Feminist Sociology vs Durkheimian Sociology
Contents
- Introduction
- Feminist sociology
- Critiquing Positivism.
- Gender as category
- Durkheim’s perspective on division of labour: Feminist Critiques
- Structure Functionalism
Introduction
Have you ever wondered what are the implications of Emile Durkhiem's theories in sociology? Are they current today? More importantly, who are they important to? Durkheim is quite famous for his views on "social facts," a concept commonly used to denote almost any phenomenon that occurs in society. In sociology, social facts are the structural values, cultural norms and social structures, and the overall normative structure that lies outside the individual and transcends the individual and is capable of exerting social coercion. Durkheim argued that the discipline of sociology should be understood as an empirical study of social facts.
Durkheim therefore believed that sociology was the scientific study of a sui generis social reality, which was a set of phenomena quite different from what was studied by any other sciences, including physics, biology, and psychology. Durkheim reserved the term social facts for these phenomena, i. H "a category of facts which have particular properties: they consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, to which a coercive power is conferred by virtue of the exercise of control over him ." (1895: 52) Since these facts consist of Actions, perceptions and emotions existed, they could not be equated with biological phenomena; but neither were they within the realm of psychology, for they existed outside of individual consciousness. To define the appropriate method for their study, Durkheim wrote The Rules of Sociological Method (1895).
Durkheim also viewed social facts as "states of collective consciousness" in terms of the forms these states took when manifested through private and individual consciousness. Durkheim was interested in understanding how the units of society, individuals, form a society and how they reach consensus so that their existence as a "whole" is achieved. He calls the division of labor the way people develop skills and society is functionally differentiated to maintain social order. The degree of division of labor will therefore bring about changes in the nature of social solidarity, paving the way from simple to complex societies.
Durkheim wrote 'Division of Labour' in the year 1895. It was his dissertation and it became the first major work tracing the relationship between individuals, society, social solidarity and social order. The aim of the book was to 1) analyze the relationship between the individual and mechanical and organic solidarity, 2) examine how the division of labor leads to simpler to more complex forms of society and solidarity, 3) understand how the failure of the division of labor leads to the formation of a social order leads to anomie. Obviously, sociological theories are important to the subject and students of sociology. They are important in answering questions about how social order is maintained and how social change occurs.
They are important because they make it possible to analyze the relationships between individuals and societies. They are also important because they can help us understand issues of inequality and injustice. By conducting research and using theories, sociologists claim to provide explanations and even solutions to a society's concerns. Given this role of sociology, many critical perspectives have informed sociology. Critical perspectives such as Marxism laid the foundations of sociology. In India, Dalit sociology has changed traditional sociology.
Feminist sociology
So what is feminist sociology? Feminist sociology is a type of sociology that uses insights from feminist movements to shape feminist scholarship. It is based on practice. Feminism criticizes and vindicates the theories and methods of sociology to produce knowledge suitable for addressing issues of gender hierarchies.
From asking questions about why so few women reach the top of the professional ladder to why sociological theories are blind or gendered, feminist sociology spans the entire realm of sociology. With the development of feminist sociology and the growth of the second wave feminist movement, feminists began to revive the work of women sociologists. This was also the time when feminist sociologists began to critically challenge the fundamental theories and methods of sociology. Of course they had to question the founding fathers, the masters of sociology.
Feminists have argued that while we owe a disciplinary debt to the analysis and models of classical sociology for capturing the many elements of the social world, their language and analysis are rooted in a kind of Eurocentric male bias, which privileges and women . Feminists have therefore argued for the need to critique classical sociological approaches. They claim that these have been inadequate in their analysis of the social world in ways we will discuss below. This module takes up some themes of Durkheim's methodology, his theories and his substantial contributions to illustrate the masculinity of his approach.
Critiquing Positivism.
Although positivism was criticized by Weber himself, it became the dominant paradigm in sociology, especially in America. Feminists have contributed to the development of this critique.
