Sociological Work of Durkheim, Marx and Barthes

It does not take much examination of the history of social theory to see that varieties of conflict, alienation, and paradox appear inherent in the relationships between individual and individual, between individual and group, between individual and/or group and society at large. Endless varieties of dyadic, intergroup, and intrasocietal encounters suggest that the reality of social organization and social actors may not easily be reduced to one description. Yet the impulse to make sense of what eludes understanding persists because the individual is a social being, subject to great external influences yet also an actor in those influences. As Mead, associated with symbolic interactionism, states: "The life-process takes place in individual organisms, so that the psychology which studies that process in its creative determining function becomes a science of the objective world" (Mead 278).

Making sense of social interactions is

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im describes society as the sum total or integration of various forces interacting within it, though the sum may be either "mechanical" or "organic." Mechanical solidarity follows from the reliance of persons on the stability and integrity of their society, marked by the social similarities and psychological affinities (Durkheim 60-62). It is related to the "collective consciousness" (43 et passim). To be sure, there are deviations from the integrated whole, e.g., crime, the punishment of which entails a collective sentiment for vengeance for something sacred which we vaguely feel is more or less outside and above us" (Durkheim 56). Organic solidarity occurs because of interrelationship of individuals within that society owing to division of labor, or mutual reliance for social coherence: "However richly endowed we may be, we always lack something . . . [and] seek in our friends those qualities we lack" (Durkheim 17). In this context there are "special functions" of individuals, unregulated by collective consciousness, that foster social "cohesion" and "solidarity" by their very diversity (85), much in the manner of higher-animal organisms comprising many cells and one body. This view of division of labor is that the more specia
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Approximate Word count = 1356
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page)