.
EMILE DURKHEIM (1858-1917):
THE SCIENCE OF SOCIETY AS MORAL ORDER

Literature:

(1893) The Division of Labor in Society
(1895) The Rules of Sociological Method
(1897) Suicide
(1912) The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

A. The Rules of Sociological Method

1. Sociology as the Study of Social Facts

a) Definition and Characteristics of Social Facts:

Definition: a social fact is (1) any way of acting, fixed or not, (2) capable of exerting an external constraint over the individual; (3) it is general and exists independent of its individual manifestations.

Note the characteristics of a social fact: 1) Social facts are ways of being, including (ideal) representations and (material) actions;2) They have a coercive power over the individual; they are accompanied by sanctions, and thereby control the individual; this is actually how we can identify social facts (see two types of law in division of labor), and this is because:3) They are external to the individual; they are social; society is their substratum; they cannot be reduced to its individual manifestations, which are both part social and part psychological (socio-psychological); therefore, they are not collective (shared by everyone); society is a reality sui generis.

b) The Study of Social Facts:

Basic Rule: Consider social facts as things:

Durkheim first discusses social philosophies. These are unscientific because they substitute social reality for a certain conception of that reality. From this perspective, Durkheim discards Comte’s and Spencer’s evolutionary schemas, since they represent their ideas of society rather than present the facts of social life. What we need, is a clear-cut, unambiguous, and scientifically developed concept of the social. For instance, sociology should study not an idea of ethical rules but the ethical rules themselves. Consequently, Durkheim concludes that social phenomena are things and that they should be treated as such. Social facts, then, are seen to be things that exist outside of the will of people.Therefore, sociology needs to be established as a rigorous discipline, with the following principles:

Auxiliary Rule 1: Discard all preconceptions:

This calls for a value-free approach to the study of social facts.Whatever moral, political, or religious concerns the sociologist may have, he cannot allow them into his investigations. Ethical considerations an the like are themselves object for sociological inquiry.

Auxiliary Rule 2: Define the subject matter in terms of the common external
characteristics of a group of phenomena, and include all phenomena that
correspond to this definition:

This rule calls for a clearly defined subject matter in terms of its inherent characteristics. This ensures that the topics of sociological investigation do not depend on the sociologist but on the social facts.Durkheim makes the interesting comment that this rule is often not observed because many concepts in sociology, e.g. the family or law, are also common-sense notions. Another violation of this rule is that not all relevant phenomena are included in a study; a selection is made, often in terms of assuming that what holds for our society, is valid universally.One should therefore start with the observable consequences of the phenomenon under investigation to define it, that is, same effects indicate one phenomenon (e.g. crime is classified by punishment).

Auxiliary Rule 3: Social facts are studied objectively when they are isolated
from their individual manifestations:

This follows from the basic rule, and from the fact that objectivity is enhanced by the increasing stability of a subject matter. Hence, study social facts independent of their individual manifestations since the latter are too variable.

c) Social Facts and Physical Things:

In the preface to the 2nd edition of Rules, Durkheim discusses some misunderstandings of his method. First, he says that social things are things like physical things but this does not mean that they are physical things. Social facts are things in the sense that they stand outside an idea, that they can only be known by observation, and that thus they must be studied as nature is studied by physicists. Second, society is, of course, made up out of individuals, but this does not mean that we should study individual consciousness, because the resulting synthesis of individuals coming together is a reality sui generis. The collective representations lead a life of their own, they exhibit their own psyche, and they reveal, as one and only one of their characteristics, the fact that they are constraining or coercive.
 

2. The Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological

Science cannot decide what is good or evil for us, because it would be ideological, yet, on the other hand, science must justify itself.Durkheim sees the solution to this problem in the fact that science should ask and investigate what is actually, in a given society, good or desirable.Science is not evil or good but it can study evil and good. Here, Durkheim proceeds to do just that.

Social facts are pathological when they disrupt the normal operations of social functions in a certain society. This, of course, can vary from society to society. Note Durkheim’s functionalist argument that the most widespread social forms are, in the long run and in the aggregate, the ones that survive (normality is therefore more common). Therefore, social facts can be pathological at some time in development (but not in the long run) because, and only when, they were at one time normal.

Therefore, the following rules apply to distinguishing normal from pathological.

