In the post-Darwin nineteenth century, Darwin ’s theories of evolutionary change were applied loosely in ways that misinterpreted his theory. The idea of declaring the behavior of individuals in particular social categories as socially pathological followed a different trajectory. Nonetheless, such ideas emphasized the value of returning to the status quo over change. These pathologies were not attributed to the differential nature and value of individuals but rather to aspects of structure. In defining equilibrium and stasis (status quo) as desirable, it was implied that change and disorder were abnormal and threatening. Throughout the early twentieth century, this emphasis on social equilibrium or structural functionalism, further developed by such thinkers as Talcott Parsons, dominated U.S. Anomie was a pathological condition of moral breakdown at the societal level. He envisioned society as a system seeking equilibrium with norms for behavior. Durkheim introduced two analogies for a smoothly functioning social order characterized by solidarity: the machine (mechanical) and the body (organic). Like other foundational social theorists confronting rapid change, he privileged solidarity and cohesion as normal. His profound ideas generated many concepts and laid the basis for many fields of study. Émile Durkheim, a French sociologist, created the foundation for the modern sociological study of society by focusing on social facts, structures, and systems rather than individuals. In the nineteenth century, following parallel developments in the advancing science of biology, social theory often used either biology (e.g., racial types) or biological analogies to the physical body and biological processes to explain the social system. These social changes produced dislocations and inequalities that led to fears among established groups of moral and social danger. Such processes created increased migration and a growing wealth gap between, on the one hand, colonial nations and colonized territories, and on the other, wealthy industrialist/financiers and European working classes. Modern social science developed during a period of rapid social change produced by expanding industrial capitalism and colonialism. As the Enlightenment focused on human reason and scientific understanding of the natural world, early social scientists began to objectify what they defined as natural laws of “society ” that explained undesirable human behaviors as transgressions of natural law. Regarding social pathology, prior to the Enlightenment in Europe, social transgressions (pathologies) were attributed to supernatural forces exerted by spirits (e.g., possession) or evil humans (witchcraft). These cultural constructions emerge in specific contexts. In Purity and Danger (1966) she examines the universality of cultural explanations of things considered “out of order ” as polluting and dangerous. This concept fits within the ideas of anthropologist Mary Douglas. Definitions of social pathology are particular to specific times and reflect the dominant moral concerns of the era. Social pathology is a concept developed in modern social science to refer both to aspects of social structures and to the behaviors and values attributed to particular social categories.
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