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Emile Durkheim’s Sociological Theory: Key Concepts R99,56   Add to cart

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Emile Durkheim’s Sociological Theory: Key Concepts

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This lecture notes discusses the key concepts of Emile Durkheim’s sociological theory.

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  • July 13, 2021
  • 4
  • 2020/2021
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  • Jeff
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By: charletburns • 2 year ago

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Emile Durkheim’s Sociological Theory: Key Concepts


At the core of Emile Durkheim’s sociological theory is the idea of social cohesion. As a
functionalist sociologist, Durkheim is concerned about social cohesion or social
solidarity. According to Durkheim, social cohesion comes from a core institutionalized
values that are held in common. Thus, anomie (that is, the lack of norms of behavior),
feelings of alienation, and social conflict, which are some of the central concepts in
Emile Durkheim’s sociological theory, are seen as social pathologies.

Collective Conscience, Religion, and Mechanical Solidarity

According to Durkheim, collective conscience and religion are crucial to social cohesion.
This is because, first, collective conscience (understood as beliefs and sentiments that
are shared in common by members of a society) creates common condition of
existence, and religion is the main form of collective conscience, which, according to
Durkheim, imposes a uniformity of beliefs and actions.

However, it is important to note that Durkheim argues that collective conscience,
expressed in religious beliefs and reinforced by ceremony, which eventually brings
people in solidarity, is true only to small-scale societies, for example, tribal societies.
Durkheim calls the kind of solidarity that we can find in small-scale societies
“mechanical”. As we may already know, for Durkheim, mechanical solidarity implies the
similarity of individuals living in a society. In other words, in a society held together by
mechanical solidarity, members share the same basic beliefs about the world and about
life (which are essentially based on religion) and engage in the same basic social and
economic activities, such as hunting and gathering.

These basic beliefs and values constitute what Durkheim calls “collective conscience”.
For Durkheim, collective conscience, which is understood as the totality of beliefs and
values, is a determinate system with a life of its own. Because collective conscience is
understood more as “norms of society”, this system causes the individuals to cooperate
with each other or abide by the laws of the society. But it must be remembered that
collective conscience is not a social structure but is a form of solidarity found in small-
scale societies.

Now, as we can see, advanced societies moved away from this type of solidarity, which
results in the weakening of the hold of collective conscience. However, for Durkheim,
the paradox of modern societies is that as they become more individualized so they
become more integrated. Thus, Durkheim did not view modernization as the cause of

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