Durkheim's "social pathology" is based on the pathological-normal model of modern medicine

Abstract

Social pathology is a sociological term used in reference to deviant behaviors, or actions that societies have agreed are immoral or unacceptable. Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist in the nineteenth century, created the foundation for the modern sociological study of society by focusing on social facts, structures, and systems. His profound ideas generated many concepts and methods in his books especially in The Rules of Sociological ‎Method and Suicide. He applied the model ‎of modern medical thinking for studying deviant behaviors. According to modern medicine, which was formed in the ‎nineteenth century, the process of diagnosing the disease is based on "the pathological and the ‎normality". In this article, we try to show that Durkheim's "social pathology" is based on this ‎model. First we briefly describe the ‎characteristics of "the pathological and the normality" in diagnosis of disease in modern medicine. We ‎then show this medical model influences Durkheim's functionalist approach for studying deviant behaviors, or actions

Keywords

• the normal
• the pathological
• disease
• social pathology
• crime