Halbwachs and Durkheim: a test of two theories of suicide

The social integration hypothesis forms the basis of this study. It was first asserted by Durkheim in late nineteenth-century France and many of his assumptions are based on a social disorganizational model. This model tended to equate social change with the breakdown of social control and many of Durkheim's notions about anomie are derived from this view of industrial society. Halbwachs, on the other hand, proposed a social psychological theory of suicide. His model specifies more clearly the conditions under which lack of social integration may induce suicide. This study shows that among a population in transition, the Alaska Natives, the suicide rate was explained by the Halbwachsian model at least as well as the Durkheimian one and sometimes better. The Durkheimian model is shown to reflect a Cartesian dualism, which accounts only for that which is observable, thus making for biased studies of suicide. Moreover, psychopathological research confirms the Halbwachsian model. These findings restore the social isolation theory, once long neglected, to its rightful place among theories of suicide and opens up an important field for researchers seeking to understand high rates of suicide.     

Durkheim and the Homo Duplex: Anthropocentrism in Sociology

Previous analyses of anthropocentrism in sociological theory primarily attribute the origins of anthropocentrism in sociology to George Herbert Mead. This study addresses anthropocentrism in the influential works of David Émile Durkheim. At the core of Durkheim’s theory is his concept of the homo duplex, an inherent but tentative quality separating humans from all other animals. Durkheim uses the homo duplex as an ontological device, defining humanity as having the unique capacity to create and participate in the social. This collective process permits humans to transcend the profane, or what he observes as the immoral, passionate, animalistic individualism of nonhuman animals, into social solidarity: a realm generating morality and, ultimately, the sacred. This key distinction serves as the basis of all Durkheimian theory. This profound anthropocentrism becomes significant considering the degree of Durkheim’s influence on the field of sociology and the extent of anthropocentrism in sociology as a whole.     

Durkheim's cult of the individual as civil religion: Its appropriation by Erving Goffman

The purpose of this article is to provide a systematic analysis of the place of Durkheim's “cult of the individual” in Erving Goffman's sociology.¹ I have reviewed the most pertinent aspects of Durkheim's sociology of religion. This article discusses and/or analyzes the development of the cult of the individual primarily within the context of Durkheim's (1951) monograph on suicide; Durkheim's notions of sacred, profane, and ritual; Goffman's two‐pronged intellectual heritage; and Goffman's “Communication Conduct in an Island Community” (1953) with respect to several key Durkheimian concepts. Also discussed are several important secondary analyses—primarily those of Jurgen Habermas and Stanford Lyman—which help to further delineate the conditions of the Durkheim‐Goffman link. The final section applies Goffman's sociology to the case of Evangelicalism and “political civility.”     

The iemoto system and the avant-gardes in the Japanese artistic field: Bourdieu's field theory in comparative perspective

The conceptual framework of ‘field’ proposed by Pierre Bourdieu and his model of the literary and artistic fields in nineteenth‐century France are widely applied to studies of the development of the literary and artistic fields in other regions and the fields of other cultural practices. These researches, while showing similarities to Bourdieu’s model, reveal the distinct forms of nomos which those different fields developed through localised contingencies. In other words, their findings highlight the cultural specificity of the cases on which Bourdieu’s field theory is based. The main purpose of this paper is to argue that the field theory can be beneficially applied to cross‐cultural cases provided that its culturally specific elements are clearly identified. For this purpose, I focus on one particular aspect associated with the nomos of Bourdieu’s model – the orientation toward autonomy – to argue for its cultural specificity, which becomes clearer when it is compared to a distinct case of the artistic field in early‐twentieth‐century Japan. My case study shows that the Japanese artistic field did not develop the same form of autonomy as Bourdieu’s model, but it also discloses the processes in which a certain form of nomos was shaped through the struggles between the artistic field and other fields.     

Caught in the Middle? Worker Identity Under New Participatory Roles

This paper assesses four theories of the determinants of work identities of workplace participants. Data come from a case study of the General Motors team concept assembly plant in Shreveport, Louisiana. The findings indicate that Marxist theories of workplace control overestimate the extent to which management influences the identity of workplace participants. Some support was found for the Weberian perspective that work identity is determined by patterns of occupational mobility, yet strongest support was found for the Durkheimian focus on workplace norms. Implications are drawn regarding the meaning of employment in late modernity.     

