The Key Ingredient to a Healthy Society

Belonging and the four ingredients of community — from Emile Durkheim’s study of suicide.

Photo from canva.com; used with permission.

Summary:

What is the optimal function of society? Emile Durkheim provided a glimpse in his famous work on suicide in which he disclosed two primary factors of social dysfunction — individualism and autonomy. The remedy to this social problem is best understood with a technical definition of community.

Overview:

• Sociological perspectives on social dysfunction.
• Normal function of society versus individualism and autonomy.
• Durkheim’s discourse on suicide within capitalism and industrialism — modernism was achieved at the expense of collective belonging.
• The technical definition of community and its four necessary ingredients as a solution to modernism’s dis-ease.

Introduction

How do you determine if a social reality is positive or negative? Is it all relative — only being good or bad if it happens to agree with your preference at the moment? Or is there a means to objectively critique various societal effects?

It depends on who you ask.