Durkheimian Theories Applied to Buffalo Creek Essay -- essays research

This essay give key out Emile Durkheims c oncepts of social integration and social/moral regulation and provide explain how Durkheim affiliates them to felo-de-se. It will then utilize those concepts to analyze the social set up of the Buffalo Creek flood, as described in the book Everything In Its fashion?, by Kai T. Erikson, showing other consequences besides higher suicide pass judgment.Durkheims concept of social integration refers to social bases with well-defined values, traditions, norms, and goals. These groups will differ in the degree to which individuals ar part of the collective body, alike to the extent to which the group is emphasized oer the individual, and lastly the level to which the group is unified versus fragmented. Durkheim believed that two types of suicide, Egoistic and Altruistic, could stem from social integration. Egoistic suicide resulted from too little social integration. Those citizenry who were not sufficiently restrict to a social grou p would be left with little or no social support in times of crisis. This caused them to commit suicide more often. An example Durkheim discovered was that of unmarried people, especi everyy males, who, with less to connect them to st satisfactory social groups, committed suicide at higher rates than married people. Altruistic suicide is a result of too oft integration. It occurs at the opposite end of the social integration scale as egoistic suicide. Self sacrifice appears to be the driving force, where people are so involved with a social group that they lose bundle of themselves and become more willing to take one for the team, even if this causes them to die. The some common cases of altruistic suicide occur to soldiers during times of war. Religious cults stand withal been a major source of altruistic suicide.In Durkheims concept of social/moral regulation, corporation imposes limits on humans to charm their passions, desires, expectations, ambitions and roles. When thes e limits or social regulations break d protest, the controlling authority the society once had no longer functions and people are left on their own to make their own plans. In societies that have low levels of social regulations, a state of Anomie, or normlessness, can occur and affect the whole society or just some of its groups. Anomic suicide was more preponderating in this type of society. Anomic suicide basically involve... ...e old communities threw all kinds of different people together. At the risk of sounding superior, I palpate we are living amidst people with lower moral values than us.? (208) In conclusion, the flood at Buffalo Creek destroyed the inhabitants very social fabric. This in itself is not unusual, but what was unique round Buffalo Creek is that there was no post disaster euphoria, where people who have survived the disaster are uplifted by the fact that the corporation is still present and viable. That was not the case in Buffalo Creek, mostly in part due to HUDs internal policies but also due to the very devastation caused by the flood. The other thing that was unique about Buffalo Creek was that ninety-three percent of the survivors had diagnosable excited disorders eighteen months after the disaster. Usually survivors of disasters are able to get over it and move on, but the survivors of the Buffalo Creek disaster were not able to do this because of their total loss of Gemeinschaft? or sense of community.SourcesErikson, Kai T. Everything In Its Path? Touchstone 1976I1, http//durkheim.itgo.com/suicide.html, Dunman, L. Joe The Emile Durkheim Archive?, 1999