1) A social fact is normal for a specific social type, at some specific time in its social evolution, when it occurs in the average society of that species; this can be verified by:

2) demonstrating that the general character of a phenomenon is related to the general conditions of collective life; and this is necessary:

3) when the social type under investigation has not yet completely evolved.

An example is the demonstration of the normality of crime. Crime is normal because it is observed, in some form or another, in all societies.It is not a demonstration of the wicked nature of man, but, on the contrary, a factor that shows the necessary integrative element in society (see below).

3. Morphology, Explanation and Comparison

a) Social Morphology: The Constitution of Social Types

Above we indicated that Durkheim distinguishes different societies from one another (e.g. what is normal in one society is not necessarily normal in another). How does he make this distinction? This is the task of social morphology.

Durkheim proposes to first identify the basic, crucial characteristics of societies, which can be identified in a study of the simplest of societies (this is why he undertook the study of Australian religions). This indicates the relevance of ethnographies for sociology. Therefore, he proposes to study the horde, i.e. a social formation which cannot be split up into any smaller social parts; the horde consist of individuals.Different hordes linked together form a clan. From here on, societies can be classified into social types, e.g. a simple replication of hordes or clans, a replication of these replications, and so on (see Division of Labor).

b) Sociological Explanation

The identification of social types, on the basis of the purpose that certain basic social facts fulfill, is insufficient to demonstrate where these facts came from. Therefore, look for the historical causes that have certain social facts as effects (very important: this shows that Durkheim was not a mere functionalist; two things are needed: identification of facts based on functions, and historical study of causes!!).

Therefore, to explain a fact, study its cause and its function separately.Obviously, following from the basic rule, these functions and causes are, by definition, social and cannot be retrieved in the individual psyche, although he admits that human nature plays a part in social facts (as a kind of disturbing factor, but never as a cause). The rules to find function and cause are: the cause of a social fact lies in antecedent social facts, and the function of a social fact lies in the end it fulfills.In other words, social processes should be explained in terms of society itself (e.g. social volume and density).

This also leads Durkheim to suggest that sociology can explain what is, by finding out what has been, but not to predict what will be (against Marx and the evolutionists). Moreover, it indicates the special relevance of history to sociology. Sociology must be historical but this should be conceived as a study of the objective causes of social facts (based on principles of morphology), i.e. as a psychology of the social (since society is a character of its own). Sociology cannot be a search for individuals’ inner states of mind, because introspection is only valid for individual psychology, not for sociology. Therefore too, the method of political economy to study goods in terms of the value they have for the participants in the economic process is invalid.

c) Sociological Proof by Comparison

Since there can be no experiment in sociology, causes of social facts are investigated by the comparative method, i.e. comparing the cases where two social facts are simultaneously absent or present, so we can discover the variations displayed in these combinations which provides evidence that one fact (cause) leads to another fact (effect). This method is guided by the rule that one cause leads to one effect (any one effect must be caused by one cause).

Note that this rule, as Durkheim admits, does not really prove causes, but that it can minimally disprove causes. Indeed, if someone states that A causes B, but we find a case where there is B but not A, then the thesis is disproved. Since social life is so complex, it can always be that we have omitted a relevant variable. A parallelism of a sufficient number of cases, however, adds value to our inferences on causal links. Then we can deduce a thesis and test it inductively. This could lead us to establish laws. What is indispensable for sociology, then, is to explain social facts by tracing its entire development throughout all social species (i.e. across time and space).

In sum, sociology must make up classifications, then sociology must be historical to identify causes and effects, and finally, in being historical, sociology must be objective.

Conclusions:

1) Sociology is not philosophy: sociology is empirical and investigates causes;
2) The sociological method is objective; social facts are things and studied as such;
3) The sociological method is unique to sociology (not psyhcological): social facts are social.

4. Psychology and Philosophy

It is not true, Durkheim argues, that he wants to destroy psychology and philosophy. First, sociology begins with society to see how it affects human nature, the human psyche (sociology of social facts leads to solid psychology). Second, metaphysical questions will always exist, yet sociology will force them to be asked in different form, so sociology informs philosophical inquiry. In addition, sociology can study philosophies as social facts, so sociology is also n extension of philosophy.
 

B. Suicide as Sociological Object

1. Extra-Social Factors

First, Durkheim rules out that suicide varies with psychopathic states.It cannot be that people have only one specific type of mental illness that would lead them to commit suicide. People cannot be temporarily insane because they lack a motive to commit suicide. There is no correlation between insanity (as measured, for instance, by the number of people in an asylum) and the suicide rate. Finally, there is no correlation between alcoholism and suicide.

