Social disintegration is a sociological term for the tendency for industrialised, or otherwise modernised, societies to tend towards their own destruction due to the breakdown in traditional social support systems.
The theoretical origins of this idea lie in the core ideas of Emile Durkheim and Ferdinand Toennies. For both researchers one can see a division into two types of social integration corresponding to two historical phases. First there is a primitive integration based on likeness and intimate interaction, which Durkheim called mechanical solidarity and Toennies labelled Gemeinschaft. Second, there is a more complex and modern integration based on abstracted interdependence, which is known as organic solidarity or Gesellschaft.
Those who espouse social disintegration beliefs tend to doubt the integrative capacity of organic solidarity, claiming that if it is not based on primordial ties and relationships, it is fabricated. On the other hand, optimists might argue that new complex forms of integration can emerge, for example through new communal forms of identity formation or through economic interdependence.
Social interactions of people and their consequences are the subject of sociology studies.
Sociologists are concerned with the characteristics of social groups, organizations, and institutions; the ways individuals are affected by each other and by the groups to which they belong; and the effect of social traits such as sex, age, or race on a person’s daily life.
Social theory refers to the use of abstract and often complex theoretical frameworks to explain and analyze social patterns and macro social structures in social life, rather than explaining patterns of social life.
Today sociologists research macro-structures that organize society, such as race or ethnicity, class and gender, and institutions such as the family; social processes that represent deviation from, or the breakdown of, these structures, including crime and divorce; and micro-processes such as interpersonal interactions.
Social theory is a distinction applied to the work considered outside of the mainstream of sociology.
Among sociologists who model their work on the succesful sciences of physics or chemistry, social theory may be applied to all work produced outside of the scientific method, in contradistinction to a sociological theory which has been "correctly" tested.
Feeds |
Contact