
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
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![]() born
April 1858, died
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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
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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
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