SumBlog 5

   Harriet Martineau is a very inspiring female.  She is the first one that we have talked about in this class and is the first one that I have talked about in any of my sociology classes.  It amazes me how even with her personal difficulties and writing during Karl Marx's time, she was able to make herself heard and had very well-know writings.  I personally liked her thoughts on human happiness and how it can cause a fairness in society.  
   She also talked about our morals, how they are shared norms and values, and manners, patterns of actions based on our norms, and how society has been loosing these two objectives over time.  This can come from how men treat women, how one race treats a different race, or how one culture can treat another culture.

To me, this picture describes it all.  No matter what you look like or who you are, one should be treated equally and with respect.  Martineau was writing at a time when she was looked down upon by men and had to prove her way into the sociology world, and she did just that.

SumBlog 3

     Emile Durkheim was studied patterns in society, and one of his interests to research in these patterns was suicide.  Durkheim viewed suicide as social decision rather than a personal decision, which I thought was very interesting.  Integration and regulation were the two main factors he believed caused most suicides.  Integration deals with interaction in society while regulation deals with the rules in society.  Although the chart below makes it look like one can only be on one side or another, I believe there is a happy medium in the right in the middle that one can achieve.
                                           
     There are then four different types of suicide Durkheim categorizes society in: fatalistic, anomic, altruistic, and egoistic suicides.  Each type plays a special way of helping society see where they are in life and can help them find an equal balance between too much or too little regulation and too much or too little integration.

     "No living being can be happy or even exist unless his needs are sufficiently proportioned to his means (Lemert 63)".  I like this quote from Durkheim because it's true, no one will be happy with themselves until they have their life the way they want it.  In some ways people view this as a challenge to try and make their life the best it can be, but others will give up and give into society thinking their life is useless and so are they.  This is when society needs to help others in their time of need when they are feeling over ruled by the interaction and rules in society.