Anomic suicide: A Durkheimian analysis of European normlessness

ABSTRACT

According to Durkheim (1897), periods of economic, social, or political change result in a state of anomie or normlessness. Anomic periods lead to deregulation of desires and suffering. Durkheim hypothesized that, as an expression of suffering, societies and groups experience an increase in suicide rates. This paper provides two formal tests of Durkheim’s (1897) theory of anomie - a behavioral aggregate analysis and an attitudinal individual-level analysis - on the backdrop of the 2008 economic crash. The first analysis assesses the relationship between unemployment and suicide in the European Union between 2000 and 2010. Results provide conditional support for Durkheim's theory: suicide rates increased following the crash and decreased once economic stability resumed in 2010 for males only. A second attitudinal analysis identified factors contributing to the gendered relationship between anomie and suicide. Results indicated that traditional Durkheimian regulatory mechanisms, such as marriage and divorce, contributed to the gender-specific results.     

Rethinking industrial citizenship: the role and meaning of work in an age of austerity

T. H. Marshall in his famous tract Citizenship and Social Class wrote briefly about what he called ‘industrial citizenship’, a type of belonging rooted in the workplace. Here Marshall's ideas are developed alongside a consideration of Durkheim's Professional Ethics and Civic Morals together with research material from the Guinness Company. It shows the way the Company actively sought to create ‘Guinness citizenship’ within its London brewery. The article draws out the ways in which the significance and potential of work based citizenship for ameliorating the ills of industrial society are clearly articulated in mid‐twentieth century Britain and echo earlier neglected Durkheimian sociological ideas on work. These ideas have real potential to inform contemporary academic and policy debates about the nature of capitalism and the form and content of work now and in the future.     

Social theory and current affairs: a framework for intellectual engagement

The paper aims to facilitate more adequate critical engagement with current affairs events by journalists, and with current affairs texts by audiences. It draws on social theory to provide the intellectual resources to enable this. The academic ambition is for the framework to be adopted and developed by social thinkers in producing exemplary critical readings of news and current affairs texts. To this end it is offered as a research paradigm. The paper situates its argument in relation to the wider literature in media and cultural studies, acknowledging the subtle skills required to appreciate the relative autonomy of texts. However, it draws attention to the lack of an adequate perspective with which to assess the frames, representations, and judgments within news and current affairs texts. To address this lacuna it proposes the conception of a social‐theoretical frame, based on a number of meta‐theoretical approaches, designed to provide audiences with a systematic means of addressing the status and adequacy of individual texts. Social theoretical frames can reveal the shortcomings of media framing of the contextual fields within which news and current affairs events take place. Two illustrative case studies are used to indicate the value and potential of the approach: the analysis of a short newspaper report of the return of protesters to Cairo's Tahrir Square in 2011, and a critique of four current affairs reports from various genres on the political turmoil in Thailand leading up to the clashes of May 2010.     

Durkheim,Competitive Interaction,and the “Best”: Explaining the State-Origins of U.S. Olympians

Abstract

Durkheim's theory of the causes of specialization in society proposes that the best performers should come from places with the most competitive interaction. This paper tests this proposition in an arena where interaction is highly competitive and where performance can be objectively measured, organized athletics in the United States. Four state-level indicators of competitive interaction (population, population density, average school size, and racial diversity) are used to predict the number of Olympic athletes developing in each state for the Olympic years 1956, 1968, 1980, and 1992. Net of controls for opportunities in athletics, results show that the number of Olympians developing in states increases exponentially with population, average high school size, and racial homogeneity, as Durkheimian theory suggests. These findings are robust even with controls for unmeasured state differences. I conclude that holding constant opportunity, states with more interaction among athletes produce more of the “best.”     

Figures of Motion: Integrating Movement Theories in Clinical Practice

In this paper the author summarizes and illustrates with case examples her theory of the clinical significance of nonverbal interaction and the usefulness of her integration of aspects of movement theory to facilitate its recognition and analysis. In this discussion, she reviews the concepts of kinetic transference and countertransference, the kinetic temperament, embodied history, kinetic therapeutic action and the kinetic text. Case examples illustrate the clinical importance of recognizing various aspects of movement, namely, the qualities of tension change, preferred movement dimensions, and body attitude, which come meaningfully into patient-analyst interaction.     

Evaluating and rethinking the case study

This paper will first explore briefly how the case study fell out of favour as a legitimate research tool, and how case study researchers responded to the critique that case study research lacked internal and external validity. Some case study advocates attempted to meet this critique by using the case to compare different theoretical predictions, dividing the case into subcases, or treating the case as an experiment. A more effective response distinguishes between ‘extensive’ and ‘intensive’ research designs, and critiques the extensive model. The paper then provides a clarification of purpose and a revived emphasis on theory, history, and intervention to develop the case study method. This paper will begin to construct a comprehensive case study methodology independent of the old critiques, and will show the crucial place which case studies must occupy in our craft.     

