1 / 26

Durkheim, Division of Labor

Durkheim, Division of Labor. Weber’s “last theory of capitalism”. A) was a correction of his earlier theory of the protestant ethic B) Incorporated the “protestant ethic” as one among many factors leading to the emergence of capitalism

loe
Download Presentation

Durkheim, Division of Labor

An Image/Link below is provided (as is) to download presentation Download Policy: Content on the Website is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use and may not be sold / licensed / shared on other websites without getting consent from its author. Content is provided to you AS IS for your information and personal use only. Download presentation by click this link. While downloading, if for some reason you are not able to download a presentation, the publisher may have deleted the file from their server. During download, if you can't get a presentation, the file might be deleted by the publisher.

E N D

Presentation Transcript


  1. Durkheim, Division of Labor

  2. Weber’s “last theory of capitalism” • A) was a correction of his earlier theory of the protestant ethic • B) Incorporated the “protestant ethic” as one among many factors leading to the emergence of capitalism • C) was never fully reconciled by Weber to his earlier theory • D) B and C • E) A and B

  3. Durkheim the “Determinist” • Let me begin by enunciating a determinism much more severe than that which Marx is accused of. • “Yet what above all is certain is that morality develops over the course of history and is dominated by historical causes, fulfilling a role in our life time. If it is as it is at any given moment, it is because the conditions in which men are living at that time do not permit it to be otherwise. The proof of this is that it changes when the conditions change, and only in that eventuality.” • (DOL, Preface to the First edition, xxv-xxvi)

  4. Morality • By “morality” Durkheim would probably mean “social norms” in the way in which we use these terms today, that is as explicitly stated or implicit guides to behavior in a society. • The question that seems to inform Durkheim’s analysis is: what keeps COMPLEX societies together? That is, societies in which uniformity of consciousness, in turn determined by the uniformity of labor in the social division of labor, so called segmentary societies that have “conscience collective.”

  5. Mechanical and OrganicSolidarity • In these simple societies solidarity is MECHANICAL, in complex societies it is ORGANIC. • The idea that society is an organism is an old one, almost always a conservative idea, the point being that each individual has a role to perform for the functioning of the whole in the same way that the organs of a complex organism perform functions which keep the organism alive. This is why the image is “organic.” It had a deep influence in the 19th century as Darwin’s theory of evolution had an impact beyond the natural sciences and as biology advanced.

  6. Organicsolidarity, a sociological concept • The idea of organic solidarity, however, whether it is right or wrong (to Durkheim it is a “metaphor”) is nevertheless profoundly sociological. It entails the notion that the relationships between the individuals, or the social structure as we would say in modern language, has properties of its own above and beyond the qualities of the individuals. Society has specific characteristics which cannot be inferred from those of the individuals hat compose it. MORALITY is a collective property and must be studied as such.

  7. Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

  8. Mechanical v. Organic • Mechanical Solidarity: societies with similarity and segmented division of labor have a strong collective consciousness • Organic Solidarity: complex societies with developed division of labor and functional interdependence, and hence individualism, have fragmented collective consciousness.

  9. Contrast between “solidarity” and “contracts” • In stating this, Durkheim was going against the trend of many thinkers of his time who saw society as a contract between private interests in which every individual is looking at his/her own interest, in such a way that “the collective interest is only a form of personal interest,” and “altruism is merely a concealed egoism.” This was not only true of a school of thought called utilitarianism but of much political economy besides, including the work of Adam Smith. To Durkheim, A “Contract is not sufficient unto itself.” If it were not for the existence of social norms which provide the framework within which contracts are made, then “incoherent chaos” would reign in the economic world.

  10. Moral rules, collective needs • MORAL RULES ARE SHAPED BY SOCIETY, UNDER THE PRESSURE OF COLLECTIVE NEEDS • Solidarity in primitive societies is achieved through religions: religions contain • metaphysical speculation on the nature and order of things” • rules of conduct and moral discipline on the other • A cosmological order is followed by rules of conduct, as in “I the lord are your god” and then rules of conduct are laid out, that is, relation of community to deity is vertical, serves to introduce norms that are horizontal among members of society

  11. Society first, individual second….. • “FAR FROM INDIVIDUALITY BEING THE PRIMITIVE FACT AND SOCIETY THE DERIVED FACT, THE FIRST ONLY SLOWLY EMERGES FROM THE SECOND” • (THUS, logically, SOCIETY IS ANTERIOR TO THE INDIVIDUAL)

  12. In primitive societies…… • This is in PRIMITIVE societies, which are segmentary and in which solidarity is mechanical (i.e., I am like my neighbor; similarity and segmentarity go together). • In fact, for Durkheim, individuality only emerges in societies with a complex division of labor.

  13. Importance of “ideals” and moral unity in the continuity of a society • The significance of the individual as an active agent as well as a passive recipient of social influences • The dual nature of the attachment of the individual to society, as involving both obligation and positive commitment to ideals • The conception that an organization of units (i.e. individuals as the units or organized societies) has properties which cannot be directly inferred from the characteristics of the component units considered in isolation from one another; • the essential foundations of what was to become the theory of anomie • the rudiments of the later theory of religion

  14. Debate on two fronts • Division of Labor fights a fight on two fronts: against individualist utilitarianism, and against Auguste Comte and others to the effect that there must be a strong moral consensus in order to perpetuate social order • To Durkheim, individualist utilitarianism cannot explain society because underlying contracts there must be values that make those contracts possible, i.e. society is not a bundle of contracts. • Also to Durkheim, strong moral consensus of the kind that exists in primitive societies, and which occurs largely at the expense of individuality, can explain primitive societies but not societies based on the complex division of labor.

