Is Society Anything More Than The Sum Of Its Individual Parts?Essay Preview: Is Society Anything More Than The Sum Of Its Individual Parts?Report this essaySociety, in its simplest terms can be described as a body of individuals living as members of a community (Oxford Dictionary, second edition). To define society, the expression, individual, has to be used and therefore this could suggest that one cannot survive without the other, rather like the chicken and the egg scenario; which came first? Durkheim, a sociological posivist, believed that society was the creator of individualism and to prove this, he utilised and investigated into the reasons why individuals committed suicide; whether it was an individual act or a rebellion against society. Looking at Durkheims study will enable a greater understanding of the relationship between society and its individual parts.
Society is the world we live in. It is the country we reside in. The town we shop in. The family we are born in. It encompasses a range of cultures, traditions, places and people. It provides rules and regulations that individuals are supposed to abide by, but do not always do. It provides occupations, homes, schools, universities; a life. But is it the society that makes the individual, or the individual that creates the society? Why Jason runs away, (Why Jason runs away, Carol Sarler, 1992) is an article telling of an 18-year old boy who is abandoned by what seems every institution of society. The article attempts to outline possibilities as to the reason why this young, confused boy rejected the norms and values of the society he was born into and raises the debate whether Jason became a social problem for society because of his individual behaviour in which he is control of, or whether it was societies integration and regulation that forced Jason into a troublesome life with his family and the authorities. Jason was born into a working-class family in a council house in Haverfordwest where there is chronic unemployment (Why Jason runs away, Carol Sarler, 1992,
This article raises many questions. Jason was rejected by many institutions of society; the education system, for not reporting his abuse and failing to integrate him successfully into society with other children; the social services, for failing to reconcile Jason to his parents or find him a permanent foster home; the police, for not succeeding to notice that Jasons crimes were a cry for help and not deliberately hurtful; and finally; his family, for neglecting, abusing and rejecting him from their home continuously. But in turn, is this really the structure of societies fault, or could Jason have done something about his way of life? Individualism, according to Hayek (Individualism and Economic Order, Hayek, 1948), means that individuals are free to act as they choose and that they, and not the society, control their own manner and actions. Therefore, what Hayek is suggesting in relation case of Jason, is that Jason could have helped himself if he had chose it, but instead he went into a spiral of decline blaming society for his life and not himself as the main problem. This article broaches further discussion about what is more important; the individual parts or the society itself. This raises the questions; does society create and control the individuals and therefore individuals could not survive without society, or does society only exist because of individuals. This argument between actors (individuals) and systems (institutions of society) is a heated one and Durkheim has played a very important role in determining the importance of both.
Durkheim conducted a study into suicide in order to try and prove that there was a correlation in suicide rates that was determined by the relationship between individuals and society. In particular, Durkheim noted that suicide rates were dependent upon the degree to which individuals were integrated into social groups and the degree to which society regulated individual behaviour. Durkheim, when discussing why an individual had committed suicide, perceived that their death was determined by their social existence (Durkheims Suicide, Whitney Pope, 1976). On this basis, Durkheim distinguished four different types of suicide; egoistic, altruistic, anomic and fatalistic (Classical Social Theory, Ian Craib, 1997). Egoistic suicide resulted from the individual being insufficiently integrated into the social groups and society to which he or she belonged.
As the level of integration decreases, the individual detaches himself from social life, depending less on the group and more on himself. (Durkheims Suicide, Whitney Pope, 1976, Page 17).
This, according to Durkheim (Emile Durkheim: His life and his work, Lukes, 1973), accounted for the inconsistency between the suicide rates of Protestants and Roman Catholics. He used the example of religion to argue that the Catholic Church integrated its members more strongly into a religious community than the Protestant religion. The conventional beliefs and traditional rituals of the Catholic Church provided an even system of religious belief and practice into which the lives of its members were closely intertwined. The Catholic faith was rarely questioned and the church had strong controls over the ethics and behaviour of its members. The result was a harmonised community, unified and integrated by uniform belief. By comparison, the Protestant Church encouraged its members to develop their own interpretation of religion and society. Protestantism
[31] In sum, Durkheim’s work is a case study in a process of political decentralization and control that culminated in the formation of the Reformist Movement, a movement that began in 1922 with a belief in the importance of state power and an embrace of a Catholic-religious family. One way the Reformist Movement attempted to achieve this was by forming an independent church or state structure. However it was unsuccessful because the two existing church structures had a different approach to the problem of state power and thus they are not mutually exclusive. Durkheim and his colleagues argued that those existing structures of power could easily be re-established, which would have brought about a new and more harmonious community of religious, legal and political people that had not been brought down by the political divisions and conflicts of the previous government. For all the changes that were made over the years of the Reformist Movement, both the state and church had always been dominated as they were by a few different religious and political systems, and therefore any attempt to develop these could only have a negative effect. This is why Durkheim rejected a model of institutional democracy in which members could decide their own life and their own fate. This would have been a model of decentralisation and the possibility of using government patronage, the most effective tool against centralized power. Indeed, one of the main reasons why this model was criticized was the presence of politicians and bureaucrats, who could serve in the church without the use of government patronage. As such, the Reformist Movement gained a certain degree of decentralisation due to its focus on non-religious families that did have different rules and rituals. Another way the Reformist Movement achieved its aim of achieving this was to form a single state in the name of government and thus it could not create a church-state. The state was not founded on one group of people but rather the entire people. As a result it would have to be a single unified political institution, which was an effective way to achieve this. Durkheim did not consider that the Reformist Movement also used parliamentary system or parliamentary systems to achieve this aim. However he considered that they were different because they were political ones and the state had its own role to play in the process.
[34] In his 1972 book, the political system did not create a church state. According to Durkheim the state was “a form of bureaucratic management. The state is often confused with the Church but they can be considered political systems. The state has its various parts and departments but is really the same political organism and people are divided as distinct parts of both. The state is also used to control the movement to achieve its political aims. The state is divided into separate or divided state units which are connected by a system of government which is often dominated by ministers.”
[35] If the state came from a minority group it had to give up the authority to perform and defend its tasks. In some circles, it was simply because the power of the state was limited. But even if the Church did form a parliament the power of the church was under the rule of the state. Durkheim’s conclusion was that “I would not argue that a minority of Catholics are better able than others to serve the state as their ministers”. The state might not actually be able to make this argument, as it may have a different role to that of the State. It would certainly have needed a different political system and it would have to be a different system than the one which Durkheim