Homework #1

Joy Marie Prior
14 January 2009
Sociology 112
Section 4
Homework #1
Question #3
While reading chapter 1 in Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities in a Global Economy by Scott Sernau I puzzled over the idea that a society should desire social inequality or equality. It was simple to settle on a society being defined as the way in which a community lives to maintain personal and mutual benefits, but social equality was difficult to define. In this situation I took the perspective that social equality is achieved when all members have valued position and not equal wealth or identical contributions. After considering how parents teach their children and after I thought about organic solidarity I concluded that a society can not function properly if it does not desire equality.
The family structure supports a society that desires equality. Parents want to teach their children skills that will make them equal to themselves. They have a desire for social equality. In Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities in a Global Economy Sernau notes that Marx called private property a “great evil” and era prior to private property the primitive communism era. A tribal society in which he idealized the family as the structure of relatively equal parties. I thought that considering how a family functions and progresses would be a good place to consider how a society progresses. The family has existed for thousands of years with a father and mother raising their children to become parents like themselves. Parents want their children to eventually become equal to themselves physically, mentally, and emotionally. In a tribal society survival skills such as hunting, fishing, cooking, and constructing shelter are passed down from one generation to another. Thousands of years later children are still learning from their parents. My parents did not simply send me to college one day for no reason. They want me to become something, and I know that when I have my own children I want them to become something as well. Within relatively twenty years children are physically, mentally, and emotionally adapt to the world that they live in- just as adapted as their parents are. The method of parents teaching their children to become equal to themselves is appears to be the driving base of the family structure. Although, even in later years, children maintain a respect towards their parents and the social distinction between parents and children remains points out that children might not obtain social equality, but the desire to obtain social equality is what helps the family structure continue.
According to the Worlds Apart: Social Inequalities in a Global Economy Emile Durkheim page 22 purposed and compared the “division of labor, the way tasks are ever more likely to be divided into the domains of specialists” to the “organic solidarity’. Like the organs of the body, all persons in a society have their own specialized tasks, and each individual needs all the others for survival.” I am still unclear as to what the distinction is between a division of labor society and a organic solidarity. If you could please clarify this for me in class I would be grateful. It sounds like both societies are based on the ideal that each member of society has something to contribute, but the real question is if in either of these society structures each members contribution is viewed equally. I understand the basics that an organic solidarity is structured similar to the human body. For example I would like all ten of my fingers, but if one of them is deformed I will live. In contrast if my heart fails I die. In short all organs have an important contribution, but some organs have a greater significance than others. The thing that bothers me about this ideal is that cancer is a deadly disease that starts from one mutated cell, not even a whole organ, but a single cell. It spreads and kills the entire body. On the other hand if the cancer cell is removed or killed then the person will live, but does simply being able to remove the cell and still living make the cell less valuable than all the other cells. I keep on getting bugged by the notion that one cell, a single cell can not function properly and jeopardize the entire body. Does the person with cancer think that one cell had a less valuable function than all of their other cells? I am not sure, but just thinking about how I would feel. I desire for each of my cells function how they should. The reality that each individual cell needs to function properly so I can live makes me value each individual cell equally.
How the family structure teaches children to become like their parents, and how every individual cell needs to function properly points to the idea that societies should desire for equality. A functioning society does not need to have social equality, but a functioning society desires social equal.