Chapter 1: Durkheim and Funtionalism

Article:
http://www.jstor.org/stable/pdfplus/3099084.pdf?acceptTC=true
__________________________________________
The Functionalist Tradition and Comparative Education
Author(s): Anthony R. Welch
Source: Comparative Education, Vol. 21, No. 1 (1985), pp. 5-19
Published by: Taylor & Francis, Ltd.
URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/3099084

Emile Durkheim
menessive. (2009, December 11). Introductory Sociology. SOC 100. Retrieved April 2, 2011, from http://soc100ua.blogspot.com

 Studio4Learning. (2009, June 12). Introduction to Functionalism. YouTube.com. Retrieved April 2, 2011, from http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v48kAslT-cY













Web Resources:


http://www.emile-durkheim.com/
http://web.grinnell.edu/courses/soc/s00/soc111-01/IntroTheories/Functionalism.html

Quote:

“If each man or woman could understand that every other human life is as full of sorrows, or joys, or base temptations, of heartaches and of remorse as his own . . . how much kinder, how much gentler he would be.”

 - William Allan White 

 

Crossword: 

http://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2011.04/1022/10224149.953.html

Key:http://www.armoredpenguin.com/crossword/Data/2011.04/1022/10224149.953.ans.pdf

I believe I have chosen this chapter because everyone needs a launching place. For me that launching place was the first chapter of the book where certain theories and concepts of sociology were introduced. In particular, what interested me in this chapter was that sections on Durkheim and Functionalism. Durkheim believed that a society functions because of social norms. Being a Jewish Frenchman he was able to view the unfortunate acceptance of antisemitism in french society as a unifying factor in French society. Among other things he noted that this antisemitism helped support his idea that there was a social  basis to individual human behavior.

 

Though he did not define his thinking as Functionalism, his work became the groundwork on which the idea of functionalism came into being. Functionalism is interesting to me because the idea dissects society into its individual parts to study how each of these parts works together to form society. The definition of Functionalism is that it is a theoretical orientation that views society as a system of interdependent parts whose functions contribute to the stability and survival of the system.

 

My first supporting material was an article which discusses Functionalism and how it relates to Durkheim's early work and to education. As an Elementary Education major who has studied, very briefly, the idea of functionalism within the classroom, to look at this article was interesting. Second a picture of Durkheim was what I chose to use to help show what I looked at throughout this chapter. It would have been very difficult to obtain a clear picture of functionalism from a painting, thus I felt that Durkheim, on of the sociologists who's work was the basis for functionalism, was appropriate. 

 

My next supporting resource was basically "functionalism in 7 minutes" in a video found on YouTube. This video shows various ideas of Functionalism in picture form, along with going through  functionalism in an engaging way through text. I felt that the music on this video was more distracting than enhancing to the material, but over all, I think that the video was well put together to show how society's parts made up the social whole. 

 

The two web resources used for this entry are first a website devoted to Durkheim, which goes into greater depth than the book did about his life and pointed out that for many, Durkheim is considered the father of sociology because of the ways in which he went about scientifically studying society. The second resource is a site that outlines Functionalism clearly and discusses it's strong points and its critics. 

 

Finally, the quote I chose while I was reading this chapter as a whole was a quote from Journalist William Allan White. In looking at the issues of society and all the different ways that people try to study it, it struck me that the problems still haven't been worked out. My though was that perhaps the reason for this is that we still cannot fully get into the heads of other people, and while we are still living in our own bodies in our own social conditions, there is a definite and reasonable explanation for why there are still so many social issues in this world. If we were able to stop and realize one another as parts of society and as people who are similar to ourselves, perhaps then we would be able to solve the problems of this world, but because so many of us live in our own individual communities within the world's society, it is difficult for many to look out and see others, even if those others are working with us to create a whole society.