Durkheim's Social Cohesion Theories PDF

SOC2240E Lecture 8 October 29, 2024 Durkheim Part 2 How is Social cohesion Possible in an Individualistic Society? - Durkheim is interested in the relationship between individual and...

SOC2240E Lecture 8 October 29, 2024 Durkheim Part 2 How is Social cohesion Possible in an Individualistic Society? - Durkheim is interested in the relationship between individual and society - Believed that “society” existed on its own, outside of the individuals who make society - Modernity increases individual autonomy so how does modern society form a sense of unity or cohesion? - Individual freedom versus morality? DURKHEIM ARGUED THAT THERE WERE TOW FORMS OF SOCIAL SOLIDARITY 1. Mechanical Solidarity (Pre-Modern) and 2. Organic Solidarity (Modern) Mechanical Solidarity - A form of social cohesion in small, rural homogenous societies - Kinship structures and religious beliefs are dominant - Low levels of individuation Organic Solidarity - A form of social cohesion in large, urban and diverse societies - High levels of individuation and ”Dynamic Density” - Highly specialized “Division of Labour” that integrates individuals in a society DURKHEIM ARGUED THAT A SOCIETY’S SYSTEM OF LAW TELLS US ABOUT ITS TYPE OF SOCIAL COHESION Mechanical Solidarity and Law - Has penal law or repressive sanctions - To break a code is to offend the collective conscience - Public, brutal displays of punishment - No formal legal, judicial bodies Organic Solidarity and Law - Contract law or restitutive sanctions - Mediated by a legal system that sees relationships between people as a series of contracts - Aim is not to punish crime but to restore things to how they were prior to the injustice Collective Effervescence - Temporary moments of enhanced solidarity - Increased identification with the group and decreased individualism - Characterized by intense, collective emotions and “energy” - Can be basis of religion: Sacred versus Profane Anomie When individualism is extreme and becomes a “pathology”, linked with organic solidarity and ”Anomic Division of labour” There is a lack of sufficient integration, moral cohesion and restraint Having insufficient moral constraints – unclear or shifting norms Increases during times of economic crisis and economic boom Expectations are frustrated Question: How can Durkheim’s idea of Anomie help us understand Covid? Anomic Division of Labour: The division of labour creates mutual dependence of each other which forms the basis of social cohesion However, this can be insufficient, the division of labour cannot fully make up for the lack of shared morality and our work differences/expertise means that we don’t have a lot in common with others: Difficult following rules when norms are weak Anomie is chronic within modernity but really becomes evident during times of economic or social crisis Critique of Durkheim JULIAN GO’S WORK ON DECOLONIZING SOCIOLOGY EXAMINES ITS “ANALYTICAL BIFURCATIONS” The European colonial standpoint thinks in terms of binaries (splitting things into pairs of opposites) which reflects global hierarchies: West vs East or “Rest” Metropole vs Colony “Modern” vs “Premodern” Durkheim divides history into Mechanical solidarity (premodern) and then Organic Solidarity (“Modern) ”As we know, Durkheim distinguished between “mechanical” and “organic solidarity …. But Durkheim treated these as entirely separate societies – societies that represented different stages of development, manifest spatially as a global division. The problem, then, is that he never acknowledged how they were temporally co-incident and interdependent. He never theorized that those societies that he called “organic” were actually industrial imperial societies whose very existence was shaped by – if not dependent upon the colonial societies they ruled and whose so-called “mechanical” solidarity was kept intact deliberately for the purposes of colonial rule. Precursors to Durkheim: Ibn Khaldun (1332-1406) Muqaddimah Theory of society that separated fact from fiction/myth = new science of society Positivist (what is) not normative (what should be) understanding of society Focused on: social solidarity economic organization and occupation urban vs rural/ sedentary vs nomadic political formations Ibn Khaldun: -Nomadic society (desert, mountains) versus sedentary society (towns and cities) Asabiyyah: feeling of unity in a group; higher in nomadic societies, resulting in ability to subjugate urban societies and form new dynasties, become wealthy and therefore sedentary. Nomadic groups were accustomed to difficult condition, loyal, and supportive of each other Sedentary life weakens group feeling August Comte (1795-1857) Influences Durkheim - Comte was an early advocate of positivism - Positivism: The belief that the world is rational and orderly - Sociology was like a “social physics” – by observing society sociologists could discover its social laws from the patterns of social behaviour What are some limits/criticisms of Durkheim’s Theory of Structural Functionalism? - Conservatism of this theory - there are limited ways to account for social change within this theory - Social inequalities are unaccounted for - Focuses on positive function of institutions but ignores the negative dimensions institutions can have