The interactions among individuals in primitive societies can
be contrasted with the way in which people relate to each other in modern
contemporary societies. This alteration in social unity, or solidarity was seen
by Emile Durkheim, a late nineteenth century sociologist to have been the
result of changes in “social facts,” which he referred to as the “beliefs,
tendencies and practices of [a] group taken collectively” (114 Calhoun). Spurred
by his observations of the evolution of societies from the period of economic
traditionalism to the period of economic rationalism, Durkheim analyzed how
they adapted to change. When he wrote his influential sociological theory, he
believed society to have already undergone this transformation.
In The Division of Labor in Society,
Durkheim sought out to criticize the historicist arguments of his predecessors,
and describe a shift in the “collective consciousness” to an “individual
consciousness,” which resulted from the division of labor (39 Durkheim; 167
Hughes). In traditional societies, Durkheim saw the social order as focused on
“mechanical solidarity,” in which individuals were held together by their
similarities, and their subsequent need for social conformity (85 Durkheim).
When societies became more and more complex, people were held together by their
perceived differences, typifying “organic solidarity” (85 Durkheim). The specialization of roles and skills were
seen to actually foster interdependence among people, as individuals could no
longer fulfill all of their needs alone. (132 Durkheim) Durkheim saw mechanical and organic
solidarity to be the extremes of a continuum, and used legal code as a measurement of solidarity among different
societies. He believed that a direct correlation existed between the
characteristics of interpersonal connections and the quantity and type of laws
that were enacted within a particular society. In traditional societies, there
was a preponderance of repressive law, in which offenders were punished for
deviating from social norms. In complex, modern societies, restitutive laws and
their associated sanctions prevail, whereby the offender is not punished, but
rather, forced to make amends and restore society to the “status quo” (68
Durkheim).
In the most
traditional of societies, people were held together purely by mechanical
solidarity. People perceived themselves to be similar units of a collective
whole. Durkheim referred to such groups as “horde[s],” in which regardless of
age and sex, people were “linked to one another with the same degree of
kinship” (127 Durkheim). Slightly more progressive were “segmentary societies,”
whereby individuals were held together by their similarities within a
particular family or “clan” (127 Durkheim). These two typologies encompassed
forms of mechanical solidarity, as their social structures were “comprise[d] of
homogeneous segments similar to one another” (131 Durkheim). Furthermore,
“their solidarity [was] the weaker the more heterogeneous they [were], and vice
versa,” demonstrating the importance of similarities in the context of their
social relationships (128 Durkheim).
In the process
of forming his positivist argument, Durkheim made generalizations based on
examples of societies and laws that demonstrated his points. What he found was
that a preponderance of penal or repressive law manifested itself within these
traditional societies. These laws are characterized by the sanctions imposed
upon their violators, which intend to “do harm to him through his fortune, his
honour, his life, his liberty, or to deprive him of some object whose
possession he enjoys” (29 Durkheim). Penal law promotes “sameness” within a
society, as its enactment functions to confine social interactions according to
set standards. It “ensure[s] respect for all beliefs, traditions, and
collective practices… and defend[s] the common consciousness from all its
enemies” (42 Durkheim). Punishment “avenges… the outrage to morality,” and is
itself an “emotional reaction,” doled out by society or those individuals that
symbolically represent the society (44,46 Durkheim). The reaction associated
with a particular crime “does not occur in each individual in isolation but all
together and in unison,” thus demonstrating that the collective consciousness
of the society is what is harmed by the actions of a criminal (57 Durkheim).
Not only did a preponderance of repressive law occur in societies in which
people related to one another by mechanical solidarity, but also, such
similarities actually served to foster the creation of repressive law.
The mechanical
solidarity that existed in traditional societies can be contrasted to organic
solidarity, which subsists in modern contemporary societies. Durkheim described
organic solidarity as the social relationships in which people perceive
themselves to be “different from one another,” and furthermore, stated that
organic solidarity “is only possible if each one of us has a sphere of action
that is peculiarly our own, and consequently a personality” (85 Durkheim).
Durkheim compared the organs that compose the human body to the characteristics
of organic solidarity when he stated that “each [organ] has a special role and
which themselves are formed from differentiated parts,” and they are
“co-ordinated and subordinated to one another around the same central organ,
which exerts over the rest of the organism a moderating effect” (132 Durkheim).
Similar to the components of the human body, each person plays a specialized
role in modern society.
Durkheim further developed his argument when
he stated that, “each organ has its own special characteristics and autonomy,
yet the greater the unity of the organism, the more marked the
individualisation of the parts” (85 Durkheim). Therefore, although organic
solidarity is based on differences between people, it nonetheless serves to
bring them together. Durkheim went on to describe this symbiotic relationship
when he stated that organic solidarity is the type that “brings about a division
of labor” (85 Durkheim). As societies increase in complexity, “individuals are
distributed within its groups that are no longer formed in terms of any
ancestral relationship, but according to the special nature of the social
activity to which they devote themselves” (132 Durkheim). One’s role becomes a
“single task which is their individual contribution to the working of society
as a whole” (165 Hughes). In essence, increasing individualism leads to
specialization in the workforce. The more specialized the workforce, the
stronger it becomes. Durkheim advanced this theory even further when he
conceptualized a phenomenon known as “sui
generis,” which stated that a society assumes a character over and above
that of its individual members, and has the capacity to exist independent of
them (114 Calhoun).