Second, Durkheim disproves that suicide varies with normal psychological states, such as race or heredity, since there is considerable variation in suicide rate within races.

Third, Durkheim argues that there is no relation between suicide and climate or seasonal temperature, but he finds that the intensity of life seems to have an effect (a social cause).

Finally, imitation, the mechanic reproduction of somebody else’s act, does not correlate with the suicide rate, since, for instance, there are no concentrated zones of suicides.

2. Social Causes and Social Types

The previous investigation on non-social factors of suicide, by elimination, shows that suicide must depend on social causes. Such a sociological explanation could start from types of suicide and then look for their causes.However, this is not possible because of lack of data. Therefore, we look for causes of suicide-rates, on the premise that one cause leads to one effect. How to look for these causes? The legal establishment gives immediate motives of suicides, but this only explains individual suicides, and not the more general states that lay behind them.

a) Egoistic Suicide

Thesis 1: Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration in religious society

Religion affects suicide: there is less suicide in Catholic countries, and more suicide in Protestant countries. Also, within any single nation this effect holds good. Jews generally commit even less suicide than Catholics. Note that both the Catholic and Protestant religions prohibit suicide. The essential difference, however, between Catholicism and Protestantism is that Protestantism permits free inquiry to a much greater extent, while Catholicism is organized by a hierarchical system of authority. Protestantism’s free inquiry is itself the effect of a lack of traditional beliefs and practices, in short, it is a less strongly integrated church. For Jews, the great solidarity, the need to live in greater union, protects them from suicide.

This explanation is confirmed: 1) of all protestant countries, England has a lower suicide-rate, because the Anglican church is more strongly organized; 2) free inquiry stimulates a desire for learning, and, indeed, the more the craving for knowledge develops, the more does suicide (this also explains why women commit less suicide; and for Jews the thesis does not hold because their strive for knowledge has a different origin, namely to be better armed for struggle in their unfavorable position). Note that knowledge in itself is not a source for evil, and religion in general has a prophylactic effect upon suicide. But the (lack of) intense collective life along with it explains their effect upon suicide.

Thesis 2: Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration in domestic society

Marriage reduces the danger of suicide. Other data show that: - too early marriages have an aggravating influence on suicide, especially for men; - married persons of both sexes commit less suicide than unmarried persons; - the sex committing less suicide in marriage varies from society to society; - widowhood leads to higher suicide-rates.

The privileged position of married persons, with regard to suicide, is not dependent on matrimonial selection (e.g. because men and women are recruited to marriage in the same way, but married women commit more suicide).Now, is it the conjugal group (husband and wife) or the family group (married with children!) that produces this effect. Data on families without children show that conjugality only plays a moderate role. The fact that widowers have children makes the crisis through which they pass more intense, and therefore their suicide-rate is higher. Differences in suicide during widowhood between the sexes are explained by the suicidal tendency of the sexes in the state of marriage (where men benefit more from marriage, they also suffer more from widowhood, but are also better able to endure it). The effect of the family group is further shown by the fact that higher family density (more children) correlates with lower suicide-rates, because families with more children are more powerfully integrated.

Thesis 3: Suicide varies inversely with the degree of integration in political society

Political societies also effect suicide-rates: revolutions, wars, and other political crises lead to a reduction of the number of suicides, because (and only when) such crises can move the masses, arousing collective sentiments and national faith, and integrate society, at least temporarily, towards a single end.

Conclusion: Suicide varies with the degree of social integration

Something in religion, the family, and political life must be common to explain their effect on suicide: they are all strongly integrated groups.Social integration refers to the degree of bonding or attachment of individuals to society. If groups are weakly integrated, the individual is less dependent on them, they are in a state of egoism: egoistic suicide springs from excessive individualism. An entire range of ideas, feelings and practices of civilized adults are built and expanded because of the demands of the social environment; they are social demands with a social purpose. But, as individuals, we must cling to them, and we can only do so to the extent to which we are integrated within society itself.(Women live more outside of community existence, this explains the relatively lower suicide-rates of widows as compared to widowers).

b) Altruistic Suicide

Thesis: Insufficient individuation leads to suicide; every form of suicide
is the exaggerated form of a virtue; the extremes are pathological

In the lower, primitive societies, old men, women at their husband’s death, and servants at the death of their chief kill themselves because it is their duty, it is compelled, because these individuals are completely absorbed in the group, they are very highly integrated. In this case, the ego is not its own property, this is a state of altruism.

