the central conception of his work, or the collective representations of society through collective conscience.
Similarly, Durkheim believed that social solidarity was engendered by the collective conscience and that this led to a distinct pattern in society that he called "normal" and "pathological." The normal type is only a relative term, one that really means average or unexceptional. However, the pathological situation, called anomie is more of a characteristic of advanced or modernized societies that results from an abundance of diverse social functions that may be incompatible. For instance, Durkheim used this concept to explain such behaviors as the statistical correlation between suicide and widowhood, or between the suicide rate and the divorce rate (Coppleston, 1985).
The Division of Labour in Society was Durkheim's doctoral thesis and first major work, actually published in 1893. In basic terms, the book is Durkheim's attempt to explain the process of industrialization and urbanization in European society. What is novel about his approach, however, is that he seems to examine the various modalities of labor differentiation from the bottom up, rather than the opposite manner that had been popular in the decades before his work appeared. It is also important to remember that Durkheim was writing after Karl Marx's critique of capitalism appeared, and that Durkheim saw himself as a student of the scientific basis of society.
Thus, for Durkheim, a basic methodological supposition is that the origins of an institution does not explain its function. Especially important in this concept is that different societies develop their structure of labor at different rates and respond to the pressures of modernization and urbanization in different manners. Labor, then, exists as a pattern of growth and development in society and the division of labor further refines and elaborates that function (Durkheim, 1984).
Max ...