The concept of organic solidarity and its
associated division of labor has served to bring about a preponderance of civil
or restitutive law, which is designed to mediate between increasingly
dissimilar interpersonal relationships. Civil law code generally refers to the
overarching body that subdivides into contract, commercial, procedural,
administrative, and constitutional law. (81 Durkheim) These types of law are
characterized by their attempt to restore society to the “status quo,” whereby
the offender is not punished per se, but is instead “merely condemned to
submit to it” (68 Durkheim). Therefore, violations of civil law codes can not
be sanctioned by terms of imprisonment or fines for the direct purpose of punishment,
as they are “simply a means of putting back the clock so as to restore the
past, so far as possible, to its normal state” (68 Durkheim).
Restitutive-type laws tend to “either
constitute no part at all of the collective consciousness, or subsist in it in
only a weak state,” as they generally “have no deep roots in most of us” (69
Durkheim). As opposed to violations of the penal code, self-interested
individuals are the ones who generally bring about civil lawsuits. Nonetheless,
restitutive laws “do not merely concern private individuals” (70 Durkheim).
This is demonstrated in that “it is society that declares what the law is,
through its body of representatives” (70 Durkheim). Furthermore, “the law is
pre-eminently a social matter, whose object is absolutely different from the
interests of the litigants” (70 Durkheim). The purpose of the legal system is
to protect itself, and ensure that whatever the outcome of a particular civil
case, it ends in correlation with the established code of law, thus protecting
the interests of the greater society. (70 Durkheim) The majority of legal code
in modern societies is comprised of civil law. This type of law regulates the
cohesiveness of interpersonal relationships. Under organic solidarity,
individuals become increasingly different from one another, and are therefore
more in need of mediation. As similar to penal law, restitutive law functions
in a cyclical pattern with organic solidarity, as the more unique individuals
become, the more restitutive laws are needed to maintain the status quo.
By using differences in legal code as
empirical evidence, Durkheim’s work in The Division of Labor in Society
exemplifies how he was able to elevate the study of sociology and transform it
into a scientific discipline. He focused on objective evidence to advance
sociological principles, and opined that the “preconceptions of the author
before he began his research” should be eliminated so as to allow him to study
society “from the outside” (160 Hughes; 111 Calhoun). Durkheim believed that
sociological data could not be complied “through mere observation, since it is
not wholly and entirely within any one of us” (111 Calhoun). He fortified his
position by arguing that the “determining cause of a social fact must be sought
among antecedent social facts and not among the states of the individual
consciousness” (125 Calhoun). In other words, Durkheim believed that social
facts exist to explain social life in modern societies that are independent of
the actions of its individual members. The principles introduced by Durkheim
and his efforts to study society objectively clearly allowed sociology to
achieve recognition within the academic community and thus contribute to the
rise of modern sociology.
Emile Durkheim described a shift in social
interactions among individuals in their given societies in terms of the
differences between mechanical and organic solidarity. He perceived the root of
this transition to be the onset of the division of labor in the workforce, and
the subsequent individuality that it fostered. Thus, a modification occurred in
which a society that had been dominated by its strong sense of “collective
consciousness” was replaced with an “individual consciousness,” whereby people
began to think of themselves as unique. The structuring of legal code in a
given society reflects the social order maintained within that society. Both
forms of solidarity are manifested within legal code, and it demonstrates how
the ways in which people connect to one another change over time. The
preponderance of either repressive or restitutive law, respectively, is used to
indicate where a particular society falls upon a gradual, yet compulsory path
towards economic rationalism. Traditional societies, which are characterized by
mechanical solidarity, tend to legislate a majority of their laws within the
repressive realm, whereas modern societies, which are characterized by organic
solidarity, tend to legislate a majority of their laws within the restitutive
realm. Emile Durkheim is credited with advancing the study of sociology to the
level of a science, independent of other related disciplines. His theories give
social phenomena an independent, perpetual existence external from that of any
individual within the society. Furthermore, these phenomena have the ability to
exert power over an individual, which can manifest itself in law designed to
maintain the social order. Emile Durkheim’s study of social solidarity surely
demonstrates why many deem him to be one of the most influential thinkers
behind the development of modern sociology.
Works
Cited:
Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labor in
Society. 1st ed. Vol. 1. New York, NY: The Free Press, 1984. 1-341. [cited in text as Durkheim]
Durkheim, Emile. "The Rules of
Sociological Method." Classical Sociological Theory. Ed. Craig
Calhoun. Malden, MA: Blackwell Ltd, 2002. 109-127. [cited in text as Calhoun].
Hughes, John A., Wes W. Sharrock, and Peter
J. Martin. "Emile Durkheim." Understanding Sociological Theory.
London: Sage Publications Ltd, 2003. 145-201.
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