Altruistic suicide may be obligatory (the previous examples), optional, i.e. not formally required, or considered a praiseworthy sacrifice (as in some, pantheistic religions). In all these cases, the individual strips himself of his personal being, in order to be engulfed in something considered the true essence, a mental representation which springs not from the individual, but from society. In modern society, altruistic suicide can be observed in the army, not because of bachelorhood, since the soldier is not isolated at all, and also not from alcoholism, or not from disgust with the service. Actually, those that are most inclined to a military career and best suited to the needs of the army, are the ones with highest suicide-rates (note that throughout these chapters, Durkheim refutes explanations different from his owns, and he does so by controlling variables when looking at statistical data). The general loss of discipline in the army in recent years is accompanied by a general decline in the suicide-rate, again, this proves the thesis of altruism.

c) Anomic Suicide

Thesis: Suicide varies with the degree of social regulation

1) Acute anomic suicide:

Economic crises increase suicide-rates, not because then life is more difficult, since even fortunate crises have this effect, but because they are disturbances of the collective order. This can be explained by the fact that man, unlike animals, has needs that are in principle infinite.If there would be no limits set to these needs, this would lead to perpetual unhappiness, and since man cannot limit the desires himself, a force outside of him must do it, an authority he respects, and this is society. Society is the moral disciplinary body whose authority must not only depend on force but also accepted as just. Now, when society is disturbed by crises, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this moral influence; society is then in a state of anomie, and this produces anomic suicide.

2) Chronic anomic suicide:

Anomie is a regular factor in the world of trade and industry. Economic progress exists in freeing relations from all kinds of regulation, the complete liberation of desires. Anomic suicide shares with egoistic suicide that both represent an insufficient presence of society in the individual, but egoism refers to a lack of integration (the attachment of individuals to society), anomie refers to a lack of regulation (the control of basic human passions).

Explanation: The suicide of widowhood is a result of domestic anomie, and divorce shows this even more. Particularly, divorce, especially where it is legally regulated, leads to higher suicide-rates among husbands.This is explained by the nature of marriage (conjugal society).For men, marriage offers a useful regulation of sexual desires and other passions, and divorce is a sudden weakening of this regulation.For women, this is different: women are more instinctive creatures and mentally less developed, so that any regulation (marriage) for them is a constraint without great advantages, and divorce frees them from this constraint. Anomic suicide because of divorce is thus wholly to be attributed to men. [Excessive regulation can also lead to suicide, fatalistic suicide, but this is very uncommon].

d) Individual Forms of the Different Types of Suicide

Now a morphological classification, on the basis of the aethiological one, can make sense, taking into account that only suicide as a collective phenomenon can be explained. Egoistic suicide refers to those types that result from highly developed individualism, from seeking the absolute only in him/herself, because society is not sufficiently integrated.The decision to commit suicide under these circumstances can be sad or cheerful.Altruistic suicide is the opposite, an active suicide, with perfect calmness. Entirely different is anomic suicide out of a state of unregulated emotions or the disappointment following disturbances in regulation.

These different social conditions can also affect the individual simultaneously and produce combined effects. Egoism and anomie have some affinity, cf. the egoist is detached from society and thus it has no sufficient hold upon her/him. Anomie can also be associated with altruism (e.g. the Jews after the fall of Jerusalem). Finally, egoism and altruism even can combine their influence, e.g. when people create an imaginary object which they attach themselves to (summary table, p.293).

3. The Social Element of Suicide

Suicide, then, is socially determined, independent of the individual.The collective tendencies that are responsible for suicide have a mind of their own; they are moral and social. Social life, then, is external to the individual. Murder and suicide, which seem alike, are not invariably related (e.g. wars lead to less suicide, yet more murder; anomie and altruistic suicide, on the other hand, are related; consequently, murder is social too and, since it has different causes, murder comes in different types).

Since the indispensable conditions of life are useful, suicide is likely to occur. Indeed, social regulation and integration are needed in any society, and whether societies place high value on the individual or, on the contrary, constrain him heavily, there is suicide resulting from those social states (every morality produces its type of suicide).

