TEACHSOC: Inside the War on terrorism

[John Glass]

that doesn't fit with the model, however. organic speaks to highly diversified interdependencies of very stable social relations and practices. certainly the US is that, yes?   perhaps the leaders in the current US Administration can be characterized by mechanical solidarity; but the US as an entirety, no way. Durkheim used industrialization and diversification of adaptive and interdependent practices, beliefs, etc. as the model for organic solidarity.   truly, the difference is, IMO, irrelevant. certainly, there is a difference in definition between the two types of solidarity, but so what? definitions are by their very definition, "fungible" (to paraphrase a current US leader). the question is, do they really capture and accurately reflect social organization? or are they one of those "sacred" notions in our discipline that are rarely questioned? i would suspect that a close inspection of allegedly "pure" mechanical and/or organic groups would find evidence of both; i.e., they are not mutually exclusive. yet we treat them as distinct categories and assume that any type of social organization can neatly fit into one or the other. absurd.   i tell my students that when it comes to sex, "race," etc., that nature doesn't give a damn about our categories. we, howver, feel compelled to assure conformity to our categories, nature be damned! those who hail social constructionism as the be all, end all of social science seem to readily forget that the categories that they construe from constructionist inquries are simply other categories; or as Schutz would say, typifications of typifications;" at least Garfinkel acknowledged this.   supposedly, we create notions to assist us in understanding and theorizing about social behavior, not to provide us a way of neat categorization. we sometimes seem to get to a point where we feel compelled to cram some kind of behavior/organization into a category instead of rejecting or revising the category because it is no longer accurate.   do we really need to have as our foundations theories that are over 100 years old? we have discovered nothing else about human social behavior in that time period? Marx, Durkheim, and Weber said it all? to paraphrase yet another current US leader (they come up with good fodder for paraphrasing, don't they?), maybe they have been rendered "quaint" due to advances in many sciences.   hmmm, where would sociology be if we rejected them?   john     >>> Del Thomas Ph D <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 09/20/06 10:45 AM >>> No No!! We are mechanical..... they are the organic..... the sameness is us(a) --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Teaching Sociology" group. To post to this group, send email to teachsoc@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/teachsoc -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---