Emile Durkheim Vs Karl Marx
The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries were full of evolving social and economic ideas. These views of the social structure of urban society came about through the development of ideas taken from the past revolutions. As the Industrial Revolution progressed through out the world, so did the gap between the class structures. The development of a capitalist society was a very favorable goal for the upper class. By using advanced methods of production introduced by the Industrial Revolution, they were able to earn a substantial surplus by ruling the middle class. Thus, maintaining their present class of life, while the middle class was exploited and degraded. At this time in history, social theorists like Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx challenged the aspect of social structure in their works. Emile Durkheim is known as a functionalist states that everything serves a function in society and his main concern to discover what that function was. On the other hand Karl Marx, a conflict theorist, stresses that society is a complex system characterized by inequality and conflict that generate social change. Both Durkheim and Marx were concerned with the characteristics of groups and structures rather than with individuals.
Ultimately, many social thinkers in the history of sociology have challenged the topic of social structure in their works. Social thinkers like Emile Durkheim and Karl Marx have spent their entire lives formulating theories that would explain the status of individuals in societies. From a functionalist perspective sociologist like Emile Durkheim looks at society as a system with various parts that contribute to the maintenance of the whole. On the other hand Karl Marx, a conflict theorist, stresses that society is a complex system characterized by inequality and conflict that generate social change. Both theorists looked at a social system as a set of mutually supporting elements, unlike for Mark, it was hard for Durkheim to explain how change might occur in a society. A good example of functionalist perspective is Emile Durkheim’s theory about religion. According to Durkheim, religion in not about supernatural beings but rather about beliefs and practices, which are the collective representations of society and groups. Because Durkheim’s main interest was the ways in which society is bound together, he investigated the role and the origin of religion in various communities. He believed that a simpler society has a simpler religion. Durkheim claims that, “a religion as closely connected to a social system surpassing all others in simplicity may well be regarded as the most elementary religion we can possibly know” (Ritzer, 91). For instance Durkheim argues that totemism a religious system in which animal figures are regarded as sacred is among the simplest religious forms in the world. The totemic animal, Durkheim believed, was the original focus of religious activity because it was the emblem for a social group, “the clan” (Ritzer, 91). He thought the model for the rel
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Approximate Word count = 1210
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)
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