Emile Durkheim was a positivist. Indeed, he developed positivism in a way that gave sociology its status and identity. Durkheim's positivism was modeled on the natural science method. After August Comte, Durkheim wanted to establish sociology as a separate and independent field from biology and psychology. In doing so, Durkheim developed a positivist ontology based on social determinism and a positivist epistemology based on the idea of studying the causes of social phenomena. Durkheim believed that social beings were governed by what he called social facts. As you have already studied, social facts are ways of being and acting that are collective, constraining and external. Durkheim discovered that man is molded, shaped and controlled by these social facts. In a Durkheimian sociology, people have limited freedom of choice, are largely socialized to conform to social norms. As women face enormous scrutiny over their lives from the outside social world, feminists have advocated for a freer conceptualization of human agency. Most feminists criticize social determinism on the grounds that while we are all profoundly shaped and constructed by social universes, we can change them. In one sense, feminist movements have challenged the idea that patriarchal structures are based on biological fact. This ontological clash between structural determinism and human action is an important axis on which feminists differed from Durkheim. Feminist ontologies of the social universe are less deterministic than Durkheimian ontology. In fact, feminists have drawn more from the interpretative and realist ontologies of Max Weber and Karl Marx, which focus on the power of human agency to construct and transform societies. So what does this mean? How to illustrate the difference between Durkheimian ontology and a feminist ontology? So let's take an example. We often say that women are not naturally suited to take up mathematics or strenuous sports or become surgeons. We do this despite the fact that we have seen so many cases proving otherwise. Durkheiminian positivism would argue strongly that these social "facts" are based on biological abilities. Durkheim often used the organic analogy to describe social systems. Feminists argue the opposite, they would say: whether we give a biological or a sociological explanation, the fact remains that, given the opportunity, women can exercise their agency and break the norm. They can become famous mathematicians, sportsmen and surgeons. Feminists would argue that this can be done by an individual or a collective.
Gender as category
Feminists vehemently dispute that very little attention has been paid to gender as a central analytical category in sociology. Although women have been active participants since the dawn of sociology, their voices and perspectives have been rejected (for example: omission from Harriet Martine's own works, such as Society in America and How to Observe Moral and Manners, which predate Comte's work by two decades, is indeed one of the poignant reminders of the marginalization of female labor.) or that they settled into the discipline of the "family" during most of the 19th and 20th centuries. Any aspect of research on social life, be it economics, work, family, politics, is insufficiently addressed if gender is not considered a central analytical category. The “founding fathers” of sociology (Durkheim, Comte, Simmel, Weber, etc.) were inspired by the doctrine of the two spheres of the 19th century, with the woman as the private reproductive “body” taking care of the household and the hearth and of man as a public, political and noble "spirit" living in the larger world of commerce and politics.
Durkheim’s perspective on division of labour: Feminist Critiques
Comte, who had greatly influenced Durkheim's positivist worldview, argued that it was a woman's duty to humanize alienated and sexually unstable men. Marriage as an institution of sociology, according to Comte, is the positivist discipline of the undisciplined, for which the feminine must be subordinated to the masculine. Durkheim also believed that women were necessary to control man's passions. Women were seen as necessary because of their stabilizing effect on men, but paradoxically as more "primitive". Women were seen as undifferentiated, uniform and "at home", while men were seen as differentiated due to the division of labor. Feminists have therefore made it their mission to uncover and contextualize women's experiences in order to draw attention to the prevailing structures of inequality.
Durkheim's concept of division of labor has long held a prominent place in sociology as the foundation of society and the economy. The sexual division of labor has been given immense societal value, as if to say that biology determines the abilities and roles of men and women. The Matrix of the Sexual
The division of labor is the principle on which modern society is based. This means that women take on the role of breadwinners and provide for their family's needs in terms of food, clothing and clean houses, while men take on the role of providers and play an active role in production by the through money and the will to barter. This principle means that women do the unpaid work, take care of the "emotional" functions that are less valued than their male counterparts who do the paid work and take care of the "intellectual" functions. Obviously, it can be said that in addition to the "housewife", the sexual division of labor has also transferred to the "social professions" of women.
Women are teachers, nurses, secretaries and other “caring” jobs that are less valued and much less well paid than the “men's jobs” of their male colleagues. The division of labor may be outwardly desirable, since necessary and fundamental functions may be performed by virtue of it. Feminists, however, problematize the expression of structural differences between men and women as natural, biological, and hierarchical. Durkheim attributed biological explanations to explaining the place of women in society.
