How does emile durkheim defined sociology

As societies reach an advanced stage of organic solidarity, they avoid anomie by redeveloping a set of shared norms. According to Durkheim, once a society achieves organic solidarity, it has finished its development. Does his theories hold up under modern scrutiny? Skip to main content. Module 2: Culture and Society. Search for:. Practice 1.

Show Answer a. Organic solidarity is most likely to exist in which of the following types of societies? Evolutionism — society changes slowly and the process of change includes self-correction to problems and strains in the social world. Most nineteenth century sociologists developed some form of evolutionary approach to society. That is, societies change, there are stages to social development tribal, primitive or traditional, modern, post-modern , change is relatively gradual although the radical approach of Section III developed a more cataclysmic view of change , and where there are conflicts or disagreements among groups in society, these tend to be corrected through evolutionary forces.

These writers generally viewed later stages as higher or more developed forms of society as compared with earlier stages of social development. Spencer, Sumner, Comte, and Durkheim all developed variants of this approach. Writers who are not in the conservative tradition, such as Marx and Weber, also developed a view of society in stages, although they were not always so evolutionary in their approach — Marx adopted a view of revolutionary change.

Functionalism — society is similar to a biological organism or a body, with interrelated parts, needs and functions for each of these parts, and structures to ensure that the parts work together to produce a well-functioning and healthy body. Such an approach was adopted by some less conservative sociologists as well. Even today it is common for sociologists to discuss the function of the family in socializing individuals and in helping preserve social order, or the function of profits to help encourage economic growth and a well-functioning economy and society.

While functionalism has been an important theoretical approach, it is sometimes theoretically lazy to use this form of explanation as a substitute for understanding and determining how the social world works. For example, using a functionalist approach we may not be able to understand why the family is functional for society, why it developed the way it has, and how changes in the family occur.

If the family form is functional, why is it always changing, and why do new family forms appear as functional as earlier ones? That is, Durkheim understood that it was necessary to explain the reasons why particular social structures emerged historically, and if such structures were functional, this required a separate explanation. Rather than discuss each of the early conservative sociological approaches, we will move directly to Durkheim, one of the major influences in twentieth century sociology.

Emile Durkheim General approach. Durkheim adopted an evolutionary approach in that he considered society to have developed from a traditional to modern society through the development and expansion of the division of labour.

He compared society to an organism, with different parts that functioned to ensure the smooth and orderly operation and evolution of society. He is sometimes considered a structural functionalist in that he regarded society as composed of structures that functioned together — in constructing such an approach, he distinguished structure and function. While he considered society to be composed of individuals, society is not just the sum of individuals and their behaviours, actions, and thoughts.

Rather, society has a structure and existence of its own, apart from the individuals in it. Further, society and its structures influence, constrain, and even coerce individuals in it — through norms, social facts, common sentiments, and social currents.

While all of these were developed from earlier or current human action, they stand apart from the individual, form themselves into institutions and structures, and affect the individual. Durkheim was especially concerned with the issue of social order, how does modern society hold together given that society is composed of many individuals, each acting in an individual and autonomous manner, with separate, distinct, and different interests.

His first book, The Division of Labour in Society , was an exploration and explanation of these issues, and he finds the answer in the concept of social solidarity, common consciousness, systems of common morality, and forms of law. Because these forces and structures are not always effective in producing and maintaining social order, and because there is social change as the division of labour and society develop, there can be disruptions in social solidarity and common consciousness.

Durkheim connects these to what he calls the forced division of labour eg. He also considers anomie to be one cause suicide — in his book Suicide he explores the causes different suicide rates at different places and times in Europe, and explains why they differ. Durkheim distinguished sociology from philosophy, psychology, economics, and other social science disciplines by arguing that society was an entity of its own.

He argued that sociologists should study particular features of collective or group life and sociology is the study of social facts, things which are external to, and coercive of, individuals. These social facts are features of the group, and cannot be studied apart from the collective, nor can they be derived from the study of individuals. Some examples are religion, urban structures, legal systems, and moral values such as family values. Durkheim considers the beliefs, practices, and consciousness of the collective to be coercive on individuals as actors.

In this sense, Durkheim has a structuralist approach, considering the social structures to exert a strong influence on social action. Of course, it is individuals who act, but they do not act on a purely individual basis. Rather, they have obligations and duties, and generally act in ways that are strongly influenced by the structures of which they are part.

