1. Render Durkheim’s ideas into Russian:

A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint which is general over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations.

2. Translate the following words and phrases:

education; crime; religion; suicide; proponent of solidarism; coherence; maintaining the quotidian; precursor to functionalism; contemporaries; exterior to; exercise coercive power; endowed with a power of coercion; a quantitative or experimental approach; sociological positivism.

3. Translate the text about Emile Durkheim into Russian. Reading and summarizing

Read the text about Durkheim's sociology of knowledge and do the tasks that follow.

Durkheim The Sociology of Knowledge

(1)Durkheim's sociology of knowledge is intimately tied to his sociology of religion. In the latter, he attempts to show that man's religious commitments ultimately can be traced to his social commitments (the City of God is but a projection of the City of Man). His sociology of knowledge postulates that the categories of man's thought - his ways of conceiving space and time, for example - can be traced to his mode of social life.

(2)Durkheim maintained that spatial, temporal, and other thought classifications are social in origin, closely approximating the social organization of primitive people. The first "classes" were classes of men, and the classification of objects in the world of nature was an extension of the social classification already established. All animals and natural objects belonged to this or that clan or phratry, residential or kinship group. He further argued that, although scientific classifications have now become largely divorced from their social origins, the manner in which we still classify things as "belonging to the same family" reveals the social origins of classificatory thought.

(3)Durkheim attempted a sociological explanation of all fundamental categories of human thought, especially the central concepts of time and space. These, he claimed, are not only transmitted by society, but they are social creations. Society is decisive in the genesis of logical thought by forming the concepts of which that thought is made. The social organization of the primitive community is the model for the primitive's spatial organization of his surrounding world. Similarly, temporal divisions into days, weeks, months, and years correspond to periodical recurrences of rites, feasts, and ceremonies. "A calendar expresses the rhythm of the collective activities, while at the same time its function is to assure their regularities."

(4)Although in the light of later critical discussions of this thesis it can be said that Durkheim failed to establish the social origins of the categories of thought, it is important to recognize his pioneering contribution to the study of the correlations between specific systems of thought and systems of social organization. It is this part of Durkheim's contribution, rather than some of the more debatable epistemological propositions found in his work, that has influenced later development in the sociology of knowledge. Even when one refuses assent to the proposition that the notions of time and space are social in origin, it appears that the particular conceptions of time and space within a particular society and at a particular time in history are derived from specific social and cultural contexts. Here, as in his study of religion, Durkheim was concerned with functional interrelations between systems of beliefs and thought and the underlying social structure.

Tasks

1. Read passages 1 and 2 thoroughly and define their main point.

2. Summarize passage 3 in no more than two sentences. Begin with:

It is claimed that …

3. Reproduce the last passage using the phrases:

The text reports on …

It is pointed out that …

Attention is concentrated on …

4. Summarize the whole text.

SPEAKING

Current research: purpose and methods

Vocabulary to use

purpose/ aim/ target

method/ procedure

assumption/ consideration/ generalization

advantages/ disadvantages

accurate/ precise

valuable/ useful/ reliable

data/ results/ method

to make an experiment/ analysis

to reveal/ to find/ to confirm/ to prove evidence

to study/ to examine

to collect data

to improve

to work out/ to develop

to check

to use/ to employ

to provide

to come into use

Answer the questions:

1. What is the purpose of your research?

2. What is the subject of your research?

3. What method do you employ? Why?

4. What are the advantages of your method?

5. Do you find the method reliable? Why?

6. How long has your current research been under way?

7. How much time will it take you to complete your research successfully?

Speak about the purpose of your research and methods you use.

Work in pairs: ask for and give information about your current research, namely its purpose and the methods you employ.