However, the enormous increase in the number of suicides over the last century is due, not to progress, but to the particular conditions under which progress has actually occurred. These conditions are pathological (basically, a lack of regulation, due to the abruptness of the social changes, cf. Division of labor). Therefore, the current rate of suicide is pathological, not suicide as such!

The solution to the problem is not legislation, education, politics or family. The true solution is the professional group, to create a morality close enough to the individual (see below).
 
 

C. Religion, Society and Knowledge

1. Religion as a Social Fact

Durkheim studies religion in its most simple form to derive the basics, to find the universals of religion by tracking its indispensable properties.This also leads him to a theory of the origin of religion, and to postulate that religion is at the basis of all human thought (both sacred and profane), even of all the categories of human thought (e.g. space, time, causality).All of this, it will be shown, is essentially social: religious representations are collective representations which express collective realities. The categories of knowledge, because they are of religious origin, are therefore social too; e.g. spatial representations are universal because they are based on the fact that values are differentially attributed to different regions within any given civilization. Within that civilization, therefore, these values must be universal, i.e. they originated within that society (e.g. space is conceived the way a tribal area is divided).Since society is a reality sui generis, it representations which express it, must be supra-individual, it imposes itself upon the individual mind.Consequently, since these representations are so constraining, have such power over the individual, society is responsible for the necessity of the categories of thought as a reflection of the moral necessity of society. It will be shown that all representations come from religious representations as a social reality sui generis.

Therefore, religion has to be defined as a social fact: religion is a unified system of beliefs (states of opinion) and practices (modes of action) relative to sacred things, i.e. things set apart and forbidden; the beliefs and practices unite all those adhere to them into a single moral community, i.e. the church. The beliefs refer to representations of the sacred, but at once they identify the relations between different scared things and between the sacred and the profane. The practices are tied with the beliefs. Religious rites and beliefs, then, have a special object, i.e. they presuppose a classification of things into scared and profane, determined by the attitudes people have towards those things on the basis of their social reality.

Durkheim proceeds, on the basis of this definition, to refute other conceptions of religion. Animistic theories explain religion by reference to the worship of the soul which would be the result of dreams, of an illusion, of fantasy. This is nonsense since it is an individualistic interpretation, and because it cannot account for the fact that something which has sustained as long as religion it must have physical, concrete aspects. Likewise, naturalistic theories pose that religion comes from the fact that sacredness is attributed to sensuous experiences and the language by which reference is made to these phenomena. Again, this is nonsense since religion is again attributed to an illusion, namely the illusion of just names.

2. Totemic Beliefs

Durkheim proposes to study totemic religion among Australian tribes because it is a very simple society and it will therefore exhibit the original form of religion. The clan that worships the totem is of central significance: the clan is a bond of kinship united by name (not biology), and the totem of the clan is also the totem of the clan members. Another clan has another totem. Totems can be animals, vegetables and even ancestors. Clans are united by bonds of fraternity in phratries; these phratries also have a totem, and they relate to the different totems of the clans in a relation of subordination. Clan totems enjoy special status: some persons may not touch the totem, it is kept in a special place, it gives men special powers, and its loss is a disaster. Other things can be scared because they are in some way related to the totem. Note that totems are worshipped, not because the person has some sensation of it, but because it fulfills the need of representing ideas which are formed of it. (later Durkheim will of course seek to explain what these ideas are). There is also a marked parallelism between men and totems: the prohibitions regarding totems also apply to clan members (e.g. they have the same name).

Then Durkheim proceeds to show that the totemic classifications form the basis for the idea of social class. Men were first organized as men, in clans and phratries, and therefore they were able to organize things. The fundamental notions of the intellect are the product of social factors. The notion of class is not an ideal but a defined group of interrelated things. Human classification is based on social hierarchy.

3. The Origin of Totemic Beliefs

After refuting a series of theories, Durkheim asserts that totems have an underlying idea of force. The force of the totem, its symbolic qualities of sacredness, must indeed have a referent (symbols refer to something). There must be something unifying in all that is worshipped in these totemic religions, and this unity lies in what is symbolized and not in the symbol. Here Durkheim argues that totems are forceful over and against the individual because they are an instance of the idea of force in general. This force derives from the strength of the clan, so that the totemic principle of force is in fact the clan under an empirically concrete form: if the totem’s symbol is god and society, then god and society are identical.