Sociology can be distinguished from psychology in this way — noting that psychologists study individuals and their mental processes, whereas sociologists are concerned with the structures that influence social action and interaction. It is this study of society as a whole, individuals in their social relationships with other individuals, and the connections of these social relationships to society, that constitutes the subject matter of sociology.

This leads to the title of the chapter — society as sui generis — that is, society as a thing in itself, something of its own kind, or a thing apart. Emile Durkheim was born in Epinal in Lorraine, France. He was a contemporary of Weber , but probably never met Weber, and lived his adult life after Karl Marx died.

Durkheim came from a Jewish background, and was a superior student at school and University. He taught for a number of years, and then received an appointment to a position in philosophy at the University of Bordeaux in There he taught the subject of moral education and later taught the first course in sociology at a French university. In he was appointed to a professorship at the Sorbonne, in Paris, where he remained until he died.

Durkheim is often considered a conservative within the field of sociology, being concerned primarily with order, consensus, solidarity, social morality, and systems of religion. His theoretical analysis helped provide a basis for relatively conservative structural functional models of society. However, Durkheim was involved politically in the Dreyfus affair, and condemned French racism and anti-Semitism.

Durkheim might more properly be considered a political liberal, in that he advocated individual freedom, and opposed impediments to the free operation of the division of labour. In contemporary terms, he might be considered a social democrat, in that he favoured social reforms, while opposing the development of a socialist society. For Durkheim, these would promote more than just their own interests, the general interests of the society as a whole, creating solidarity in a society that had developed a complex division of labour.

In advocating this, he comes close to some versions of pluralism. Durkheim was not generally involved in politics, and can be considered a more academic sociologist than either Weber or Marx. In terms of the development of the field of sociology, Durkheim is especially important. He was the first to offer courses in sociology in French universities, at a time when sociology was not well known or favoured. His writings are important within the field of sociology, in that several of them are basic works that sociology students today are expected to read and understand.

Much of the manner in which sociology as an academic discipline is carried on follows Durkheim's suggestions and approach. French sociology, in particular, follows Durkheim, and some of Durkheim's books are likely to serve as texts in French sociology. Much American sociology is also heavily influenced by Durkheim. In recent years, there has again been much attention paid to his writings. Division of Labor in Society.

In The Division of Labor in Society Durkheim attempts to determine what is the basis of social solidarity in society and how this has changed over time. This was Durkheim's first major work, so it does not address all the issues that be considered important.

But in this work he began his study of how society is sui generis , an entity of its own. These two forms mechanical solidarity, which characterizes earlier or traditional societies, where the division of labour is relatively limited. The form of social solidarity in modern societies, with a highly developed division of labour, is called organic solidarity. Durkheim argues that the division of labour itself which creates organic solidarity, because of mutual needs of individuals in modern soceity.

In doing so, each person also receives some recognition of his or her own rights and contributions within the collectivity. According to Giddens p. On the other hand, there are also moral ideas encouraging people to be well rounded, of service to society as a whole.

These two seem contradictory, and Durkheim is concerned with finding the historical and sociological roots of each of these, along with how these two seemingly contradictory moral guidelines are reconciled in modern society.

This book can also be read with a view to illuminating Durkheim's methods. In the first chapter, he outlines his method, and the theory which could be falsified. By looking at morality, he is not pursuing a philosophical course, mainly in the realm of ideas.

That is, Durkheim is attempting to determine the roots of morality by studying society, and changes in society. These forms of morality are social facts, and data from society must be obtained, and these used to discover causes. The data used by Durkheim are observable, empirical forms of data in the form of laws, institutions legal and other , norms and behaviour. In this book, Durkheim adopts a non-quantitative approach, but in Suicide his approach is more quantitative. In examining the roots of social solidarity, Durkheim regards the examination of systems of law as an important means of understanding morality.

Since law reproduces the principal forms of social solidarity, we have only to classify the different types of law to find therefrom the different types of social solidarity which correspond to it. Division , p. That is, since social solidarity is a concept that it not easily observable or measurable, Durkheim attempts to use systems of law as an index of forms and changes in socialsolidarity.

From this, Durkheim begins to build a proof of the division of labour as the basis for the different forms of solidarity. He then attempts to show the nature of society, how it changes over time, and how this results in the shift from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity. Early societies tended to be small scale, localized in villages or rural areas, with a limited division of labour or only a simple division of labour by age and sex.

These societies are characterized by likeness, in which the members of the society share the same values, based on common tasks and common life situations and experiences. In these early societies, Durkheim argues that legal codes or the system of law tends to be repressive law or penal law. If there is a crime in this society, then this crime stands as an offense to all, because it is an offense to the common morality, the shared system of values that exists.