  15. Individualism… what holds society together? • The problem for Durkheim is that modern society has produced modern individualism, clearly associated with the division of labor, specialization of occupational function, fosters the development of specific talents, capacities and attitudes which are not shared by everyone in society, but are possessed only by particular groups. Thus, individuals do not resemble one another as in primitive societies, they are rather distinctive, so the mechanical solidarity of primitive societies cannot explain the cohesion of complex societies, the question is: what keeps it together?

  16. Organicsolidarity • This second type of social cohesion is “organic solidarity”. Here solidarity stems not simply from acceptance of a common set of beliefs and sentiments, but from functional interdependence in the division of labor. Where mechanical solidarity is the main basis of societal cohesion, the conscience collective “completely envelops” the individual consciousness, and therefore presumes identity between the individuals. Organic solidarity, by contrast, presupposes not identity but difference between the individuals in their beliefs and actions. The growth of organic solidarity and the expansion of the division of labor are hence associated with increasing individualism.

  17. Division of labor expands at the expense of “conscience collective” • However complex the division of labor, society does not become reduced to a chaos of short term contractual alliances. • Differentiation of the division of labor inevitably produces decline in “conscience collective” • Growth of individualism is an inevitable concomitant of the expansion of the division of labor • Individualism can only progress at the expense of the strength of common beliefs and sentiments

  18. “Consciencecollective” fragmented • The “conscience collective” comes increasingly to be made up of highly generalized and indeterminate modes of thought and sentiment, which leave room open for an increasing multitude of individual differences • Modern societies do not collapse into disorder, social cohesion is based on “organic solidarity” • Society is NOT a bundle of contracts, contemporary society is still a moral order • One area of consensus in moral order is “the cult of the individual” worth and dignity of the individual rather than the collectivity

  19. “Conscience collective” fades… • But it CANNOT be the sole basis of solidarity: • DURKHEIM: It is certainly what might be called a common faith; but firstly, it is only made possible by the ruin of the others, and consequently cannot produce the same effects as this multitude of extinguished beliefs. Nothing compensates for that. Moreover, if it is common insofar as it is shared by the community, it is individual in its object.

  20. Problems with Durkheim’s Division of Labor • Problem with Durkheim: if organic solidarity replaces mechanical, why is there so much conflict between capital and labor in capitalist society? • EXPANSION OF THE DIVISION OF LABOR ENSUING FROM INDUSTRIALIZATION • DURKHEIM: “la division du travail contrainte” = the forced division of labor • While the functioning of organic solidarity entails the existence of normative rules which regularize the relationships between different occupations, this cannot e achieved if these rules are unilaterally imposed by one class upon another.

  21. divisionS of labor • In reality, there is an immense confusion in Durkheim between the SOCIAL DIVISION OF LABOR and the TECHNICAL, DETAILED, or MANUFACTURING DIVISION OF LABOR

  22. Social Division of Labor • There is the division of labor at large in society, division of labor among various industries and occupations and industrial processes; in pre-industrial societies, such as that of Adam Smith, it takes the form of a division of labor between crafts—baker, carpenter, farmer, the brewer; later with industrialization between industries, the baking industry, the construction industry, the automobile industry and so forth. This is the social division of labor regulated by the MARKET.

  23. Manufacturing Division of Labor • Counterposed to this social division of labor, there is the type that we observed in A nous la liberte and in Modern Times. This is the manufacturing division of labor, a modern industrial division of labor under machinofacture; this last has reduced human beings to the role of tightening a bolt all day long.

  24. Critics of Durkheim’s “division of labor” • “It is for this reason that the popularity of Emile Durkheim’s work, The Division of Labor in Society, has grown as its applicability to the modern world has dwindled. Durkheim adopts just such a level of abstraction in his approach [ i.e. no difference between social and manufacturing, focusing on abstract similarities] “ The only way to succeed in objectively appreciating the division of labor is to study it first in itself, entirely speculatively, to look for its use, and upon what it depends, and finally, to form as adequate a notion as possible of it.” He proceeds in this fashion, determinedly avoiding the specific social conditions under which the division of labor develops in our epoch, celebrating throughout his proposition that “the ideal of human fraternity can be realized only in proportion to the progress of the division of labor,” until in the last tenth of his book he discovers the division of labor in the factories and offices of modern capitalism, and dubs them “abnormal forms.” But, as has been noted by a recent critic, M.C. Kennedy, “when we inspect these abnormal forms throughout the world, it becomes difficult to find one clear-cut case of the normal division of labor.” Kennedy is absolutely right when he calls Durkheim’s “normal” form of the division of labor “the ideal of a moralistic sociologist and not of a sociologist of morals.” • Harry Braverman, Labor and Monopoly Capital : the Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century (New York: Monthly Review Press, 1974), p. 74.

  25. Social and detailed division of labor • Social division of labor is division of labor between producers in the market; this appears as a “spontaneous development” in society • Manufacturing division of labor WITHIN the enterprise is PLANNED, it is DICTATORIALLY controlled by capital, it reduces workers to mere appendages of machines; think of Chaplin in Modern Times; there is no “civil society” or terrain of “political democracy” to appeal to: workers either do their jobs as assigned by management or get fired, all in the interest of “competition” in the market. Perhaps it is THIS LATTER division of labor, BECAUSE IT IS DIFFERENT FROM THE OTHER ONE, which explains class conflict in industrial society. Yet to Durkheim it is ABNORMAL (“division du travail contrainte”). But the fact is, more and more, it is the NORMAL AND NORMATIVE form of the division of labor for millions or people as capitalism spreads.

  26. “Organic” in Durkheim refers to • A) free from class differences • B) Durkheim’s definition of primitive accumulation • C) a society free from the use of pesticides • D) the type of solidarity that exists in clan societies • E) the type of solidarity that exists in complex societies with an advanced division of labor

More Related