Sociology final questions - Coursework Example

 This means that the agent knows well that the suicidal act will lead to death despite the fact that the person did not intent to die. This ideology is sufficient to differentiate suicide from other types of death that are not self-inflicted or inflicted by an individual unconsciously. Durkheim can thus be called a determinist sociologist because he defines suicide as an act applicable to all death cases resultant indirectly or directly from a negative or positive act of the agent., which he knows leads to this consequence.

Durkheim argues that the determining reason of a social fact ought to be sought amongst the precursor social facts as opposed to amongst the states of the personal consciousness. However, he links the determinism nature of actions such as suicide to the social fact stating that while a social fact is likely to have repercussions that serve the person; this is not the instant reason for the existence. Contrary to this, its purpose lies in the production of socially essential impacts. In chapter 1 of Suicide, Durkheim says that the personal conditions under which suicide can be established are of two sorts, namely: the external situation of the victim, or their own moral faults.

His determinism nature is when he advocates that whichever the reason for suicide, be it poverty, divorce, fractions, or any other offence, all of them equally serve as suicidal causes (Durkheim 297). Nevertheless, the connections of suicide to specific states of social environments are as constant and direct as their links to facts of physical and biological character that were viewed as ambiguous and uncertain. In this case, Durkheim wants to illustrate that even a deeply individual deviance act such as suicide could be clarified by reference to sociological facts.

Durkheim can be viewed as a determinist sociologist because his ideologies revolve around the causal effects of one action to the next. For instance, still on the suicide case, he states, “if the total figure cannot be transmitted as a whole, then the units composing it must be transmitted singly” (Durkheim 309). This idea can be linked to Durkheim’s sociological nature of determinism in such a way that each suicide would have obtained its affinity from an earlier act and thus every single act of suicide would be termed as an echo of an earlier one.

Durkheim therefore is believed to relate his ideologies to the way social facts are recognized; by predetermined lawful sanction or by their action and belief that were thought to be threatening. Work Cited Vintage, 1977. Part 1, Chapter 1. Durkheim, Emile. Suicide. London: Routledge, 1951. 297-325. Name Instructor Course Date The role plaid by knowledge in Foucault's Historical account of punishment In Foucault’s account of punishment, the body is first shown as an element of knowledge in the practices that are discursive and revealed in past historical evidence.

There is “knowledge” of the body, which may not be exactly the art of its functioning, as well as the mastery of the forces that goes beyond the ability to overcome them. The mystery and the knowledge depicted here comprise of what can be referred to as the political knowledge of the body. In the article, Foucault uses knowledge to show the way political and social issues spread in the society. The issues are not always organized in any comprehensible way, but