Toll stations, Greece

Ontology & epistemology

• Ontology: a specification of a conceptualization1 o E.g., What is society? What do we mean when we invoke “society”? Who

does it contain? What are its boundaries?o Generally understood as a theory of what is, of being, existence

• Epistemology: the study of knowledge and justified belief 2o What are the necessary and sufficient conditions of knowledge? What are

its sources? What is its structure, and what are its limits? o How we are to understand the concept of justification? What makes

justified beliefs justified? Is justification internal or external to one's own mind?

o Understood more broadly, epistemology is about issues having to do with the creation and dissemination of knowledge in particular areas of inquiry

1.T. R. Gruber. A translation approach to portable ontologies. Knowledge Acquisition, 5(2):199-220, 1993.2. Steup, Matthias, "Epistemology", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Winter 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/win2011/entries/epistemology/>.

3

Metatheoretical MapNonrational

Rational

Individual Collective

ACT ION

ORDER

surplus value

class conflict

class interests

labor exploitation

forces & relations of production

commodity festishism

alienation/estrangement

4

Metatheoretical MapNonrational

Rational

Individual Collective

ACT ION

MARX

DURKHEIM

ORDER

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

There can be no society which does not feel the need of upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective sentiments and the collective ideas which makes its unity and personality. Now this moral remaking cannot be achieved except by the means of reunions, assemblies and meetings where the individuals, being closely united to one another, reaffirm in common their common sentiments.

(Durkheim 1912/1995: 474-75)

Intellectual influences• Auguste Comte (1798-1857), founder of French

positivism, coined the term “sociology”o Through systematic collection, the patterns behind and within individual

behavior can be uncoveredo positivism: the idea that the study of social phenomena should employ the

same scientific techniques used in the natural scienceso Comte saw "social physics" or sociology as a means to combat anarchy in

the wake of the French Revolutiono Society is sui generis (an objective reality that is irreducible to the

individuals that compose it) and amenable to scientific investigation• Herbert Spencer (1820-1903), British philosopher,

shared organic view of societyo as social organism grows, it becomes more complex, due to differentiationo differentiation: in essence, any change that increases the variety of social

forms having durable connections to each other 3

• can take the form of industrialization, urbanization, immigration of people from alien cultures, and any number of other changes

• the myriad variations among people based on selected social characteristics such as age, sex, race, educational attainment, occupational status, etc. is an example of differentiation

3 Tilly, Big Structures, p. 50

Influences and core ideas • Sense of moral crisis in turn of the century France

o ED defended Captain Alfred Dreyfus (center of "Dreyfus Affair"), a young French artillery officer of Jewish descent, who was falsely charged w/treason, as the result of rampant anti-Semitism

o ED considered anti-Semitism a "moral sickness of society”• ED was a reformist, not a revolutionary

o described Marxism as a “disputable set of outdated hypotheses“o ED did not support agitation, feared and hated social disorder, but did not

believe social disorder was inherent in capitalism or a necessary part of modern world

o Disorder could be reduced through social reforms• Critique of individualism

o society, not the individual, is primaryo ED was critical of utilitarian individualism, economism

Core ideas in Durkheim’s early work

• the importance of ideals & moral unity in the continuity of society

• the significance of the individual as an active agent as well as passive recipient of social influences

• the dual nature of attachment of the individual to society, as involving both obligation and positive commitment to ideals

• the conception that an organization of units (individuals as the units of organized societies) has properties which cannot be directly inferred from the characteristics of the component units considered in isolation from one anothero society is more than sum of its parts

• society as an organism, which can be healthy or pathological• the process of change from traditional to modern society can

be likened to biological processes involving differentiation of cells

9

Metatheoretical MapNonrational

Rational

Individual Collective

Marx

DURKHEIM

Du Bois

Weber

Gilman

Mead

Simmel

10

Metatheoretical MapNonrational

Rational

Individual Collective

ACT ION

ORDER

anomiecollective consciencecollective representations sacred & profanesocial solidarity mechanical solidarity organic solidarity

division of labor

The Division of Labor in

Society1893

Durkheim’s theoretical orientation

• collective conscience: “the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society” that “forms a determinate system which has its own life”o collective representations: the term used to describe the same

phenomenon in ED’s later work

Key concepts

• social facts: conditions and circumstances external to the individual that, nevertheless, determine the individual’s course of action

• social solidarity: the cohesion of social groups

How does the division of labor in modern societies affect

individuals as well as society as a whole?

• Marx claimed the division of labor (or economic specialization) in capitalism inevitably resulted in alienation

• Durkheim, by contrast, argued that economic specialization was not necessarily bad for the individual or societyo It depends on the conditions, whether voluntary and spontaneous

Division of labor & social solidarity

• The Division of Labor in Society was a polemico opposed (utilitarian) individualismo opposed Comte and others who thought modern society was headed

towards disintegration• Despite declining significance of traditional moral

beliefs (rooted in religion), a new system of moral regulation could be found in the differentiated DoLo but it's not due to the multiplication of contracts, as utilitarians suggesto emphasizes the "noncontractual basis of contract," i.e., social norms

upholding contracts give them force• In modern societies, the form of social cohesion

called mechanical solidarity is increasingly supplanted by a new type: organic solidarity

contemporary society still has a moral order!

A science of morality

• ED sought to treat the facts of moral life according to the method of the positive scienceso vs. the moral philosophers who began with a priori postulates about

essential human natureo & vs. psychology, where propositions are applied through a process of

logical deduction• ED sets out not to extract ethics from science, but

to establish a science of moralityo moral rules develop in society and are bound up with the conditions of

social life pertaining in a given time and placeo science of moral phenomena thus sets out to analyze how changing

forms of society effect transformations in the character of moral norms and to observe and classify these

There are two types of positive solidarity:

mechanical & organic

• mechanical solidarity, links the individual to society without any intermediaryo Society is organized collectively and is

composed of beliefs common to all members of the group

o The individual consciousness depends on the collective consciousness

Organic solidarity• With organic solidarity, society is a system of different functions united

by definite relationships, which bring about the DoL• In modern DOL, each individual must have a sphere of action and a

personality which is his own.• Individuality grows at the same time as the parts of society

o Society becomes more effective at moving in concert though at the same time each of its elements has more movements that are peculiarly its own.

• Solidarity stems not simply from acceptance of common set of beliefs but from functional interdependence in the DoL

• Where mechanical solidarity is the main basis of societal cohesion, collective conscience completely envelops the individual conscience and therefore presumes an identity between individuals in their beliefs and actions

• The growth of organic solidarity and the expansion of the DOL are hence associated with increasing individualism

• The progress of organic solidarity is necessarily dependent on the declining significance of the conscience collective

• greater frequency of contact moral or dynamic density

The Rules of the

Sociological Method

1895

Sociology is the study of social facts

(1)Sociology is a distinct field of study(2)Although the social sciences are distinct from the

natural sciences, the methods of the latter can be applied to the former

(3)The social field is also distinct from the psychological realm

21

Crime is normal• Crime is present in all societies of all types• Its form changes

o acts thus characterized are not the same everywhere but everywhere and always there have been people whose behavior draws punishment

• Crime is not only inevitable, it is necessary - an integral part of all healthy societies

22

What is crime? • Crime consists of an act that offends certain very

strong collective sentiments• It is not the intrinsic quality of a given act that

makes it a crime, but the definition which the “collective conscience” of society gives it

23

Crime plays a useful role in social evolution

• Where crime exists, collective sentiments are sufficiently flexible to take on a new form, and crime sometimes helps determine the form they will takeo Socrates’ crime, independence of thought,

provided a service not only to humanity but to his country, preparing the ground for a new morality & faith in Athens, since traditions were no longer in harmony with current conditions• his violation was a crime, but it was useful as a

prelude to necessary reforms

24

Beyond good & evil• Crime must no longer be conceived as an evil to

be suppressed • Instead, we should attempt to discern its social

function, the purpose it serves for society