The Totem, By Durkheim

However, Durkheim's analysis has been criticised as he only looked at small pre-industrial societies so his views do not apply to complex modern societies. Also he fails to account for the

This ‘false identity’ to which Haugthon refers, is indicative of how most countries that were colonies operate. This has impacted the way we dress, speak and relate to each other. Stone (1992) posits that the because the social ideology of plantation society defined black people as being

Pope and Johnson (1983) state that Durkheim proposed that society revitalizes individuals and gives them strength to persevere in the face of the vicissitudes of everyday life. Stones (2008), further states that Durkheim felt that we acquired all the best in ourselves and all the things that distinguish us from other animals from our social existence. Thought, language, world-views, rationality, morality and aspirations are derived from society. Thus, the unsocialised individual, the individual divorced form society, the beast within us, is a poor approximation of the highly socialised beings that constitute societies.

In Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, her racial identity varies based on her location. Towards the beginning of her life when Zora was in her own community she could be a lighthearted, carefree spirit. However, when she was forced to leave her community, Zora’s identity became linked to her race. In this essay I will demonstrate how Zora’s blackness is both a sanctuary and completely worthless.

Along with his study on social facts, he also focused some on the Division of Labor. Many people during this time believed that the social order of things was in danger due to the selfishness of society as a whole. While Marx believed that capitalism was a bad thing and was bringing down society, Durkheim believed that it was a good thing and it pulled society together. As times progressed, so did society. Durkheim began to look at the solidarity of society. He categorized them into two different types mechanical and organic solidarity. . (Ritzer 2004) I believe that Durkheim thought

In DHN, Durkheim argues that sociology must examine what an individual consists of because it is a result of the whole society. It is this society

For Durkheim, the problem concerning modernity emerged from the move to an industrial society wherein the division of labour (increasing specialisation of occupations) led to a decrease in mechanical solidarity (social cohesion based on similarities between members of pre-industrial societies); resulting in the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a

Hurston, on the other hand, lived in a town where only blacks lived until she was thirteen years old. Therefore, she only knew the “black” self. There was no second identity to contend with. She states that “white people differed from colored to me only in that they rode through town and never lived there.”2 She does not feel anger when she is discriminated against. She only wonders how anyone can not want to be in her company. She “has no separate feeling about being an American citizen and colored” (Hurston 1712).

On a sociological basis, the notion of race is understood as a social construction. As a black student in France, Frantz Fanon writes of how the white man has made him a “slave not of the ‘idea’ that others have of [him] but of [his]

In Zora Neale Hurston’s essay “How It Feels To Be Colored Me”, her racial identity varies based on her location. Towards the beginning of her life when Zora was in her own community she could be a lighthearted, carefree spirit. However, when she was forced to leave her community, Zora’s identity became linked to her race. In this essay I will demonstrate how Zora’s blackness is both a sanctuary and completely worthless.

Individualism and self-determination are against the needs of society for conformity and stability, because a society needs people that help out for it to function as a constant, strong society. People acting on their own will only bring down a society, because a society runs on its people contributing to it.

By doing so, she feels a sense of betraying her white heritage and her mother. Physically, she succeeds in passing as black, but she realizes that “it wasn’t merely a matter of color. It was something broader, deeper, that made folk kin” ( Larsen, P.55). Her mental inability to get connected with her people drives her to a place where there are no “Negroes, no problems, no prejudice” ( Larsen, P.55). The recognition with the self offers the first step to one’s subjectivity.

The phrase “small black fry” represents the constant disparaging of slaves in a society governed by European colonists, and serves as a tool to reinforce constraint on the slave population on the estate- as a constant reminder to blacks of their inferior position in society. The emphasis on the phrase “small black fry” personifies the extent to which blacks existed and were recognized in society. Thus, “small black fry” legitimizes the status and wealth of the European planters through the lasting psychological oppression of blacks in the period. Sociologist Rosenthal and Jacobson posits that one’s self concept is, in many cases, primarily based on other people’s perception of them and behave according to people’s perception. Hence, Phillips’s depiction of blacks’ psychological abuse exists on the basis that blacks accepted the label supplied by the whites (small black fry) and act accordingly, resulting in the self-degradation of blacks. Therefore, Caryl Phillips attempts to portray the psychological suffering of blacks in slave society as a result of the verbal abuse received from the whites.

After determining what resulted from modernization, Durkheim unlike Marx was interested in reforming not eliminating modern society. In analyzing Durkheim’s theory of modern society, I will begin with the focal point of it, namely solidarity.

Franz Fanon is one of the many profound voices of black identity during the 1950s. His work in the field of psychology features an unfathomed approach to critical theory, post-colonial studies and Marxism. In Black Skin White Masks, Fanon dives into the Negro psyche through understanding its origin. In studying this, Fanon comes to the argument that the dehumanizing process of colonization renders both Blacks and Whites crazy. In analyzing Africans, specifically, Fanon determines that the “Negro [is] enslaved by his inferiority [and] the white man enslaved by his superiority” and that is why they are both mentally unbalanced. It is this neurotic orientation through which Fanon discusses the process through which Africans become second-class French people. In discussing the Negro neurosis, Fanon begins with this statement: The Negro “becomes whiter as he renounces his blackness.”