Indeed, following from Durkheim’s approach to sociology in general, it follows that the reality underlying religious thought cannot be representations of the individual or of the material environment. This external reality, Durkheim will contend, is society itself. Society alone is the moral authority which can exert such a powerful hold over man.Therefore, god or any other sacred object is a symbolic representation of society.The ideas of religious, then, are real in that they express something real, a real idea so to speak, or what Durkheim calls essential idealism.

Note how the soul can be seen from this perspective. The idea of the soul is universal to religion. The human body shelters a soul; body and soul are not the same, but they are closely related.The soul represents the sacred, it concerns moral ideas; while the body is in a sense profane, and represents the material world. The soul, Durkheim asserts, was created because it refers to something real, namely the relation between individual and society (body and soul).

Other religious ideas are also of social origin. The god, for instance, is an ancestor who gained a prominent place. All religious ideas of totem, souls, spirits, and gods, derive from the original form of the tribe: the tribal unity is expressed in the form of a god, it expresses the tribe conscious of itself.

4. Ritual Attitudes

Here Durkheim explains the origin of rituals in its most basic form.Cults are negative or positive. Negative cults prohibit or interdict (by means of taboo), in order to keep different sacred things apart or to separate sacred from profane. These interdictions can translate into the prohibition of contact with the scared, not speaking out the scared, and the territorial or temporal separation of sacred and profane. The positive cult worships something. In rites, something is awakened, then it is sacrificed.

These acts produce feelings of well-being, which itself becomes the justification of the rite. The ritual arouses sentiments, it affects the mental status of its participants. Note how the notion of causality is produced by rituals. Causality is a social force, external to the mind. Causality is the work of the group and not just an intellectual construction; it derives from the efficaciousness of ritual manipulations.Rituals tie the individual to the group. Religious rituals reaffirm the social group and strengthen the collectivity. Rituals of passage (e.g. burial) have the same function: when someone dies, the group is weakened, so the collective sentiments have to renewed, reaffirmed. This also explains the rise of civil religion, e.g. the worship of Fatherland, Reason and Liberty in the French revolution.

5. Conclusion

These simple religions which Durkheim studies, share essential elements with all religions. Specifically, the sentiments of the believers, unanimously shared, cannot be illusory, they have objective causes in a reality sui generis, i.e. society. Society produces religion, it can account for the sentiments involved, it is even society who makes the individual. To do this, society must come in action, it must make itself felt and it does this in the assembly of believers. By this form of common action, society takes consciousness of itself. It is the idea of society which is the soul of religion; and through religion, all the fundamental categories of thought were formed.

It could be objected that this ‘society’ at the origin of religion is an ideal version of society, that it is not real. No, it is real, but an idealization nonetheless; the idealization itself stems from the intensity of rituals, as a natural product of social life, i.e. as a condensed or concentrated version of that society. The idealized society is therefore not outside the real society but a part of it. The ideals of religion are thus an expression of the collective life: in the school of collective life, the person has learned to idealize. This is not to be confused with an historical-materialist argument.

Concepts are collective representations. They derive their more specific nature (their diversity) from the fact that clans and tribes are differentiated, and, at the same time, they derive their universal nature from the fact that every society is always part of a larger whole. Therefore, it is always society which furnishes the most general notions with which it should be represented. Society is the consciousness of consciousness, it is itself an individuality, of a superior status.
 

D. The Division of Labor and the Morality of Society

In his review of the works of Marx and Durkheim, Alexander outlines Durkheim’s theory of modern society as forming a hierarchy of processes and institutions ranging from the particularism of individual life to the universalism of culture. At the most general level, culture refers to the cognitive, moral and aesthetic representations of collective life that inform the rest of society. It refers to what Durkheim described as the "collective consciousness", society as it thinks of itself, the morality of society which regulates the social institutions as well as economic life. Beneath culture, the state and the law represent this universal culture in a more particularistic way and organize the lower levels of the educational, occupational and domestic institutions. The individual is at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Some central elements emerging out of this scheme are Durkheim’s notion of culture and morality, state and politics, law and punishment, the corporation or occupational group, and the characteristics of modern economic life. Durkheim’s ideas on these issues have undergone changes in the course of his work; basically in The Division of Labor he argued for a materialist interpretation, while in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life he gives an idealist account. This presentation rests on his first major excursion in The Division of Labor in Society, but when necessary I will indicate if and how Durkheim’s ideas have developed in his later works.

