Durkheim on Solidarity

Pope and Johnson (1983) state that Durkheim proposed that society revitalizes individuals and gives them strength to persevere in the face of the vicissitudes of everyday life. Stones (2008), further states that Durkheim felt that we acquired all the best in ourselves and all the things that distinguish us from other animals from our social existence. Thought, language, world-views, rationality, morality and aspirations are derived from society. Thus, the unsocialised individual, the individual divorced form society, the beast within us, is a poor approximation of the highly socialised beings that constitute societies.

Emile Durkheim, was a French sociologist. His theories and writings helped establish the foundations of modern sociology. Durkheim disagreed with most social theorists of the late 1800 's because they thought that individual psychology was the basis of sociology. Durkheim regarded sociology as the study of the society that surrounds and influences the individual. Durkheim explained his theories in his book The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). He says there is relationship between moral values and religious beliefs, which establishes unity in society.Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so called variables oriented approach to sociological investigation. Durkheim developed the theory that societies are bound together by two sources of unity. He called these sources mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity refers to similarities that many people in the society share, such as values and religious beliefs. Organic solidarity results from the division of labor into specialized jobs. Durkheim believed that the division of labor makes people depend on one another and thus helps create unity in a society. Durkheim studied thousands of cases of suicide to demonstrate his theory that a person commits suicide because of the

People in present society are divided up into different positions in the work force. Durkheim sees society from a structural functionalist perspective and refers to society as a system of different organs, each with a

For Durkheim, the problem concerning modernity emerged from the move to an industrial society wherein the division of labour (increasing specialisation of occupations) led to a decrease in mechanical solidarity (social cohesion based on similarities between members of pre-industrial societies); resulting in the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a

2. Durkheim: What term does Durkheim associate with social solidarity? How do societies achieve it organically and mechanically? What did he think threatened social solidarity?

Organic solidarity arose as a result of the industrial revolution when society became more multifaceted and new ways of working emerged. This saw a decline in the collective conscience regarding shared morals and beliefs as society began to progress and expand. The division of labour that arises as a result of organic solidarity is complex and varied, resulting in people becoming more individualistic and yet also interdependent. Society’s social bonds now centred around the fact that people were dependant on each other for the good and services required in their day-to-day lives. (McDonald, 2009)

Durkheim illustrates social solidarity as social unity and integration, that uses moral phenomenon to help understand the moral degrees in society. Durkheim suggest social solidarity works under two different types which are mechanical and organic solidarity. Durkheim defines mechanical solidarity as common value and beliefs that are shared within society, that creates unity and shared goals. Organic solidarity is the highest interaction between different groups, with diverse ideologies. Durkheim suggest that the Black Lives Matter movement use their social solidarity to achieve collective awareness of the unjust repressive laws that discriminate against African Americans within the judicial and prison system. Durkheim would suggest that the

Durkheim believed that by examining and understanding the effect of these social facts on human behaviour within the context of industrial society, adequate solutions could be devised to deal with the problems inherent in the new capitalist society. According to Durkheim, two different types of social facts exist: material and immaterial. Durkheim was most interested in studying the latter, particularly morality, collective conscience, collective representation, and social currents. He suggested that society could achieve a state of harmony or equilibrium – the state at which it was designed to remain. Unlike Marx, who believed the industrialized society would bring alienation and revolution, Durkheim believed it would bring cohesion and interdependence. Greater specialization would create greater interdependence.

With modernization and industrialization, labour became increasingly specialized. Before this in the pre- modern societies, all workers did almost the same work in order to sustain themselves. These workers shared social cohesion base on similarity and commonality among themselves. This ‘mechanical solidarity’ was soon replaced by ‘organic solidarity’. With organic solidarity social cohesion was based on each individual’s dependence on every other in the society for survival. (The Emile Durkheim Archive, Solidarity)

An aspect of modernity that worried Durkheim was social bonds. Social bonds are seen as the bonds that holds a society together. It is clear that Durkheim believed the bonds holding society together at the time were fragile and becoming more fragile the more modern and industrialised society was becoming. He felt that this was an aspect that needed to change. Social bonds were stronger in certain parts of the city which mainly consisted of manual workers or rich people but in different parts of the city, social bonds were almost non-existent.

He believed by punishing individuals on their wrongdoings it reinforced social solidarity and strengthens society’s common values (Saarsteiner, n.d). He establishes two different types of society. These are organic and mechanical solidarity. Durkheim notes that the collective consciousness is more common in a society with mechanical solidarity rather than in a society with organic solidarity (Edles and Appelrouth, 2005: 236). Durkheim suggests this is because the nature of solidarity is varied in a modern

His views can be divided into three different theories; the form of solidarity, Anomie, and the division of labor. Durkheim explained that there are two different types of the social integration; which is mechanical and organic solidarity. He explained that the mechanical solidarity forms a group or community where people affiliate and feel the comfort by regulated by the shared rules and the systems of beliefs, which is we call common conscience. The mechanical solidarity has a strong social morality compare to organic solidarity. The organic solidarity is more like an opposite theory of mechanical solidarity. The organic solidarity is the society that is more focused on individual’s values, performance in different tasks, and form a society that has less social morality with less common conscience. Durkheim explained, as a society grows up, the division of labor increases and become powerful. The mechanical and organic solidarity must exist in our society to keep the balance between the inequality and equality. But at the same time, it also makes big distance between the high class and working class and it is causing working class to feel devastated because of the differences of advantages and disadvantages between the high class and working

Durkheim too thought that societies were held together by the dependence that each person had on others. In the days of old many would bake their own bread, sew their own clothes, as well as grow their own vegetable and raise their own meat as time went on more and more people began to specialize in things that caused them to depend on others that had talents. Today we are even more dependent on others than ever. If our car breaks down, we call a mechanic. We go out to eat more than ever before, and many choose to utilize daycare for their children. Without these people to

People in present society are divided up into different positions in the work force. Durkheim sees society from a structural functionalist perspective and refers to society as a system of different organs, each with a special role that differentiates parts from one another (pg 122). According to Durkheim, the differences we hold in society create interdependence among one another due

As Durkheim said that “My work had its origins in the question of the relations of the individual to social solidarity. Why does the individual, while becoming more autonomous, depend more upon society? How can he [sic] be at one more individual?”(Durkheim 1976: 37-8) Durkheim is basically saying that as we move from a mechanical form of solidarity which has a simple occupational structure as there where fewer occupations compared to organic solidarity where with the development of society brought about more occupation’s to choose from means that there is now a more