It has also been documented that, according to Durkheim, gender equality was a "primitive" concept that went against nature and that he called it "dysfunctional". He saw the subordination of women to men as an indicator of progress. Prohibiting women from war and public affairs was seen as necessary for the general well-being of modern, complex societies. For Durkheim, patriarchy is therefore the result of social evolution. It is very obvious that Durkheim was extremely opposed to the feminist movement. While many scholars have said that Durkheim promoted the rights and dignity of the individual and a social order based on the values of equality and justice, feminist scholars have felt that her reputation as a supporter of human rights was diluted by his theoretical treatment of women. . Scholars have noted that his approach to a just social order developed primarily in relation to the male social individual. His idea and commitment to a free "social" individual could not be transferred to "humanity", but was limited to "humanity". Feminist scholars have stated that a society can never be a just society if it marginalizes women's interests and welfare. This is completely contrary to the principles of moral individualism, a theory formulated by Durkheim, which is therefore not universally applicable. Durkheim had theorized women as weak, "asocial", biologically determined outsiders, dependent on their nature.
Their social nature was compared to that of children, old people, and animals, and contrasted with males who were hostile to females. These reasons were put forward by Durkheim to explain the different suicide rates between men and women. Simply put, women were closer to nature and more primitive than men. They also did not participate in various aspects of society like men. In general, Durkheim found that women had lower suicide rates than men, although different suicide rates were associated with different marital statuses and different countries. Single and divorced men were prone to suicide. He further suggested that men benefited more from marriage than women.
Structure Functionalism
Of the other "founding fathers" of sociology, Durkheim is the least supportive of feminist approaches (Jackson and Scott 2002). The reason for this was that his views were strongly based on structural functionalism—a theoretical understanding of a society that assumes social systems as collective resources to satisfy social needs (Gingrich 1999). It is therefore taken for granted here that the way society is structured is the most anticipated and imaginative way of organizing it. Society is seen as an orderly and functional whole, where everyone had their place – like women belonging to the confines of private spaces and men to the public sphere.
Structural functionalism centralizes the notion of a social system, in which all parties must develop mutual consent to achieve the goal of equilibrium. The systemic goal of consensus and balance excludes conflict. Conflicts are widely seen as “problematic” to the system and its social order. In fact, parties that deviate from the expectations and standard set for them are seen as disruptive to the system. This means that if and when women, individually or collectively, raise questions or challenge the social status quo, they undermine the system's overarching goal of maintaining social order.
Feminists According to the structural-functionalist perspective, the status and roles of women and men are different and rigidly defined. This hierarchical difference and gender stratification ensure the smooth functioning of society. Hence, structural functionalists assume that such layering is good enough and therefore do not recommend any attempt to transform this ordering. Durkheim concluded that women's subordination to men benefited men more than women. He also stressed that these hierarchical differences are essential to the marital bond that makes men and women harmonically interdependent, the former governing intellectual functions and the latter governing emotional functions (Jackson and Scott 2002).
This complementary division of labor thus ensured a stable family and integrated it into the larger society. However, feminists began to challenge the dominant perspectives of structural functionalism. Jackson and Scott (2002) reported extensively on Margaret Mead's questioning of naturalistic assumptions about gender differences in her anthropological study of three New Guinea societies, which she argued represented very different ideas about each gender's perspective. According to her study, one of the societies had an androgynous character, with both men and women displaying qualities seen as feminine in Western cultures. In another society, both men and women exhibited traits considered masculine in Western society. Her work established that attributes and roles considered feminine and masculine were, for the most part, cultural rather than natural.
Reference
- Tucker (Jr.), K. H (2001): “Classical Social Theory: A Contemporary Approach”, WileyBlackwell.
- Sydie, R.A (1995): “Natural Women, Cultured Men”, UBC Press, Vancouver.
- Sheleff, L.S (1997): “Social Cohesion and Legal Coercion: A Critique of Weber, Durkheim, and Marx, Value Inquiry Book Series (VIBS), Netherlands.
- Emile Durkheim: Critical Assessments of Leading Sociologists, Volume 4 By W. S. F. Pickering
- Sydie, R.A (1994): “Sex and the sociological fathers”. Canadian Riview of sociology & Anthropology 31
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