2122923, 7:36 PM [ASummary of Durkheim's ‘Divison of Labor in Society’
Science, Tech, Math > Social Sciences
Understanding Durkheim's
Division of Labor
Views on Social Change and the Industrial Revolution
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By Ashley Crossman
Updated on October 24,2019
French phil
(or De la Division du Travail Social) debuted in 1893. It was his first major
published work and the one in which he introduced the concept of anomie or
sopher Emile Durkheim's book The Division of Labor in Society
the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society.
At the time, The Division of Labor in Society was influential in advancing
sociological theories and thought. Today, it is highly revered for its forward-
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Durkheim discusses how the division of labor—the establishment of specified
jobs for certain people—benefits society because it increases the reproductive
capacity of a process and the skill set of the workers.
It also creates a feeling of solidarity among people who share those jobs. But,
Durkheim says, the division of labor goes beyond economic interests: In the
process, it also establishes social and moral order within a society. "The division
of labor can be effectuated only among members of an already constituted
society," he argues.
To Durkheim, the division of labor is in direct proportion with the dynamic or
moral density of a society. This is defined as a combination of the concentration
of people and the amount of socialization of a group or society.
Dynamic Density
Density can occur in three ways:
through an increase in the spatial concentration of people
through the growth of towns
through an increase in the number and efficacy of the means of
communication
When one or more of these things happen, says Durkheim, labor begins to
become divided and jobs become more specialized. At the same time, because
tasks grow more complex, the struggle for meaningful existence becomes more
strenuous.
‘A major theme of the book is the difference between developing and advanced
civilizations and how they perceive social solidarity. Another focus is how each
type of society defines the role of law in resolving breaches in that social
solidarity.
Social Solidarity
Durkheim argues that two kinds of social solidarity exist: mechanical solidarity
and organic solidarity.
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society is what Durkheim calls the "collective consciousness," sometimes
translated as "conscience collective," meaning a shared belief system.
With regard to organic solidarity, on the other hand, society is more complex—a
system of different functions united by definite relationships. Each individual
must have a distinct job or task and a personality that is their own. Here,
Durkheim was speaking specifically about men. Of women, the philosopher
said:
"Today, among cultivated people, the woman leads a completely different
existence from that of man. One might say that the two great functions of the
psychic life are thus dissociated, that one of the sexes takes care of the effective
functions and the other of intellectual functions."
Framing individuals as men, Durkheim argued that individuality grows as parts
of society grow more complex. Thus, society becomes more efficient at moving
in sync, yet at the same time, each of its parts has more movements that are
distinctly individual.
According to Durkheim, the more primitive a society is, the more it is
characterized by mechanical solidarity and sameness. The members of an
agrarian society, for example, are more likely to resemble each other and share
cated
the same beliefs and morals than the members of a highly sophisti
technology- and information-driven society.
As societies become more advanced and civilized, the individual members of
those societies become more distinguishable from one another. People are
managers or laborers, philosophers or farmers. Solidarity becomes more
organic as societies develop their divisions of labor.
The Role of Law in Preserving Social Solidarity
For Durkheim, the laws of a society are the most visible symbol of social
solidarity and the organization of social life in its most precise and stable form.
Law plays a part in a society that is analogous to the nervous system in
organisms. The nervous system regulates various bodily functions so they work
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type of social solidarity: repressive law (moral) and restitutive law (organic).
Repressive Law
Repressive law is related to the center of common consciousness” and everyone
participates in judging and punishing the perpetrator. The severity of a crime is
not measured necessarily by the damage incurred to an individual victim, but
rather gauged as the damage caused to the society or social order as a whole.
Punishments for crimes against the collective are typically harsh. Repressive
law, says Durkheim, is practiced in mechanical forms of society.
Restitutive Law
The second type of law is restitutive law, which does focus on the victim when
there is a crime since there are no commonly shared beliefs about what
damages society. Restitutive law corresponds to the organic state of society and
is made possible by more specialized bodies of society such as courts and
lawyers.
