the example of suicide

1
the example of suicide

• -the personal- how life has felt empty and
  meaningless
• -the social- Durkheim considered the cohesion or
  lack thereof in religious groups and related it
  to ones likelihood of committing suicide
• What factors in the social life of Kurt Cobain
  may have been unsatisfying?

2
The Global Perspective

• -the vital exchange of goods, people and
  consequently, culture, across transnational
  boundaries have a profound effect on our nation
  and our social world
• -we need to think in terms of a chain of causes
  and effects of social phenomena which produce a
  ripple effect across borders
• (ie.- wargtpovertygtdesperationgtanti-west
  ideologuesgtsense of purposegtsuicide)

3
the Other Perspective

• race- to specify groups based on skin color or
  physical characteristics
• ethnicity- cultural identity or heritage
• class- relative location within a society based
  on wealth
• sex- biological male or female differences
• gender- practices associated with femininity or
  masculinity

4
Early Sociology

• the Enlightenment, Industrialization,
  Urbanization
• the age of reason
• through science towards reason (unbiased
  understanding)
• Philosopher Thomas Hobbes coined the term a war
  of all against all in reference to the natural
  human tendency in a free society
• Rousseau conceived of a social contract, which
  would be entered into by all citizens in exchange
  for order

5
industrial age

• the move to cities due to opportunities in
  mechanized plants led to increased crowding and
  concentrated poverty, unparalleled in history
• Shift from producers to consumers

6
Early Thinkers order within upheaval

• Auguste Comte
• -coined the term sociology and considered the
  founder
• -father of positivism or scientific inquiry to
  uncover social laws
• -social science should unseat religion as
  unbiased source of knowledge to govern humanity
• -birth of social statistics

7
Emile Durkheim

• -social facts exist outside the individual and
  pattern their behavior
• -institutions, norms, roles
• -city life and specialized labor leads to strain
  and anomie
• -roles in life lose their meaning and one
  experiences normlesness or purposelessness
• -founder of functionalism, concerned with society
  as an organism and how social roles are
  functional for society

8
Karl Marx

• wrote Das Kapital and introduced conflict theory
• class conflict is necessary to produce social
  change
• the proletariat (working class) will attain class
  consciousness and rise up
• saw the economic as the determining factor of
  social life
• struggle of bourgeoisie (capitalists) and the
  proletariat

9
Georg Simmel

• -society as a web of patterned interactions
• social forms and the geometry of social life
• social differentiation and the economy of roles
• Metropolis and the Mental Life
• linked causally the characteristics of the city
  with the character of its inhabitants
•  

10
Karl Marx

• exploitation of workers by capitalists produces
  alienation
• a feeling of powerlessness and estrangement from
• 1) the action of work
• 2) the products of work
• 3) other workers
• 4) humanity

11
Max Weber

• -wrote the Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of
  Capitalism
• saw the rise of capitalism as a function of
  shifting religious values
• bureaucracy and the iron cage
• -power and prestige as non-economic status
• ideal types objectively derived forms of social
  facts