Compare and contrast the theories and methods of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber.docx

1、Compare and contrast the theories and methods of Emile Durkheim and Max WeberCompare and contrast the theories and methods of Emile Durkheim and Max Weber regarding social behaviour1. IntroductionIt is well known that Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) and Max Weber (1864-1920) are two of the most significa

2、nt philosophers and sociologists. However, they belong to two different schools. Emile Durkheim is an extremely important French sociologist who believes positivism. He completed his magnum opus, “on suicide” and “the rules of sociological method”, which have a profound effect on the sociology. He u

3、sed scientific method including collecting, analyzing data and discussing those date to study the society (Hynes, 1975). On the other hand, Weber believes interpretivism and he spent his entire adult life to study the society. He thought to have knowledge is to give meaning to the social world and i

4、nterpret the social phenomena in some way (Stones, 2011). His famous method of studying the society is “ideal types” and “verstehen” (Goldman, 1993). As both of them are chief delegates in their respective areas of schools, combing their thoughts and views of the sociology will gain our knowledge of

5、 the world more fully. This paper will show the differences between their objects of their study and principles of social research methodology. In addition, this essay will illustrate their theories belong collectivism and individualism respectively and take “liberty” for example to contrast their o

6、pinions. This paper has three sections. The first two sections are to show the two mens theories and methods. The third section will compare their theories and methods. 2. Durkheim positivism theory and methodsIn the 1880s and 1890s, the intellectual climate was dominated by positivism and positive

7、philosophy (Prager, 1981). Positivists advocate realism. They regard the positivism as the core of their studies and research. Realists focus on what people can be observed and what really exists in the world (Stones, 2011). During that period, positivists believed they could study the social world

8、as the way to study natural world (Prager, 1981). Durkheim was one of the represents in positivism. In 1987, he completed his classical writing, “the rules of sociological method”. When he did research on this social phenomenon, he selected statistics on suicide rates. Then Durkheim analyzed these d

9、ata and looked at the differences in suicide rates among countries and different categories of people. In this issue, he used scientific methods to solve the social problems.Another one of the most famous writings of Durkheim is “on suicide”. In this publication, he thought the social structures inc

10、luding institutions, traditions and beliefs, patterns of behaviour existed individually in the world. In another words, these social facts already existed when we were born- we were born into an already existing society (Emirbayer, 1996). General speaking, social facts were collective of acting, thi

11、nking, or feeling. Most of them are kind of obligation for us (Morrsion, 1990). Some people may think they can choose what to learn, how to think and how to act. However, Durkheim clamed that people just followed the patterns of the society they are living. What they want to be and how to live had b

12、een decided in their early lives. Our expectation has been infused by our experience of life (Hynes, 1975). People have some similar behaviors from generation to generation. At the same time, these structures also have a coercive power over the individual we are coerced into following the establishe

13、d rules of our society (Morrsion, 1990). That is to say, the social facts have both “pull” and “push” effects on us. For example, if a man breaks the law by murder another person, he will face to arrest, trail, and imprisonment or execution. At the same time, in general, people will not break the la

14、w because the punishments forced him to dare not commit a crime. 3. Webers interpretive theory and methodsWeber is one of the most famous sociologists who are belonged to the interpretive tradition. Interpretivists advocate the idealism. Unlike positivists, idealists believe the natural world and so

15、cial world is fundamentally different (Stones, 2011). In their views of the object in the social world, the objects of research of the social sciences including people and their institutions are fundamentally different from those of the natural sciences because human beings have self-consciousness a

16、nd reflection, and humans can reflect on themselves and their situations (Stones, 2011). Weber did believe that social behavior could have causal explanations (Mcintosh, 1977). That was to say, even though the social world was so complicated and it was hard to use general and common rules to underst

17、and those diversity social behaviors, these social phenomena have their own reasons which could be interpreted. Furthermore, Weber claimed that we should understand the historical and social background before studying a social phenomenon (Goldman, 1993). For example, if an American sociologist judge

18、s the social behavior and events in India by American values, the results will be hard to understand by the Indians or totally unreasonable. Instead they should seek to understand behavior according to the values of Indian culture.Weber created a special method called “verstehen” to interpret the so

19、cial behaviors. Verstehen means the interpretive understanding of social action (Goldman, 1993). To be specific, verstehen involves an understanding of what someone is thinking, which needs an understanding of the culture that person lives in. in Webers opinion, human behavior was purposeful. People

20、 always had a goal and made efforts to achieve the goal such as establishing an institution. We can find and interpret the meaning of the social phenomena though exploring its social background and essence. It is commonly believed that social scientists should establish systematized methods and solu

21、tions to do research. One of the important tools Weber used was called “ideal types”. It could be generally used to study the complex social behavior. It suggests that we should remove all our values, motions, opinions. Therefore ideal types create a framework of the analytical method which is simil

22、ar “Utopia” (Prager, 1981). It provides different kinds of extreme “ideal” conditions. From Webers ideal types, we can see the difference between Weber and other sociologists. Weber focuses on the essence of the social spirit instead of the social structure. Weber tried to use ideal types to lay a l

23、ogical foundation of the social science. Ideal types should be established after analyzing lots of social phenomena synthetically and systematically. 4. Comparison and contrastFew comparisons have been done systematically between Durkheim and Weber before because each of the two men did not connect

24、each others study directly (Tiryakian, 1966 cited in Parger, 1981). Bendix (1978) also suggested that each of them had different agenda in their social works so it was hard to find out the clues to compare their opinions directly. However, both of them belongs different schools. This paper will show

25、 the comparison between their object of study and the principle of their analytical method. 4.1 The object of their studyIn the Durkheims book, “the rules of sociological method”, he focused his object of study as social facts and social structure. He claimed that all the social behavioral patterns,

26、 no matter they were stable or unstable, once they could limit individuals action, are called social facts. That is to say, all the people could not avoid the influence of the social facts even though the effects of the social facts had different effects on individuals in the complex social world. O

27、n the contrary, Weber sociology was called understanding sociology. In his definition of the sociology, he thought that sociology was a science that tried to understand and interpret social actions; find the logical and causal relationships between different social actions. According to this definit

28、ion, we could see the object of Webers social study was social action. Comparing with Webers social actions, the view of the Durkheim was macroscopic. According to this, it is clear that Durkheim theory is objective. On the other hand, Weber believed only individuals were real. The process of the so

29、cial study should be to research social actions of people, understanding the meaning of social actions and interpreting causation. So Weber treated the understanding and interpreting as the most two important tasks in his social work. 4.2 The principle of social research methodologyThe most basic ru

30、le in the Durkheims social methodology was to treat the social facts as objective facts (Hynes, 1975). Durkheim emphasized that the facts are prior to thoughts. In other words, social facts existed before being defined and judged. In his ideas, sociologists should observe the essence of these social

31、 facts directly before eliminating traditional and general values. However, Weber created another method which was called ideal types to study the society. He thought the object of research had its own peculiarity and subjective intention. In his opinion, if we wanted social science to be reliable,

32、social scientists should establish a set of accurate and precise system of the sociology as the natural science. The purpose of the ideal types was to increase objectivity and decrease subjective randomness. The method Ideal types was widely accepted and available to all the social schools (Mcintosh

33、, 1977). So individual sociologist could have a common system of study to understand and analyze the society. In this way, social scientists could remove the barrier of communication and different values to develop the social science. Similarly, Durkheim had the same idea that social must get rid of all his own predictions when doing the socia