Emile Durkheim's Impact On Modern Day Societies

For this critical journal report, I selected Emile Durkheim who was concerned about how, modern day societies can be held when people don’t even know each other. In other words, how can social ties be maintained in such an increasingly individualistic world? We will examine Sunday mass to come to an understanding of the social conditions that shape the limitation for individuals in society. Durkheim’s social theory claims that the real purpose of religious worship is not God, but society itself. Durkheim argued that collective conscience held society together, since an average citizen shares the same beliefs and ideologies as society. Religion provides a structure, which is able to keep people together with similar ideas and values that are
Silence overcomes the church and most people put their phones away. Many people raise and stand to await the priest to walk down the aisle. My mother forces me to stand as I sluggishly rise people all around me are staring. I don't understand why I must praise a man. As a sign of respect and commonality I stand with the others to greet the representative of God, man. Social order dictates that the norms of a society have to be reaffirm, but to whose benefit? Why is the representative of god a man and not a woman, why not both? Could the fact that we live under a patriarchal society affect how women are viewed in society? According to Charlotte Gilman story the “Yellow Wallpaper”, discusses the oppression and gender inequality women back in the day had to endure, which are present in modern day. She writes from her own personal experiences and conveys a message that sometimes in a male dominated society women suffer from the relentless power that some men implement over women when she states, “If a physician of high standing, and one’s own husband, assures friends and relatives that there is really nothing the matter with one but temporary nervous depression—a slight hysterical tendency—what is one to do?... So I take phosphate or phosphates—whichever it is, and journey, and air, and exercise, and am absolutely forbidden to “work” until I am well again. Personally, I disagree with their ideas (234).” Gilman demonstrates how men, her husband, and family members are commonly put in positions of power, and dictate her medical conditions without taking her opinion into consideration. Her opinions carry little weight. “Personally,” she disagrees with her treatment, but she has no power to change the situation. Similarly, in church you cannot disagree with the established norms created by man.In unison, all the people make the sign of the cross and say, "In the name of the father,