SUMBLOG5 Harriet Martineau

Harriet Martineau who is often regard as the first female sociologist, really made a name for herself when she introduced her view on society to the world.  Her ideas such as the “laws” of social life and morals and manners are especially interesting to me.  They are interesting because it basically explain how people should act in society.  Martineau “laws” of social life says that human happiness is express through the fairness of our society.  What I got out from this is that if the government (society) treat everyone citizen equally, then people would in theory be happier.  Happy people mean more productive people, and with more productive people then the government’s economy can thrive.  However this is also one of her greatest critique, mainly because of the vagueness of the idea itself.  Although the idea does look good on paper, is it possible to achieve?  We live in a capitalist government where everyone is in for themselves, thus rendering this idea useless.  The example in class about the country Bhutan shows that a government measuring people’s happiness would not last long.  Secondly is her idea of morals and manners, and this idea is pretty self-explanatory.  It’s about the shared norms that people of a particular society have, and the action that we take based on those norms.  I really like the example that we use in class about men needing space in between urinals.  There are no written rules that say that no two men should ever pee next to each other.  However, in our society we view going to the bathroom a private matter.  Thus when going to use the urinal in public we like to give them space, so things don’t get awkward. I thought of the image below when the idea came up in class and I believe it helps demonstrate this idea.