Development of Sociology- Talulah

 Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist. He made sociology its own subdivision which is now taught as an academic discipline because of him. Before, sociology wasn’t an independent field, but rather another subcategory in philosophy, psychology, economics. He made it an independent study and along with that, he has contributed many great ideas as well. One of his most important works was about suicide. He dove into the idea that capitalism and industrialization of countries lead to mass rates of suicide, and after further research, this was proven. He wanted to figure out why people had started to become more depressed, and suicidal in modern society, and in this research, he discovered five major points that are now very influential to Sociology. Individualism- when you have to be independent and make your own decisions, but when things fail and there is no one to blame but oneself. Excessive hope- ideas that you can become very successful if you follow certain rules, end up diminishing our accomplishments because ‘we could have done better’. We have too much freedom- the amount of freedom we have, often overwhelms us when trying to make a decision, the answer “whatever works for you” is too overwhelming to comprehend. Atheism- religion creates society and keeps them whole, but without it, things fall apart and people do as well. His final reason for suicides caused by modern capitalism is the ‘weakening of the nation and of the family- people need the belonging that family/nation supplies but they fail to give us a larger sense of purpose now that things have changed. These concepts have helped sociologist pinpoint motives for the increasing rates of suicide. Another very famous and important theory of his was, “Functionalism”. 

Sociologists love to ask questions, it is their job, so Emile’s question was  ‘what keeps a society functioning, and what makes it function in the first place’.  The simple answer to this is there's no one party that keeps Society functioning, rather it is every structure working together that keeps a society stable. It is argued that some structures are more important than others, like government, but if one structure fails to keep up with the others, society falls. This introduced many new ways of looking at Society for Sociologists, and directly impacted the educational system,  bringing more awareness of the importance of our education. His theories, though old, still are relevant and true to this day.