In essence, Durkheim is describing the birth of the modern industrial state. The concentration of the population and the centralization of the means of production created an enormous shift in the way of life for large parts of European society. It also changed the way that people related to one another. The way of life that corresponded to medieval society no longer corresponded to the way of life in the modern industrial world.

It was impossible for new generations to live in the same ways as their predecessors and European society witnessed a weakening of all its previous traditions, particularly its religious traditions. Yet how is one to understand this statement? What does this mean for European society? On the one hand the old gods are dead. Because of the massive transformations taking place, European society became profoundly destructured.

The institutions animating medieval life disappeared. As a result, individuals were having a hard time finding meaningful attachments to social groups and society as a whole lost its former unity and cohesiveness.

Not only this, but the transformations that led to modernity also rendered former beliefs and practices irrelevant. The big things of the past, the political, economic, social, and especially religious institutions, no longer inspired the enthusiasm they once did. With former ways of life no longer relevant and society no longer cohesive, the collective force so vital for the life of a society was no longer generated. This would have an important impact on the religion of medieval society, Christianity.

Because society no longer had the means to create the collective force that exists behind God, belief in God weakened substantially. Christian society was no longer sufficiently present to the individual for faith in God to be maintained; the individual no longer felt, literally, the presence of God in their lives. With the lack of faith in God also came a rejection of other elements of Christian doctrine, such as Christian morality and Christian metaphysics, which were beginning to be replaced respectively by modern notions of justice and modern science.

In sum, the social milieu that supported Christianity disappeared, leaving Christian faith, values, and thinking without any social foundations to give them life. That Christianity faded away in European society is not a problem in itself, for it merely reflects a natural course of development a society may take.

For Durkheim, the changes in European society were taking place too quickly and no new institutions had been able to form in the absence of the old ones. European society had not yet been able to create a religion to replace Christianity. Instead what Durkheim saw in Europe was a society in a state of disaggregation characterized by a lack of cohesion, unity, and solidarity. Individuals in such a society have no bonds between them and interact in a way similar to molecules of water, without any central force that is able to organize them and give them shape.

European society had become nothing but a pile of sand that the slightest wind would succeed at dispersing. To begin, such a society is incapable of generating social forces that act on the individual. It is unable to create an authority that exerts pressure on individuals to act and think in a similar manner.

Without these forces acting on the individual from the outside, individuals are dispersed from their commitment to society and left to their own. Duties are no longer accepted carte blanche and moral rules no longer seem binding.

As such, individuals increasingly are detached from group obligation and act out of self-interest. These are the two conditions that Durkheim believes characterize the moral situation of modern European society: rampant individualism and weak morality. A second problem stemming from the fact that society is no longer present to individuals is a higher suicide rate, specifically with two types of suicide that Durkheim identifies in Suicide.

The first is egoistic suicide, in which an individual no longer see a purpose to life and sees life as meaningless. These feelings arise because the bonds integrating the individual to society have weakened or been broken.

This problem involves society because society is an important source of meaning and direction for individuals, giving them goals to pursue and norms to guide them.

Consequently the individual is perpetually unhappy. Both types of suicide result from a weakness of social solidarity and an inability for society to adequately integrate its individuals. A final consequence is that society has no central measure for truth and no authoritative way of organizing or understanding the world.

In such a state, there arises the potential for conflict between individuals or groups who have different ways of understanding the world. This same underlying disorganization was preventing European society from generating the collective force necessary for the creation of new institutions and a new sacred object. The death of the gods is a symptom of a sickened society, one that has lost its internal structure and descended into an-archy, or a society with no authority and no definitive principles, moral or otherwise, to build itself on.

In spite of such a glum analysis, Durkheim did have hope for the future. According to the later Durkheim, religion is part of the human condition and as long as humans are grouped in collective life they will inevitably form a religion of some sort.

Europe could thus be characterized as in a state of transition; out of the ashes of Christianity, a new religion would eventually emerge. This new religion would form around the sacred object of the human person as it is represented in the individual, the only element common to all in a society that is becoming more and more diverse and individualized.

What is its conception of individual? The cult of the individual begins, like all religions according to Durkheim, with collective effervescence, the first moments of which can be found in the democratic revolutions taking place in Europe and elsewhere at the end of the 18th and during the 19th centuries. Durkheim identifies the French Revolution as an example of such a release of collective energy. The concept of individual that these democratic revolutions were embracing follows strongly the line of thinking established during the Enlightenment; it is based on a general idea of human dignity and does not lead to a narcissistic, egotistical worship of the self.

