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The Father of Modern Sociology:




INTRODUCTION:                    

                  Émile Durkheim is known as the father of Sociology, he was the first to develop a vigorous methodology combining empirical research sociological theory. Although It was Auguste Comte who first coined the word “Sociology,” and he used it to refer to what he imagined would be a single, all-encompassing, science of society that would take its place at the top of the hierarchy of sciences. Durkheim was born in France in 1858. Émile Durkheim lost his faith when he was twenty years because his father (a Jewish rabbi) died, but his thoughts had become altogether secular but with a strong bent toward moral reform. The heavy burden and responsibilities that Durkheim help him look at his thoughts in this manner. As early as his late teens Durkheim became convinced that effort and even sorrow are more conducive to the spiritual progress of the individual than pleasure or joy. He became a gravely disciplined young man

                  Like a number of French philosophers during the Third Republic, Durkheim looked to science and in particular to social science and to profound educational reform as the means to avoid the perils of social disconnectedness, or “anomie,” as he was to call that condition in which norms for conduct were either absent, weak, or conflicting.

                Durkheim was one of several young philosophers and scholars (in the 1870s), fresh from their École Normale training, who became convinced that progress was not the necessary consequence of science and technology, that it could not be represented by an ascending curve, and that complacent optimism could not be justified.

                More and more, Durkheim's thought became concerned with education and religion as the two most potent means of reforming humanity or of molding the new institutions required by the deep structural changes in society. His colleagues admired Durkheim's zeal on behalf of educational reform. His efforts included participating in numerous committees to prepare new curriculums and methods; working to enliven the teaching of philosophy, which too long had dwelt on generalities; and attempting to teach teachers how to teach.



born April 1858, Épinal, France

died Nov. 15, 1917, Paris



BOOK SUMMARY:

               Emile Durkheim's classic work tells us more than just details about suicide. Studying a powerfully individual phenomenon from a sociological perspective was, in its own right, an impressive undertaking. But what interests me more for sociology of media is the way Durkheim handled statistics. In the first chapter, he gives a series of examples that illustrate the danger in placing too much unexamined value in numerical data. He shows first that married people commit suicide more than singles, but then notes that single people include children who are unlikely to commit suicide. Therefore this data does not necessarily indicate a causal relationship between marriage and suicide. He adjusts the data, taking only people of marriage age and computes the data again. This time, single people commit suicide more than married people. However, Durkheim then notes that single people will automatically include a larger portion of mentally or physically defunct people. He therefore concludes that there is not sufficient data to make a conclusion about a causal relationship between suicide and marital status. This is really little more than mental exercise, but it is a critical one for any one employing survey methods and statistical analysis. The researcher must be vigilant in analyzing data to ensure avoiding errors in logic


MY TEXT:

            Émile Durkheim revolutionary style of thinking help the world develop into what it is today. If it wasn’t for Durkheim ideas of  “endeavor to formulate a positive social science that might direct people's behavior toward greater solidarity” (Britannica).  Durkheim also notice the frequency of anomie, a personal sense of rootlessness that is brought by the absence of social norms.  A society’s pursuit of material greed open the doors to greed and the tampered with the unstable threads of society.  But Durkheim's influence don’t just stop at the social science, they are extended beyond. Through him, sociology became a seminal discipline in France that broadened and transformed the study of law, economics, Chinese institutions, linguistics, ethnology, art history, and history.



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The images on this site borrowed from 3dtextmaker.com,  http://www.emory.edu/OXFORD/HistSocSci/Sociology/intro.html and , 

http://www.unc.edu/~elliott/durkheim.html.

The text on this page was abstracted from Encyclopædia Britannica Online.

Book summary taken from: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0684836327/qid=1084676656/sr=8-1/ref=pd_ka_1/103-4528285-4830225?v=glance&s=books&n=507846







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