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I am a sociology major and we have been reading Durkheim. We had a paper due about what we define as civil disobedience. Reading about the thousands of people organized around social justice issues such as the one Paul was describing in his post about the protest organized by United for Peace and Justice, seems to correlate to how I, based on the Durkheim readings, define civil disobedience. I believe that civil disobedience is an act that brings people together more than any other act.

I define civil disobedience as an act of punishment carried out by the masses against a governing or authoritative body or person who has committed an act that disrupted or offended the collective morals of the masses such as creating a punishment that contradicts the morals of the collective or going to war for a reason against the morals of the collective.

Durkheim argues that punishment is something that brings people together because it is based in collective morals that make up the moral fabric that holds societies together. These collective morals are usually somewhat in tangible and thus hard to rally around because people are confused by what it is or can’t articulate what it is. However, penal law is neat and tangible and based in the collective morals of the masses. Thus the breaking of penal law can insight clear direction in which the masses can travel.

If this is the case, that means that the masses, we, are intent on maintaining the survival of society because we have penal law—a system of punishments whether that is in a visible code or a system of punishments that are in our psyche. Why is this so? (We have penal laws in our Honor Code.) If punishment exists in all societies across space and time, then does that mean what we innately desire to protect society, the collective? Do we innately desire to protect Haverford and Bryn Mawr? Do we protect society because there is some intrinsic value in the collective or society? Or do we do so, because society protects us and we want to innately protect ourselves?

I believe that we have internalized the values a particular society and those values help, in turn, define us and because we innately want to protect what we define as us, we create a system of punishments to get rid of something or someone that is a threat to what we define as us. However, what I don’t understand is why do we wan to protect what we define as us? Why does beings of this world have a defense mechanism? Is there some intrinsic value in us? Is there some value in us that is born when we are born? If so, what is it?

Shayna