The cult of the individual thus presupposes an autonomous individual endowed with rationality, born both free and equal to all other individuals in these respects. With this sacred object at its core, the cult of the individual also contains moral ideals to pursue. These moral ideals that define society include the ideals of equality, freedom, and justice. With society becoming more diverse, the respect, tolerance, and promotion of individual differences become important social virtues.

It is by protecting the rights of the individual in this way, somewhat paradoxically, that society is best preserved. Modern democracy, which encodes, institutionalizes, and protects the rights of the individual, is the form of government whereby Western societies best express their collective belief in the dignity of the individual.

Rationality is also of primary importance to this religion. The cult of the individual has as a first dogma the autonomy of reason and as a first right free inquiry. Authority can and must be rationally grounded in order for the critically rational individual to have respect for social institutions. In line with the importance of rationality, modern science provides the cosmology for the cult of the individual. Scientific truths have come to be accepted by society as a whole and Durkheim even says that modern society has faith in science in a way similar to how past societies had faith in Christianity cosmology; despite that most individuals do not participate in or fully understand the scientific experiments taking place, the general population trusts scientific findings and accepts them as true.

Modern science has an advantage, however, in that, unlike other religious cosmologies, it avoids dogmatizing about reality and permits individuals to challenge scientific theories through rational inquiry, fitting with the doctrine of the cult of the individual perfectly.

However, with the large growth in population and the individualization of society, it becomes very easy for society to lose hold of individuals or for the state to become out of touch with the population it serves.

What is more, if society becomes too atomized the state risks becoming domineering. As a way of preventing the creation of a wholly individualistic society, Durkheim advocates the existence of intermediary groups, such as religious institutions, labor unions, families, regional groupings, and different types of other civil society groups.

These groups would serve a double purpose. On the one hand they would be intimate enough to provide sufficient social bonds for the individual, which would serve to integrate the individual into the society and develop their moral conscience. On the other hand, they would represent the demands of individuals to the government and check state power, thereby ensuring that the state does not become domineering.

At the same time, Durkheim understands that these secondary groups run the risk of dominating the individual and cutting them off from the wider society. In such a situation society would risk fragmenting into distinct groupings, leading to social conflict. Hence, Durkheim also recognizes the need for the state to exercise its authority over secondary groups as a way of liberating the individual and having them participate in the higher society and moral order that the state represents. Ultimately this dialectic between the state and the secondary group ensures the proper functioning of a democratic society, namely by ensuring that individuals are properly socialized and that neither the state nor the secondary groups become repressive towards the individual.

Through this new religion of the cult of the individual, to which he gave his full support, Durkheim predicted that European society would once again find the unity and cohesion it was lacking; once again it would have a sacred object.

This document could be regarded as one of the central holy texts of the cult of the individual, helping frame contemporary international moral discourse. Durkheim is one of the first thinkers in the Western tradition, along with other 19 th century thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Peirce , and Karl Marx, to reject the Cartesian model of the self, which stipulates a transcendental, purely rational ego existing wholly independent of outside influence.

In opposition to the Cartesian model, Durkheim views the self as integrated in a web of social, and thus historical, relations that greatly influence their actions, interpretations of the world, and even their abilities for logical thought. What is more, social forces can be assimilated by the individual to the point where they operate on an automatic, instinctual level, in which the individual is unaware of the effect society has on their tastes, moral inclinations, or even their perception of reality.

In consequence, if an individual wants to know themselves, they must understand the society of which they are a part, and how this society has a direct impact on their existence. In these ways, Durkheim anticipated by at least fifty years the post-modern deconstruction of the self as a socio-historically determined entity.

Partly because of this conception of the individual, and partly because of his methodology and theoretical stances, Durkheim has been routinely criticized on several points. Critics argue that he is a deterministic thinker and that his view of society is so constraining towards the individual that it erases any possibility for individual autonomy and freedom.

Others argue that his sociology is too holistic and that it leaves no place for the individual or for subjective interpretations of social phenomena. Critics have gone so far as to accuse Durkheim of being anti-individual due in part to his consistent claims that the individual is derived from society. To begin, one should recall that social facts, while sui generis products of society, exist only as far as individuals incorporate them.

On this point Durkheim makes clear on several occasions that individuals incorporate and appropriate elements of society, such as religious beliefs, morality, or language, in their own manner. Thus, each individual expresses society in their own way. It should also be remembered that social facts are the result of a fusion of individual minds. As such there is a delicate interplay between the individual and society whereby the individual not only maintains their individuality, but is also able to enrich the field of social forces by contributing to it their own personal thoughts and feelings.

