[SOCIOL 1] - Midterm Exam Guide - Comprehensive Notes for the exam (39 pages long!)
Document Summary
American individualism vs. the power of the social. Western, cowboy story: lone hero who saves society by himself, still characteristic of contemporary movies/stories. Emile durkheim"s suicide: egoistic suicide (lack of integration) No goals outside the self=meaningless: anomic suicide (lack of regulation) Loss of limits, rules=frustration: norms-moral rules, standards for behavior in a society or group. Thought about what you would argue is the most individual, private thing that could happen: suicide! Did not study individuals, but studied suicide rates, average tendency to suicide. Protection against suicide that you get depending what group you are a part of. Individuals can differ in how psychologically fragile they are. Some groups lead to relatively more suicides and less suicides. Suicides: marker of things about social forces, about how social forces affect individual lives in the end: egoistic suicide. Starts with statistical observation that suicide rates (19th century europe, no computers, all data collected and took down by hand)