1. The Economic Division of Labor and Its Causes

The purpose of Durkheim’s work on the division of labor is to construct a positivistic science of morality and discover how social solidarity can be maintained despite the growing autonomy of the individual resulting out of the division of labor. Economic forces have lead not only to a functional differentiation of labor but also to differentiation processes in all other domains of society. Durkheim argues that this is the result of an evolution from mechanical to organic societies. Mechanical societies are composed of similar replicated parts (families, hordes, clans).The collective conscience, defined as "the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society", reflects this "solidarity by similarities": the collective practices and beliefs of the group are shared by all of its members, and any offense against the collective consciousness is perceived a threat to the entire social order. Durkheim argues that in the course of history organic society made progress in the proportion to which mechanical society has regressed. Organic societies are made up of functionally different organs, each performing a special role.The collective consciousness of this social type has a different hold on the individual: the bonds to tradition and family are loosened, but the individual now has the social duty to specialize and to concentrate his range of activities.The collective consciousness in modern societies still has a hold on individuals, if only to affirm their individuality.

The causes of this evolution to a society characterized by a functional division of labor are two-fold. First, "It is because there occurs a drawing together of individuals who were separated from one another, or at least they draw more closely together than they had been.". Then social relations become more numerous since "they push out beyond their original boundaries on all sides". Durkheim calls this "drawing together and the active exchanges that result from it" dynamic or moral density.Second, the social volume also increases, that is, the total number of members of society becomes larger. More dense and more voluminous societies, Durkheim argues, necessitate the division of labor because the struggle for existence becomes more strenuous. As people are drawn together this will increase competition among them and when they have "ample space at their disposal, they will flee from one another. [On the other hand] If they cannot go beyond set limits, they will begin to differentiate, but in a way so that they become still more dependent of one another".Therefore, "the division of labor unites at the same time it sets at odds; it causes the activities that it differentiates to converge; it brings closer that it separates".

The secondary factors that account for the development of the division of labor include, first, the greater independence of individuals in relation to the group. This means that the collective consciousness becomes progressively indeterminate as societies get larger: "Because they are spread over a much vaster area, the common consciousness is itself forced to rise above all local diversities, to dominate more the space available, and consequently to become more abstract". This trend is for instance demonstrated by the changing nature of the notion of divinity. Originally, the objects of religious devotion are sacred beings who derived their sacred character directly from the object with which they were identified (sacred plants or animals). Then develops the notion of spirits "who, whilst preferring this or that location, nevertheless exist outside the particular objects to which they are more especially attached...; they still exist in space". With the evolution to polytheism "the dwelling-place of the gods becomes more clearly distinct from that of man", and, finally, the god of Christianity "goes beyond space; His Kingdom is no longer of this world".

Another secondary factor in the evolution to organic societies is the weakening of the influence of tradition. This occurs because in modern societies "individuals are no longer restricted to their place of origin and free space is opened up, attracting them, they cannot fail to spread out over it". Especially the growth of the town demonstrates that "The more the group is spread out, although densely concentrated, the more the collective attention, dissipated over a wide area, becomes incapable of following the movements of each individual, because attention does not become more intense as the number of individuals increases. It must oversee too many points at one time to be able to concentrate on any single one. The surveillance is less careful, because there are too many people and things to watch. There is therefore a general decrease in social control because the individual’s "more frequent journeys, the more active communications that he exchanges, the affairs with which he busies himself outside his own locality, etc., divert his gaze from what is taking place around him. The center of his life and concerns is no longer to be found wholly in the place where he lives". Therefore, "collective surveillance is irrevocably relaxed, the common consciousness loses its authority... In short, for social control to be rigorous and for the common consciousness to be maintained, society must split up into moderately small compartments that enclose completely the individual.By contrast, both social control and the common consciousness grow weaker as such divisions fade".

Along with the division of labor, there is then a general trend for social life to become regulated in a different way (and not un-regulated as some observers had thought). The economic order itself does not lead to order or disorder, it is the collective consciousness that accompanies it which determines the cohesion of society. The moralities of mechanical and organic societies fulfill the function of binding the individual, offering cohesion to the whole, albeit in different ways which are themselves the result of changed conditions in social density and volume.

