CONSCIENCE COLLECTIVE
It is the nature of the specialized tasks to escape the
action of the conscience collective.
Conscience collective
is a defensive weapon which has definite value.
An act is criminal when it offends strong and defined
states of the conscience collective.
We do not condemn it because it is a crime, but it is a crime because it is condemned.
Conscience collective
is a concept associated with Emile Durkheim, referring to the common norms, values and
beliefs shared in by members of a community.
“Collective Conscience” defines the abstract
realm of a society's virtues, morals and ideals expressed through actions. Strong,
well-defined states of this collective conscience are adhered to in simple societies; an
action against it is seen as a crime as it deviates from the societal expectations of
morality.
Conscience collective
consists of beliefs and ideas that shape the structure and direction of community life,
rather than just the personal interactions of individuals.
Repressive sanctions are found in societies with highly
defined collective conscience, as a means of penalizing anyone who acts against the grain
for the mere sake of it being “wrong”.
Restitutive sanctions are found in societies with a
lesser collective conscience, instead as a means of fixing the problem. When a criminal
acts upon society he is made to serve back to society what he took away; in some forms
this completed through fines, prison time, community service and death. .These sanctions
are less relative to the virtue of the wrong-doing, but the impact it has upon society,
simultaneously society is defending itself by setting examples of punishment to deter
potential deviants.
Conscience Collective or False
Consciousness? Adorno’s Critique of Durkheim’s Sociology of Morals -
Tobias Garde Hagens, Centre for Ethics and Law, Denmark
Journal of Classical Sociology, Vol. 6, No. 2, 215-237 (2006) © 2006 SAGE Publications
When Durkheim’s Sociologie et philosophie was first translated into German in 1967,
Adorno wrote a critical introduction to the book. This article first presents the main
thoughts in Durkheim’s sociology of morals - that is, his concept of societally
instituted morality as a reality sui generis that must be obeyed because the state of
society constitutes a ‘reason’ beyond that of the individual. The article then
presents Adorno’s critique of Durkheim. Departing from a general critique of
Durkheim’s disregard for individuality in establishing obligatory social morality,
Adorno utilizes the Marxian concepts of ‘second nature’, ‘continued natural
history’ and true and false consciousness to show how Durkheim’s concept of
conscience collective is merely expressive of what society ‘believes itself to
be’. In conclusion, the article demonstrates how the respective positions of Durkheim
and Adorno may serve as each other’s correctives. -
jcs.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/6/2/215
Is the Conscience Collective Black and White? Ireland, Michael; Ellis, Lucy
Source: Visual Anthropology, Volume 18, Number 4, July-September 2005, pp. 373-387(15)
Abstract: This article takes as its theme the black and white photography that forms a
common record of occupations and kinship ties in the fishing communities of West Cornwall.
These photographs also form the iconography by which tourists remember their holiday
experience there. The essay explores tourists' acquisition of photographs through the
assertion first put forward by Sontag [1977] that photographic images are “miniatures
of reality that anyone can make or acquire.” The countervailing argument is put
forward that tourists' access to the past through such images can only be partial. The
principle argument advanced is that photographs play an essential role in the continuity
of contemporary cultures in Cornwall. Taking as its focus the fishing village of Sennen
Cove in West Cornwall, the study shows through ethnographic examples how black and white
photographs stimulate the conscience collective among indigenous peoples. It uses
anthropological methodology to stimulate remembrance of kin ties, experience, and
interaction, and demonstrates that this process is not confined to the location of elderly
informants in a “dying culture.” Contrary to this view, it is shown that new
generations of Cornish people are using the past, captured in black and white images, to
give collective meaning to their own existence. This process is partially illustrated by
the reaction of a local woman to a photo of her relatives (all fishermen in Sennen Cove).
She said, “It makes me feel existential to ponder how in their lifetimes, they knew
the Cove as I do in mine.” Black and white photographs, far from being merely the
subject of tourist curiosity and acquisitive behavior, create a medium in which indigenous
people today create their own being. - ingentaconnect.com
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