Reassessments of sociological history: The empirical validity of the conflict tradition

Conclusion The conflict tradition does not end with Max Weber, but there is room for only the barest sketch of subsequent or even contemporary developments. We have already covered many of the follow-ups of the Marx-Weber line of conflict sociology. Among these, there is the important line of influence inwhich Michels served as the link between Weber's historical theory of organizational politics and the organizational studies of the 1940–60's. Studies of stratification, although often pursued with naive theoretical categories, have gradually accumulated a great deal of evidence bolstering and refining the classical principles explained above; and some work, especially since the time of C. Wright Mills (but not necessarily influenced by him) has made a conscious effort to build on classical theory.Some other lines of conflict theory must at least be mentioned. The socialpsychological tradition of conflict theory originating with Schopenhauer and Nietzsche, of course, has Freud as its most famous representative. This level of analysis, despite various theoretical attempts, has not yet been convincingly related to the organizational/stratification level outlined above, nor has it had as much empirical support. But this social-psychological conflict tradition continues to have great potential importance. It holds out the promise of a model for the shaping of the individual psyche by the emotional and symbolic interchanges involved in struggles for interpersonal advantage to replace the artificially one-sided and relatively static models of psychological learning theory. Its premises move towards replacing adult-centered socialization theory with a two-sided view of age conflict under conditions of unequal resources. And when cast in an explicitly historical form, its insights into sexual repression become the basis of a comparative theory of sexual stratification. Many other interesting figures have been slighted in this brief history. Some, like Simmel and Pareto, appear isolated from the main stream, as they subordinated their insights about conflict to principles which led in quite different directions: neo-Kantian idealism and liberal positivism respectively. Others, like Sorel, came closer to the main line, above all, in Sorel's emphasis that conflict is the basis of moral solidarity, a point which resonates with Weber's understanding of group ceremony as the basis of legitimacy and solidarity precisely in situations of conflict and domination. From here, the possibility exists for appropriating the main achievements of the Durkheimian tradition - the understanding of the ceremonial bases of social realityconstructing - into a comprehensive conflict theory.For the arena encompassed by conflict theory is not only the moments of obvious strife in society, but the systematic explanation of the entire social structure. The central focus is on the organization of material arrangements into a system of power which divides society into interest groups struggling for control. Such material conditions operate not only through the sphere of economic production, but also directly condition the mobilization of interest groups for political action, as well as the production of ideas and of emotional ties. We need no longer rest with an abstract assertion of the determination of structure by contending interests with varying material resources; refined principles of conflict theory may explain specific outcomes in all areas of society.

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Fetishes and factishes: Durkheim and Latour

This paper defends the concept of ‘fetishism’ as an explanatory parameter in sociological theorizing on Durkheimian grounds, while at the same time paying due attention to important insights regarding the role of objects in social life, originating from Actor‐Network Theory (ANT). It critically assesses the current critique of the concept of fetishism propagated by ANT protagonist Bruno Latour. Latour and suggests a compromise between these two ‘schools’. First, to place the paper firmly in context, I analyse some examples of modern fetishism and outline the themes of the ensuing discussion. Next, I turn to Durkheim, seeking to develop a distinct interpretation of the concept of the social and of fetishism, and then point to some of Durkheim's shortcomings and attempt to make room for Latourian perspectives. Finally, I critically assess Latour's dismissal of forms of social ‘explanation’ and of the concept of fetishism.     

Working-class ecology and union politics: a conceptual topology

ABSTRACT

This paper argues that Environmental Labour Studies may benefit from incorporating the perspective of environmental justice. We offer a theorization of working-class ecology as the place where working-class communities live and work, being typically affected by environmental injustice, and of working-class environmentalism as those forms of activism that link labour and environmental struggles around the primacy of reproduction. The paper’s theoretical section draws on a social ethnography of working-class ecology in the case of Taranto, a mono-industrial town in southern Italy, which is experiencing a severe environmental and public-health crisis. We show how environmental justice activism since the early 2000s has allowed the re-framing of union politics along new ways of politicizing the local economy. We conclude by offering a conceptual topology of working-class ecology, which situates different labour organizations (confederal, social/community, and rank-and-file unions) according to their positioning in respect to environmental justice.     

SOCIAL DENSITY AND PUBLIC RITUAL IN NON-INDUSTRIAL COMMUNITIES

An implication of Durkheimian theory—that different types of rites and the elaborateness of public rituals are determined by social density—is empirically tested, using data available for 183 non-industrial communities derived from Murdock's Standard Cross-Cultural Sample. Support for the hypothesis is sustained even when alternative predicting variables are added. Contrary to social evolutionist theory, an increase in the division of labor does not appear to suppress ritual activity. This reaffirms the interest of some contemporary sociologists in ferreting out the forms and functions of ritual in modern societies.     

Bourdieu,Technique And Technology

This paper examines the place of technology in Pierre Bourdieu's social theory, and argues for the relevance of Bourdieu's thought to the study of technology. In moving from an examination of the status of technology in Bourdieu's work through to his broad approach to social practice and his widely cited concept of habitus, it is argued that technologies are crystalliz­ations of socially organized action. As such, they should be considered not as exceptional or special phenomena in a social theory, but rather as very much like other kinds of social practices that recur over time. Ultimately, through the use of Bourdieu's concepts of habitus, field, and capital, we are able to overcome the binary divisions such as technology/society and subject/object that have plagued technology studies.     

The use of bodies. Agamben’s idea of a non-capitalist form of life

Abstract

With the notion of the form-of-life as a counter-figure to the notion of bare life, Agamben seems to invite us to place at the center of a critical theory of capitalism a reflection on bios. To envisage a form of emancipation that unfolds against bare life suggests, at first glance, another relation to the living body. Such a gesture seems to be inspired by the desire to think a natural life that would also be a politically qualified life. The idea with which Agamben closes the Homo Sacer series, namely that of a use of bodies, also gestures in this direction. In this paper I show how the categories of bare life and of the use of bodies fail to live up to their promise, before demonstrating in what sense the idea of a subtraction of law as a political project which subsumes all others ends up weakening the critical potential of the idea of a form-of-life that is to be realised against the force of production of bare lives.     

Toward a Radical Model of Social Work in Rural Communities

“Rural” areas as distinct from “urban” continue to be defined by greater personal interactions and less emphasis on formal systems of support. This reality rests in contradiction to the overwhelming majority of social work scholarship and theory development which takes place in an urban context. As such the present-day act of being a “social worker” in a rural community can, in many ways, feel like a bad fit, back-applying the model of an urban generalist into an environment whose organic community ties the social work model itself was originally designed to substitute for. In recognition of this, it is necessary to develop a “combined” model of practice for social work with rural communities and peoples. The fundamental distinction to be made is that rural social work, in its most radical form, is less concerned with adapting persons to the Gesellschaft than it is with strengthening the capacity of the Gemeinschaft to provide the kind of support capacity it historically has, taking into account changes and challenges resulting from factors such as globalization, urban sprawl, and cultural change.     

Questioning the Phallus: Jacques Lacan and Judith Butler

ABSTRACT

This article engages with the relationship between Lacanian psychoanalytic theory and poststructuralist gender theory by comparing and contrasting the questioning of the symbolic phallus (function) undertaken by Jacques Lacan and Judith Butler. The debate takes place through Lacan’s 1958 paper “The Signification of the Phallus,” to which Butler responded critically in Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter, published in 1990 and 1993, respectively. Lacan explains that the symbolic phallic function is the “anchor”’ from and around which the symbolic works and ties the discussion to the question of sexual difference by explaining that men and women are positioned differently in relation to it. Butler charges that Lacan’s schema is heteronormative—because it is limited to the male/female schema—and patriarchal because within that heteronormative framework it affirms the masculine perspective. Rather than follow the usual route taken by recent Lacanian scholarship on this issue and focus on Lacan’s later works, especially Seminar XX on female sexuality, I appeal to the contents of two works written in the same year (1958) as “The Signification of the Phallus”—Seminar V and “Guiding Remarks for a Convention on Female Sexuality”—to offer a qualified defense of Lacan that accepts that his early framework is heteronormative but questions the patriarchal charge by showing that within these pre-Seminar XX texts he explicitly works to undermine that logic.     

A piece of lost history: Max Weber and Lowell L. Bennion

This article discussesMax Weber’s Methodology, Lowell L. Bennion’s (1933) published doctoral dissertation from the University of Strasbourg, France. This book is important because it is the first systematic English language treatment of Weber’s work. It also suggests an early link between Weberian and Durkheimian scholarship and foreshadows later debates regarding Talcott Parsons’ interpretation of Weber. Additionally the book provides a unique contribution by applying Weber’s “Calvinism-Capitalism” thesis to the development of Mormonism. We explore the academic context in which the book was written and its reception by American sociologists at the time. After summarizing the text, we examine its perspective on the issues later raised about Parsons’ account of Weber. We conclude by looking at Lowell Bennion as a sociologist and a devout Mormon, and the unique connection that he forged between his religion and Max Weber’s ideas. Her field is organizational behavior and theory; her primary area of research is the relationship between organizational hierarchy and managerial leadership. He is currently investigating the modes of white collar resistance in public bureaucracies.