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Emile Durkheim: Le Suicide
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Whether he investigated religious phenomena or criminal acts, whether he desired to clarify the social impact of the division of labor or of changes in the authority structure of the family, Durkheim always shows himself a masterful functional analyst. He is not content merely to trace the historical origins of phenomena under investigation, although he tries to do this ... but he moves from the search for efficient causes to inquiries into the consequences of phenomena for the structures in which they are variously imbedded. Durkheim always thinks contextually rather than atomistically. As such he must be recognized as the direct ancestor of that type of functional analysis which came to dominate British anthropology under the impact of Radcliffe-Brown and Malinowski and which led. somewhat later, to American functionalism in sociology under Talcott Parsons and Robert K. Merton.
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Weber contrasts with Durkheim on both counts. By insisting on the impossibility of a "pre-supposition-less" sociology, he afforded the observer a more active role in the generation of scientific knowledge. The precise role of the observer... is guided toward empirical data and problems, which are significant to him from a cultural point of view. And by insisting on the centrality of subjective meaning as the basic ingredient of action, including social action, Weber gave both the actor and the investigator a more active role. In regarding the actor as meaningfully oriented to his environment, Weber insisted that a significant portion of the variables that "explain" human behavior had to be found in the pattern of meanings given to his environment and behaving in accord with these meanings. The actor's own definition of the situation, in short, contributes to explaining his behavior.
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This important reader in comparative religion includes several selections that are indispensable for an adequate understanding of Durkheim. These readings include selections from Tylor's Primitive Culture (on animism), and Fustel de Coulanges' La cité antique. The 2nd edition of the Lessa and Vogt reader included essays by W. Robertson Smith from Lectures on the Religion of the Semites (on sacrifice among the Semites), and chapters on "Mana and Taboo" and totemism.
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Durkheim was familiar with several foreign languages and reviewed academic papers in German, English, and Italian at length for L'Année sociologique, the journal he founded in 1896. It has been noted... at times with disapproval and amazement by non-French social scientists, that Durkheim traveled little and that, like many French scholars and the notable British…
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Durkheim a été vivement critiqué dans sa tentative d'établir la sociologie comme une science. Certains ont considéré sa définition du fait social comme une vision minimaliste du monde réel. D'autres, comme Robert K. Merton, voient dans les hypothèses de Durkheim « une orientation [qui] ne fournit qu'un cadre très large à l'enquête empirique »
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Le Suicide