SOC 101 Monday February 15 Lecture Emile Durkheim and Social Integration As we discussed in the overview of his book Suicide Durkheim s main focus is social integration the degree to which people feel a part of social groups Durkheim s primary interest was what happens as societies begin to modernize when they begin to industrialize and labor becomes increasingly specialized Durkheim further theorized that social integration the ways in which individuals are connected and attached to one another within a society exists in two different forms or solidarities Mechanical Solidarity Social cohesion based upon the likeness and similarities among the individuals in a society and largely dependent on common rituals and routines Common among small and or isolated homogenous populations More cooperation than competition among members Social links are based on custom obligation and emotion Members share same values and beliefs The notion of individualism and individual freedom is undeveloped The status of the individual is determined by kinship People are virtually alike in their consciousness Durkheim writes In societies where this type of solidarity mechanical is highly developed the individual is not his own master Solidarity is literally something which the society possesses excerpt from The Division of Labor in Society In contrast Organic Solidarity Social cohesion based upon the mutual dependence that individuals in more advanced society have on each other Common among industrial societies as the division of labor and 1 specialization increases In modern industrial societies individuals no longer perform the same tasks have the same interests nor necessarily share the same perspectives on life This does not cause a society to fail or disintegrate Organic solidarity is formed Like the organs within an animal individuals perform certain specific functions but rely on the well being and successful performance of other individuals If one organ fails the rest of them fail as well A body or in this case a society cannot function at all if one part crumbles This reliance upon each other for social and even physical survival is the source of organic solidarity In conclusion human behavior cannot be understood simply in individualistic terms we must always examine the social forces that affect people s lives Challenging Mainstream Sociology Silenced Voices in Early American Sociology Ida B Wells 1862 1931 Social analyst and activist who wrote and protested against many forms of racism and sexism during the late 19th and early 20th century She protested Jim Crow segregation laws founded a Black women s suffrage movement and became one of the founding members of the NAACP Her most famous works on lynchings are Southern Horrors 1892 and The Red Record 1895 In Southern Horrors Wells challenged the common justification for lynching of Black men for rape and other crimes involving white women S In The Red Record she used lynching statistics from the Chicago Tribune to demonstrate how the right to a fair trial and equality before the law did not 2 extend to African American men and women Jane Addams 1860 1935 Research on everyday lives of immigrants from eastern and southern Europe Focused on their adaptation to city life crime family problems unemployment She conducted her research from Hull House a settlement house a community center in downtown Chicago Published her findings in Hull House Maps and Papers 1895 Addam s work is significant because Her work was known among sociologists at the time but marginalized The all male Department of Sociology at the University of Chicago agreed with Addam s findings regarding immigrant adaptation but Tension between Addam s research advocacy and the University s scientific approach reflected gendered divisions The gender split became realized in early 1900s in two disciplines sociology scientific male dominated social work applied female dominated W E B Du Bois 1868 1963 First black scholar to receive a Ph D from Harvard was a prominent Black scholar and co founder of the NAACP His work addressed racial divisiveness in U S society Largely disregarded by mainstream sociologists until a Du Bois 3 renaissance in the late 1990s Now considered a founding father of American sociology Structural Racism His book The Philadelphia Negro 1899 Showed how poverty among African Americans in the United States was primarily the result of racial discrimination Applying rigorous methods Du Bois studies and subsequent writing treated sociology as a science employing empirical research and quantitative as well as qualitative analysis This was in contrast to the prevailing method at the time in which observations were so superficial that the analyst might have merely driven by without taking the time or effort to understand the community under study Du Bois methodology stood in stark contrast to this Embedding himself in one of Philadelphia s historic black communities his study is considered one of the first examples of scientifically framed and conducted sociology Du Bois uncovered a spectrum of factors contributing to community ills such as poverty and crime None of these included the alleged inferiority of African Americans African Americans were forced to live in two worlds a white one and a black one In a first for sociology Du Bois combined his research with census data to create visual illustrations of his findings in bar graphs Through this combination of methods he clearly illustrated the realities of racism and how it impacted the lives and opportunities of this community providing much needed evidence in the fight to disprove the supposed cultural and intellectual inferiority of Black people Double Consciousness The Souls of Black Folk 1903 Du Bois s experience of growing up to illustrate the psycho socio effects of racism 4 Du Bois asserted racism prevents Black people from having true self consciousness and instead forces them to have double consciousness wherein they have an understanding of themselves 1 within their families and community 2 but also must view themselves through the eyes of White others who see them as different and inferior 5