Durkheim's Theory of Division of Labor

The purpose of this research is to examine Emile Durkheim's theory of the division of labor in society and its application to an observation of realworld societies in the modern period. The plan of the research will be to set forth the major aspects of the theory and show how he develops it. Specific applications of the theory will also be discussed, particularly with reference to its relevance to the questions confronting contemporary society. In this regard, the scope and limit of the relevance of Durkheim's theory to current social realities will be examined.

Durkheim's overriding purpose in his writing appears to have been to describe and analyze contemporary society in terms of social science. That is, he sought to apply the scientific method to the task of examining the form, function, and substance of contemporary society, which for Durkheim would have been the Western society of the latter nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The result of his efforts in regard to the division of labor in society was the creation of a theory that would explain the source, evolution, framework, and content of a morally ordered society. In turn, these efforts contributed much to the emergence of social science in general and sociology in particular as a distinct intellectual discipline.

Durkheim views society as the sum total of various forces interacting within it and for this reason the society that Durkheim envisions has been referred to as organic in nature. To the exten

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lidarity will be specifically derived from one defined by mechanical solidarity, chiefly because of the proximity and density of individuals who make up the social order. "[T]he more general the common conscience becomes, the greater the place it leaves to individual variations," says Durkheim. In other words, once the common conscience is established, the passage of time, plus the confluence of many persons, inevitably leads to creative thinking on the part of those who are governed by it. The original thought leads to increased individuation, hence the inevitably increased specialization and recombination of diverse factors which inevitably characterize the development of an organic (i.e., interdependent) mode of society. The proximity of groups, the volume and density of society imply the progress of civilization, according to Durkheim: "The more numerous they are and the more they act upon one another, the more they react with force and rapidity; consequently, the more intense social life becomes. But it is this intensification which constitutes civilization."15 Durkheim discerns an interdependence of the organic solidarity and the mechanical solidarity in the progress of civilization. In other words, the collective conscie

Category: Psychology - D