Emile Durkheim• "Father of sociology" • Birth:• Emile Durkheim was born April 15, 1858. • Death:• He died November 15, 1917.• Early Life and Education:• Durkheim was born in France. He came from a long line of devout French Jews; his

father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been rabbis. He began his education in a rabbinical school, but at an early age, decided not to follow in his family's footsteps and switched schools, realizing that he preferred to study religion from an agnostic standpoint as opposed to being indoctrinated.

• Career and Later Life:• Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his

career, which meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and eventually, sociology.

Work of Emile Durkheim

Social facts

The Division of Labor in society

Suicide

Forms of Religious life

Social factsIntroduction:Social facts is an idea or things.This mean that we must study social facts by

acquiring data from outside from our own mind through observation and experimentation.

Durkheim himself gave several example of social facts, including legal rules, moral obligations, and social convention. He also refers to language as a social facts, and it provide an easily understood example. language is a thing that must be studied empirically.

Example of social facts

Material and Non material Material: technology, housing arrangements,

population distribution, etc. Nonmaterial: norms, values, roles (ways of

acting, thinking and feeling), systems (language, currency, professional practices)

Suicide• The act of killing yourself because you do not want

to continue living• A person who commits suicide• An action that ruins or destroys your career, social

position, etc.

Types of suicide:• Egoistic suicide • Altruistic suicide• Anomic suicide• Fatalistic suicide

Egoistic suicide• Egoistic Suicide occurs in a society where there is too

much individualism, that is, low social integration. Egoistic suicide is committed by people who are not strongly supported by membership in a interconnected social group.

• People who would be most likely to commit this type of suicide feel extremely detached from their community. They do not feel a part of the greater whole or a sense of belonging. Typically, elderly people who have lost communication with their community due to inability to get out of their homes would be defined as those who commit egoistic suicide.

Altruistic suicide• The term 'altruism' was used by Emile Durkheim to

describe a Suicide committed for the benefit of others or for the community: this would include self-sacrifice for military objectives in wartime. Altruistic suicides reflect a courageous indifference to the loss of one's life.

Anomic suicide• This kind of suicide is related to too low of a degree

of regulation. This type of suicide is committed during times of great stress or change. Without regulation, a person cannot set reachable goals and in turn people get extremely frustrated. Life is too much for them to handle and it becomes meaningless to them. An example of this is when the market crashes or spikes.

Fatalistic suicide

• The final type of suicide is Fatalistic suicide. People commit this suicide when their lives are kept under tight regulation. They often live their lives under extreme rules and high expectations. These types of people are left feeling like they’ve lost their sense of self.

• People who commit fatalistic suicide feel oppressed by the society around them. They feel constantly repressed, both physically and mentally, by those who enforce power over them. People who live in very oppressive countries or prisoners would be most likely to commit fatalistic suicide.

Division of labor• The division of labor is the specialization of

cooperating individuals who perform specific tasks and roles.

Why Divide Labor?• Division of labor is essential to economic progress

because it allows people to specialize in particular tasks. This specialization makes workers more efficient, which reduces the total cost of producing goods or providing a service. Additionally, by making people become skilled and efficient at a smaller number of tasks, division of labor gives people time to experiment with new and better ways of doing things.

Division of labor• Society can be divided into two parts:• Traditional society and modern society:Traditional society• Based on Hunting and gathering• Based on commonly shared belief and strong group

identity• Simply division of laborModern society:• Based on industries and new technology• Society become complex due to industrialization• Based on class level upper, middle and lower

Functionalism

• Functionalism emphasizes a societal equilibrium. If something happens to disrupt the order and the flow of the system, society must adjust to achieve a stable state. According to Durkheim, society should be analyzed and described in terms of functions. Society is a system of interrelated parts where no one part can function without the other. These parts make up the whole of society. If one part changes, it has an impact on society as a whole.

• Five institutions of society:• Family, religion, economy, education and political.

Reference• Durkheim, Emile (1951 [1897]) Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Trans. J.A. Spaulding

and G. Simpson. New York: The Free Press .• Durkheim, Emile (1957 [1900]) Professional Ethics and Civic Morals. Trans. C.

Brookfield. New York: Routledge .• Durkheim, Emile (1969 [1898]) ‘Individualism and the Intellectuals’ (trans. S. and

J. Lukes), Political Studies 17(1): 19–30 .• Durkheim, Emile (1969 [1900]) ‘Two Laws of Penal Evolution’ (trans. W.

Jeffrey),University of Cincinnati Law Review 38(1): 32–60 .• Durkheim, Emile (1973 [1914]) ‘The Dualism of Human Nature and Its Social

Conditions’ (trans. C. Blend), in R.N. Bellah (ed.) Emile Durkheim: On Morality and Society, pp. 149–163, 236–237. Chicago, IL: The University of Chicago Press .

• Durkheim, Emile (1974a [1906]) ‘The Determination of Moral Facts’ (trans. D.F. Pocock), in C. Bougle (ed.) Sociology and Philosophy, pp. 35–62. New York: The Free Press .

• Durkheim, Emile (1974b [1906]) ‘Replies to Objections’ (trans. D.F. Pocock), in C. Bougle (ed.) Sociology and Philosophy, pp. 63–79. New York: The Free Press .

• Durkheim, Emile (1974 [1911]) ‘Value Judgments and Judgments of Reality’ (trans. D.F. Pocock), in C. Bougle (ed.) Sociology and Philosophy, pp. 80–97. New York: