Durkheim and webber Social Theories (Essay Sample)

Durkheim and Webber Social Theories Name Institution Professor Course Date Introduction Though Durkheim started the development of social theories with weber, his work was vastly different. Both Marx and Weber are usually regarded as conflict theorists. According to their understanding, any social order involved the regulation of opposing interests. As a result of this, it can be concluded that a conflict between individuals as well as those among groups was an essential part of every society. This paper aims to present the theories developed by both weber and Durkheim that presents people as being controlled or determined by factors beyond their control by evaluating how the theorists understand different social controls or determinations (Douglas, 2015). Durkheim Durkheim looks at men as creatures with unlimited desires; they cannot be satiated when their biological needs are fulfilled. The more you have the more you need, this could mean that satisfaction received stimulated the needs. Durkheim holds that human wants can therefore be held in check by external controls. The meaning here is that by societal control, limits are imposed on human desires and constitutes a regulative force. He argues that this regulative force must play a similar role for moral needs that the organisms play for physical needs. In a society that is well regulated, social controls set limits on individual propensities and thus a goal is set towards individuals’ passions that cannot go beyond the limits (Douglas, 2015). On breaking down of the social regulations, the controlling influence by the society on a person’s propensities losses its effectiveness and thus individuals are left to their own. This is the situation that Durkheim calls anomie. This term means condition normlessness in a society, either the whole of it or its component groups. According to Durkheim, anomie does not refer to a state of mind but to a property of the social structure. It is a characteristic of the condition that individual desires are not any more under control of common norms and therefore individuals are left without moral guidance in the pursuit of their goals. Total normlessness is however impossible, but despite this, societies may exhibit greater or lesser degrees of normative regulations. According to McNeill & Dawson (2014), groups in the society differ in the levels of anomie. An example of a case of anomie affecting a part of the society is the case of a business crisis that has a greater effect on the ones on the higher reach of the social pyramid that on the underlying population. The men affected the sudden downward mobility as a result of depression experience a de-regulation in their lives. They suffer a loss of moral certainty and customary expectations that cannot any more be sustained by the group to which these men belonged. The same a quick onset of prosperity can also lead a group to a rapid upward mobility an aspect that may deprive them of the social support that they would need in their new styles of life. A privileged access to the intricacies of Durkheim’s approach is allowed by the discussion of his altruistic suicide. In his work, there are tendencies that individual impulses as well as harnessing the energies of persons for the purpose of the society. However, his treatment of the altruistic suicide shows that he only tried to establish a balance between individual’s claims and those of the society and not suppressing individual striving McNeill & Dawson (2014). With the knowledge of the dangers of breakdown of social order, he recognizes that total control of component social actors by the society can be as detrimental as anomie and de-regulation. His commitment throughout his life was to establish a balance between societal and individual claims. Durkheim was against the atomistic drift of many of the enlightenment policy and was concerned on maintaining a social order. This is the reason that he makes use of key words such as cohesion, integration, solidarity, ritual, authority and regulation McNeill & Dawson (2014). Politically he was a defender of people’s rights against the state. According to Durkheim societies cannot do without some common integration by a system of beliefs. These beliefs will be built on mechanical solidarity but the beliefs are clearly distinct from the norms via which they are implemented in an action of the society. These beliefs have their bases on religion. Weber Weber believed that the social structures which controls or influence the way of living of people in the society is through religious ideologies. He argues that religion forms the basis of the superstructures, which is in accordance with his theory. In his theory he argues that religion does control or influence the way people live and socialize in the society. He raises the issue of capitalism, where by business owners, leaders, practitioner and skilled labor people tend to be overwhelmingly Protestants. Thus through this, the religious ideology comes into play and controls the economy of a particular society or influences it one way or another (Weber, 1920). He compares the Protestants control of people with Catholicism who was lenient in control or influence of individual life of people. Protestants did take a reformation that results in the daily life control intensification of the people way of living; this is as compared with Catholicism according to Weber theory. Another issue that he raises is the spirit of capitalism of making profits, which requires an honest man of credit, who pursues the capital accumulation as an end in itself. He thus ties this capitalist ethic with the religious doctrine of Protestants. In this he insists that on the capitalistic ethic one can not only account it to utilitarianism but it’s more to spiritual or religious account. Weber refers to religious ideologies playing a major part in the control and influence of the people’s capitalism idea in the society. He states that a capitalist person who has the urge to earn money and make more profit, thus lives well with a lot of wealth in their life, this is not only through their works but through religious ideologies through a supernatural being. Through this he believes in his theory that religious ideologies play a part in the controlling of such people’s life in the society (Hennis, 1998). In his theory he analyzes the calling of Luther to be a religious conception since it was a calling of responsibility duty to fulfill ones position in society according to the divine providence dictates. He ties this as unique to protestant religions which found its visible expression in Puritanism. Weber explains this by arguing in his theory that the calling is from God and that through God providing the calling, He knows that one will succeed and thus assist in the good will of the community and society in general. Thus God shows all this to His elect in order for them to take up the stand and serve the people through Him with a purpose. Through this he shows how the Protestant religion has influenced or controlled the way of living since, it’s controlled by the will of...