ANTH 303 Anthropological Theory Fall 2019
I acknowledge that St FX is in Mi’kma’ki, the ancestral and unceded territory of the Mi’kmaq People.
Sept 18: READ Durkheim, Emile ([1893]) Excerpts from The Division of Labor in Society: available at http://sites.middlebury.edu/individualandthesociety/files/2010/09/division-of-labor.pdf

Marx quiz

Immersion service learning

Finish Weber

The following questions will help guide our discussion as we try to make sense of this, and other, theories. In addition, we will apply the theory to your anthropological questions.

How can this theory be seen as a product of the historical period in which it was created?
What questions does this theory ask?
What information does this theory see as important?
What are other relevant assumptions made by the theory?
How does the theory analyse this information to answer the questions it sees as important?
What are the strengths and weaknesses of this approach?

Some key concepts:
- mechanical solidarity
- organic solidarity
- collective consciousness – society greater than sum of parts
- relationship between individual and society
- role of law in society (note his claim that “primitive” societies had repressive/punitive law rather than restitutive/restorative law is not correct)
- role of religion in society
- positivist
- function
- social fact
- coercive nature of social facts
- assumes harmony
- anomie
- while recognizes change happens (especially from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity) has no theory of change

How to apply Durkheimian functionalism to your question.

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