Weber & Durkheim Different Views Term Paper

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Durkheim called the unfortunate mental state produced by modernity "anomie." Anomie is best expressed as the state of alienation felt by the modern urbanite, dwelling far away from traditional family structures and religious rituals. "Anomie is impossible whenever interdependent organs are sufficiently in contact and sufficiently extensive. If they are close to each other, they are readily aware, in every situation, of the need which they have of one another, and consequently they have an active and permanent feeling of mutual dependence." (Durkheim, p.184, cited by Dunman, 1996)

In contrast to Weber, rather than fearing too many constraints as a result of industrialization, Durkheim believed that the dangers of alienation lay in having no connections or confines within accepted laws of family, culture, and traditional governance. (Dunman, 1999) Durkheim felt that a lack of societal limits on behavior in an anonymous, modern society led to sadness and despair, which he saw as two of the central pathologies of the modern condition. Industrialization took persons away from existing norms and the naturally evolved rhythms of life and family, and forced them to create their own laws in estranged and anonymous cities, a nearly impossible task. Human beings required human connections to function, according to Durkheim -- but connections, according to Weber, that were created by bureaucracy controlled human behavior to rigid degree that these chains hurt rather than helped human beings in their desire to live a better existence.

Despite the radical differences between these two theorist's views of the modern condition, Weber's despair of the constraints enforced by bureaucratic rationalization and Durkheim's fear of the dangers of the freedom in a world without tribal law, one might suggest that both sociologists were paradoxically correct in determining the pathologies of the modern age. The average office worker today lives by the clock of businesses, from morning to night, trapped in a cubicle.

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He or she is always limited by time constraints, the surveillance of an employer fearing 'time theft, an anonymous government that forces him or her to pay taxes on a schedule, and a social world that requires conspicuous consumption of manufactured products and requires even three-year-olds to have packed schedules to prepare them for college.

Yet in the midst of such anxious regulation of the self, persons are growing estranged from their communities during their leisure time. Pleasurable pursuits are often solitary (like surfing the Internet) and suburban architecture encourages persons within gated communities to stay away from, rather than become closer to their neighbors. Rather than traditional foods, in the age of globalization, people eat the same fast or processed foods. Rather than living with an extended family, people move far away for jobs and colleges. And in place of religion, people pick and choose what aspects of the media will be their form of worship -- even channels have grown more diverse and easier to pre-record, so Americans no longer watch the same images, at the same times. Thus modern life becomes a world of constraint and commodities, pursued in a rigid way that discourages creativity, yet persons still feel estranged and hopelessly 'free' as they embark, alone, in search of a more meaningful way of life.

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