In another sense, critics claiming that Durkheim is anti-individual overlook his analysis of modern society. This grants individuals an increasing amount of freedom to develop their personality.

At least in Western society, the development of and respect for individualism has grown to such an extent that it has become the object of a cult; the individual is a sacred object and the protection of individual liberties and human dignity has been codified into moral principles. Granted that this individualism is itself a product of collective life, modern society, if anything, encourages individual autonomy, diversity, and freedom of thought as shared social norms.

In fact, Durkheim argues that to adhere to a group is the only thing that makes an individual human, since everything that we attribute as being special to humanity language, the ability for rational thought, the ability for moral action, and so forth is a product of social life. Far from being anti-individual, Durkheim never lost sight of the individual, and the relation of the individual to society is a guiding question throughout his work. Paul Carls Email: paul. Biography a.

Intellectual Development and Influences Durkheim was not the first thinker to attempt to make sociology a science. The Sociological Method: Society and the Study of Social Facts According to Durkheim, all elements of society, including morality and religion, are part of the natural world and can be studied scientifically. The Categories Language is not the only facet of logical thought that society engenders; society also plays a large role in creating the categories of thought, such as time, space, number, causality, personality and so forth.

The Classification of Knowledge Another vital role that society plays in the construction of human knowledge is the fact that it actively organizes objects of experience into a coherent classificatory system that encompasses the entire universe. Cultural Relativism versus Scientific Truth With such a theory of knowledge, Durkheim reveals himself to be a cultural relativist, arguing that each culture has a network of self-referential logic and concepts that creates truths that are legitimate and, while not necessarily grounded in the reality of the physical world, are grounded within the reality of their respective social framework.

Conclusion In the end, Durkheim strives to account for a total sociology of knowledge. Causes of Social Change Durkheim elaborates much of his theory of social change in Division , although he does return to the topic in other works such as Rules. The Division of Labor and the Emergence of Modernity in Europe The industrialization and urbanization of Western Europe had great effects on society in a number of different ways. The Cult of the Individual: Durkheim and Politics According to the later Durkheim, religion is part of the human condition and as long as humans are grouped in collective life they will inevitably form a religion of some sort.

The Individual and Society Durkheim is one of the first thinkers in the Western tradition, along with other 19 th century thinkers such as Friedrich Nietzsche, Charles Peirce , and Karl Marx, to reject the Cartesian model of the self, which stipulates a transcendental, purely rational ego existing wholly independent of outside influence. References and Further Reading a. Paris: Alcan, Le Suicide , Paris: Alcan, Paris: Colin, Propaganda pamphlet examining German nationalism during WWI.

Sociologie et philosophie. A lecture course Durkheim regularly gave on the subject of morality and how it could be instilled in individuals through various disciplinary mechanisms.

Le Socialisme. Mauss, Paris: Alcan, A text examining the history of socialist ideas and the socialist movement, including Karl Marx and St. Pragmatisme et sociologie. Paris: Vrin, A lecture course given by Durkheim examining and critiquing Pragmatist views on truth and defending his sociological explanation of truth.

Translated by W. New York: The Free Press, Halls, Steven Lukes, ed. Suicide: A Study in Sociology. Translated by John A. Spaulding and George Simpson. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. He saw increasing population density and population growth as key factors in the evolution of society and the advent of modernity.

As the number of people in a given area increase, he posited, so does the number of interactions, and the society becomes more complex. Population growth creates competition and incentives to trade and further the division of labor. But as people engage in more economic activity with neighbors or distant traders, they begin to loosen the traditional bonds of family, religion, and moral solidarity that had previously ensured social integration.

Durkheim worried that modernity might herald the disintegration of society. Following a socioevolutionary approach reminiscent of Comte, Durkheim described the evolution of society from mechanical solidarity to organic solidarity.

Simpler societies, he argued, are based on mechanical solidarity, in which self-sufficient people are connected to others by close personal ties and traditions e. Also, in such societies, people have far fewer options in life. Modern societies, on the other hand, are based on organic solidarity, in which people are connected by their reliance on others in the division of labor.

Because modern society is complex, and because the work that individuals do is so specialized, individuals can no longer be self-sufficient and must rely on others to survive. Thus, although modern society may undermine the traditional bonds of mechanical solidarity, it replaces them with the bonds of organic solidarity.