Presentation Transcript

1. Sociological Perspectives

   Week 5: The Division of Labour: Emile Durkheim Professor Nicholas Gane
2. Historical context: who was Durkheim? Born in 1858 in Épinal, France Like Marx he was born into a Jewish family Commented on the ‘Dreyfus Affair’ Lost his son in WW1 in 1915 Died in Paris in 1917 The main work we will look at in this lecture is The Division of Labour in Society (1893) (his doctoral thesis)
3. Other main works The Rules of Sociological Method [1895] (a key statement of positivist sociology) Suicide [1897] (an application of this method to the study of what appears to be the most individual act) The Elementary Forms of Religious Life [1912] (on the social structure of religion, the sacred and profane) An intellectual biography: Steven Lukes (1985)
4. The Division of Labour in Society An argument about the basis of modern individualism (especially following the declaration of the ‘Rights of Man’ following the events of 1789): economic or social? Like Marx and Weber, Durkheim was interested in the huge processes of social and cultural change that were taking place from the mid-1750s onwards – a sociology of modernity Individualism is a change in the basis of the social and of morality rather than their necessary decline
5. The focus of this work The division of labour is to be treated as an ‘objective fact’ It applies to organisms as well to societies – it is a ‘general biological phenomenon’ (p.3) An argument that with industrialization, the division of labour becomes increasingly specialized ‘Inside factories, not only are jobs demarcated, becoming increasingly specialised, but each product is itself a speciality entailing the existence of others’ (p.1).
6. The puzzle Durkheim states: ‘The question that [is] the starting point for our study [is] that of the connection between the individual personality and social solidarity. How does it come about that the individual, whilst becoming more autonomous, depends ever more closely upon society? How can he become at the same time more of an individual and yet more linked to society?...for these two movements, however contradictory they appear to be, are carried out in tandem’ (p.xxx).
7. Economic or social? An argument with the famous classical economist Adam Smith: the division of labour is social and not simply economic Durkheim attempts to show this by looking historically at the changing nature of social bonds as the division of labour has become increasingly specialised The main contrast he draws is between premodern/segmental societies characterised by ‘mechanical’ solidarity and modern societies that are ‘organic’ in form
8. Mechanical solidarity Durkheim describes mechanical solidarity as ‘solidarity by similarities’ A low level of individual differentiation: strong shared values, beliefs and culture A high degree of societal integration – a strong sense of the collective conscience A social solidarity exists ‘which arises because a certain number of states of consciousness are common to all members of the same society’ (p.64). This solidarity is embodied in repressive law
9. Repressive or penal law Repressive sanctions are social responses to acts that are seen to threaten the well-being of society and the collective conscience A system of punishment that punishes individual transgressions in order to repair any damage done to collective sentiments Tend to involve public displays of power and can be violent and bloody
10. Organic solidarity - law Again an argument that is framed in terms of law: ‘restitutory sanction’ rather than repressive law Law tells us something about the basis of social solidarity in any given society Restitutive sanctions: the attempt to restore things to the state before the offence A modern idea of justice: punishment must fit the crime
11. Restitutive law Its ‘distinguishing mark’ is that it is ‘not expiatory, but comes down to a mere restoration of the ‘status quo ante’…Damages awarded have no penal character: they are simply a means of putting the clock back so as to restore the past…to its normal state’ (p.68) Law becomes specialised and contractual – but contract is inherently social: it assumes that ‘behind the parties that bind each other, society is there…’ (p.71).
12. Organic solidarity In modern societies, the division of labour becomes more complex or specialised Such societies are characterised by a high degree of social and cultural differentiation: values, beliefs and cultures become more diverse The individual gains a new status However, this does not mean that social solidarity disappears. Rather it changes in form. It becomes (like a complex body) ‘organic’
13. The new social bond Unlike mechanical solidarity in which ‘individuals resemble one another’ the organic forms that replace it assume ‘that they are different from one another’ (p.85) A new interdependence: ‘on the one hand each one of us depends more intimately upon society the more labour is divided up, and on the other, the activity of each one of us is correspondingly more specialised, the more personal it is’ (p.85).
14. The ‘homo-duplex’ ‘there is in the consciousness of each one of us two consciousnesses: one that we share in common with our group in its entirety, which is consequently not ourselves, but society living and acting within us; the other that, on the contrary, represents us alone in what is personal and distinctive about us, what makes us an individual…Here are the two opposing forces, the one centripetal, and the other centrifugal…’ (p.84).
15. Causes What caused the transition from mechanical/segmental to organic/modern societies? 1). Population growth (an end of the ‘moral vacuum’ characteristic of segmental societies – and an increase in society’s ‘moral density’) 2). Urbanisation – a drawing together of different individuals 3). New technologies of ‘communication and transmission’ (p.203).
16. Abnormal forms Like all organisms, society can, under certain circumstances, fail to function properly – its parts can become diseased (a state of pathology) Durkheim deals with this in the final sections of the Division of Labour He says: ‘If normally the division of labour produces social solidarity, it can happen…that it has entirely different or even opposite results. It is important that we should investigate what makes it deviate from its natural course… (p.291).
17. Examples The forced division of labour: where the social groups (classes) exercise control over this process Under these conditions the division of labour ceases to be ‘natural’ and there is no meritocratic matching of tasks to individual talents: ‘cases occur where the individual is not attuned to the functions that are attributed to him’ (p.313) Echoing Marx? Capitalism: normal/abnormal?
18. Anomie (normlessness) Durkheim also talks of the anomic division of labour He refers briefly to ‘industrial and commercial crises’ where ‘at certain points of the organism certain social functions are not adjusted to one another’ (p.292) He adds to this situations where there is ‘Hostility between labour and capital’ But the main question is how far the division of labour can be pushed ‘without being a source of disintegration’ (p.294).
19. Government Durkheim says that if unity does not arise spontaneously from the division of labour then ‘the task of realising and maintaining it will have to constitute a special function of the social organism, represented by an independent organ. That organ is the state or the government’ (p.295). But things are not always that simple, especially in relation to the complexities of economic life
20. Conclusion: A contemporary problem? Can/should government regulate the activities of all other societal organs (which to some extent are autonomous/independent?) Durkheim: government cannot ‘at every moment regulate the conditions of the different economic markets, fix the prices of goods and services’ and so on (p.297) There needs to be spontaneous societal order generated out of consensus of its parts. Such order is disrupted by moments of crisis or by rapid social change: normality will return. Is this right, or is crisis intrinsic to capitalism?