7. How does the capitalist world-system maintain political stability?

Wallerstein is not advocating a new theory in sociology, rather he is advocating a whole new way of doing social science. The focus of social science, Wallerstein believes, is tied much too closely to the nation state or more vaguely, to “society.” He asserts that states as well as the organizations and groups that make up such structures exist within a much broader economic, political and legal framework he calls “world-systems." World-systems, according to Wallerstein, are the only true social system—they alone contain all social relations that are necessary for survival, they alone comprise the complete division of labor necessary for sustenance and growth. Nation states must be understood in terms of the world context of their era, and modern nation states can only be fully understood in terms of the modern world-system of capitalism. It is thus world-systems that are the proper subject of the social sciences.

8. Describe the social condition Durkheim calls "anomie.

Durkheim mentioned the concept of anomie in The Division of Labor and Suicide (Durkheim, 1897). He introduced this concept in The Division of Labor when he first compared the moral order of traditional and modern societies and refined it in Suicide. Anomie is defined as a state of "normlessness." Typically, it is a state of moral deregulation resulting from a period of social change, when existing rules, habits, and beliefs no longer hold and alternatives have yet to arise. There is great potential for anomie of this sort in contemporary U.S. science, caused by specialization, technical innovation and the attendant obsolescence of skills, the changing organizational culture of academic science, new goals and bases for legitimating scientific research, and a changing relationship between performance and reward. Under anomic circumstances, behavior is only vaguely guided by shared rules and values.

9. What are the four major types of suicide?  Make an empirical distinction among them.

Box 1.1. Around the World. Four Types of Suicide

Altruistic suicide	Egoistic suicide	Anomic suicide	Fatalistic suicide
A person feels a deep sense of moral obligation and is willing to place the group’s welfare above his or her own survival. A spy who is captured and swallows a poison capsule, rather than taking the risk of disclosing secrets, has committed altruistic suicide.	This type of suicide is just the opposite of altruistic. It occurs when the individual feels little connection to the larger society and is not affected by social constraints against self-destructive behavior. A lonely person who lives in a skid row hotel room with no friends or family may resort to egoistic suicide.	When a society lacks clear-cut rules of social behavior, anomic suicide can result. Such suicides are particularly likely to occur in a time of great social disorder or turmoil, as in the United States shortly after the stock market crash of 1929. People who lost all their savings and were unable to cope with their misfortune turned to anomic suicide.	Whereas anomic suicide stems from a sense of disorder, fatalistic suicide is related to the powerlessness that people feel when their lives are regulated to an intolerable extent. A prisoner who can no longer bear confinement may find a ″way out″ through fatalistic suicide.
Durkheim’s division of suicide into these four categories forms a typology. A typology is a classification scheme containing two or more mutually exclusive categories (types); it is used by sociologists to better understand different forms of behavior.