and help it
evolve morally?
○Three essential principles of Durkheim:
■“Society is a society sui generis” (only object in its category)
●Unique object, unique existence
●The fundamental category of society is the individual
○Society is a collection of individuals
●Durkheim argues that society is not a collection of individuals
○Society must be understood as a whole, must be seen as
independent
○Much more than a collection of individuals, something
inside them far exceeds anything any human can produce
or create
■Individuals by combining, create a new species, altering the world
●Society is more than the sum of its parts
●Society does not exist to help individuals achieve what they want