Law and Societal Development
Repressive law and restitutory law are directly correlated with the degree of a
society's development. Durkheim believed that repressive law is common in
primitive or mechanical societies where sanctions for crimes are typically made
and agreed upon by the whole community. In these "lower" societies, crimes
against the individual do occur, but in terms of seriousness, those are placed on
the lower end of the penal ladder.
Crimes against the community take priority in mechanical societies, according
to Durkheim, because the evolution of the collective consciousness is
widespread and strong while the division of labor has not yet happened. When
division of labor is present and collective consciousness is all but absent, the
opposite is true. The more a society becomes ci
ized and the division of labor
is introduced, the more restitutory law takes place.
More About the Book
Durkheim wrote this book at the height of the industrial age. His theories
surfaced as a way to fit people into France's new social order and a rapidly
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Te ITUSTITAT SOCTAT ETOUPS COMPTISEU TAMMY ANT ETE OOTS, OUTS
Industrial Revolution continued, people found new cohorts within their jobs
and created new social groups with co-workers.
Dividing society into small labor-defined groups required an inereasingly
centralized authority to regulate relations between the different groups, said
Durkheim. As a visible extension of that state, law codes needed to evolve as
well to maintain the orderly operation of social relations by conciliation and
civil law rather than penal sanctions.
Durkheim based his discussion of organic solidarity on a dispute he had with
Herbert Spencer, who claimed that industrial solidarity is spontaneous and that
there is no need for a coercive body to create or maintain it. Spencer believed
that social harmony is simply established by itself—Durkheim strongly
disagreed. Much of this book involves Durkheim arguing with Spencer's stance
and pleading his own views on the topic.
Criticism
Durkheim's primary objective was to evaluate social changes related to
industrialization and to better understand problems within an industrialized
society. But British legal philosopher Michael Clarke argues that Durkheim fell
short by lumping a variety of societies into two groups: industrialized and non-
industrialized.
Durkheim didn't see or acknowledge the wide range of non-industrialized
societies, instead imagining industrialization as the historical watershed that
separated goats from sheep.
American scholar Eliot Freidson pointed out that theories about
industrialization tend to define labor in terms of the material world of
technology and production. Freidson says that such divisions are created by an
administrative authority without consideration of the social interaction of its
participants.
American sociologist Robert Merton noted that as a positivist, Durkheim
adopted the methods and criteria of the physical sciences to examine the social
laws that arose during industrialization. But physical sciences, rooted in nature,
simply can't explain the laws that have arisen from mechanization.
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Separate and nonsocial beings. By using this framework, the philosopher
entirely missed out on the role women have played in both industrial and pre-
industrial societie:
Sources
Clarke, Michael. "Durkheim's Sociology of Law.” British Journal of Law and Society Vol. 3, No.
2,, Cardiff University, 1976.
Durkheim, Emile. On the Division of Labor in Society. Trans. Simpson, George. The MacMillan
Company, 1933
Freidson, Eliot. "The Division of Labor as Social Interaction.” Social Problems, Vol. 23 No. 3,
Oxford University Press, 1976.
Gehike, C. E. Reviewed Work: of On the Division of Labor in Society, Emile Durkheim, George
Simpson
Columbia Law Review, 1935.
Jones, Robert Alun. "Ambivalent Cartesians: Durkheim, Montesquicu, and Method." American
Journal of Sociology, 1994, University of Chicago Press.
Kemper, Theodore D. "The Division of Labor: A Post~Durkheimian Analytical View.” American
Sociological Review, 1972.
Lehmann, Jennifer M. "Durkheim's Theories of Deviance and Suicide: A Feminist
Reconsideration." American Journal of Sociology, University of Chicago Press, 1995.
Merton, Robert K. "Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society.” American Journal of Sociology,
‘Vol. 40, No. 3, University of Chicago Press, 1934.
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