2. Crime, Law and Punishment (I)

In the Division of Labor, Durkheim conceives law as a manifestation of the collective consciousness. Hence he uses as a measure for the development from mechanical to organic societies the evolution from repressive to restitutive law. Repressive law is characteristic for simple and ancient societies. Law is essentially religious law and infractions against it are immediately punished because they threaten the existence of the collectivity itself. Crimes that are not religious are less severely punished. The moral beliefs and justifications on which law and punishment are based are specific but not explicitly specified since every member of society knows them (the collective consciousness is identical to the individual consciousness). In modern societies only criminal law is still repressive: it serves the unconscious function of strengthening social solidarity. The nature of modern solidarity, however, changed and criminal law declined in favor of restitutive law. Punishment follows legal violations in a restitutive way so that the relations between individual and society are restored. Because individuals are more and more differentiated from one another (they have different professions), legal regulations are more abstract and general so they can still apply to all different individuals and provide the solidarity necessary for the cohesion of society: "That alone is rational that is universal. What defies the understanding is the particular and the concrete".

The growth of commercial law is an index of organic social solidarity: it indicates the need to maintain relations between differentiated parts (analogous to the specialized functions of the organs of the body), which are backed up by society. In contract law, for instance, every contract "assumes that behind the parties who bind eachother, society is there, quite prepared to intervene and to enforce respect for any undertakings entered into". In organic societies it is therefore the state which becomes the organ of priority to direct the other organs (like the brain). Violating the rules of a contract between individuals is an offense against the state as the representative body of modern collective conscience.

3. Political Society and State (I)

The evolution of political life, under normal conditions, corresponds to the growing indeterminacy of the collective consciousness in organic societies: "the place of the individual is becoming greater and governmental power less absolute". The modern state is more universal and less coercive and repressive, but this does not mean that it has become less in size. On the contrary, "the state’s attributions become even more numerous and diverse as one approaches the higher types of society". The state’s functions thus generally increase and specialize; "At the same time, it extends progressively over the whole area of its territory and ever more densely packed, complex network, with branches that are substituted for existing local bodies or that assimilate them". According to Durkheim, the state develops not as a counterbalance to but by mechanical necessity out of the division of labor (p.296-308). The government cannot regulate at any moment all the conditions of economic life since it is "too general to ensure the co-operation of the social functions, if such co-operation is not realized spontaneously". This "spontaneous consensus of its parts" is still necessary if society is to be held together and only the collective consciousness can provide this unity. Therefore, the state "is not the brain that creates the unity of the organism, but it expresses it, setting its seal upon it, [while] the parts must be already solidly linked to one another".

4. Crime, Law and Punishment (II)

We already saw that Durkheim conceives the law as fulfilling the function of maintaining solidarity between the component parts in society, to secure the autonomy of different individuals while maintaining the relationships that hold them together. In a later work Durkheim modifies his view of law and outlines two laws of penal evolution. The first law stipulates that "the intensity of punishment is greater the more closely societies approximate to a less developed type - and the more the central power assumes an absolute character". Durkheim thus reaffirms what he earlier argued in The Division of Labor: the collective consciousness is stronger in mechanical societies, more loosened in organic societies. He now explicitly links this evolution with the religious or secular nature of law. In primitive societies, the collective consciousness is essentially religious and so are their laws. In organic societies, the law is secularized to refer to some human interest, not an individually held interest but to mankind in general (analogous to the development of the collective consciousness). Any offense is an offense against another human and "cannot arouse the same indignation as on offense of man against God". However, in the second part of the first law Durkheim states that the nature of political power also intervenes in the development of the intensity of punishment. The law does not always "automatically" represent the collective consciousness; it may be "distorted" by the political regime that determines its contents. An absolutist government which faces no counter-balancing social forces, in particular, may create and enforce laws which do not correspond to the collective consciousness: the laws may be repressive, even in a differentiated society characterized by a division of labor. However, Durkheim asserted, this is not "a consequence of the fundamental nature of society, but rather depends on unique, transitory, and contingent factors". The political society to be normal, therefore, should always be in concord with the development of the collective consciousness.

The other "law of law" refers to the fact that "deprivations of liberty, and of liberty alone, varying in time according to the seriousness of crime, tend to become more and more the normal means of social control". Durkheim refers to the lack of prisons in primitive societies where, he argues, imprisonment would not fulfill any need since crimes directly threaten the collectivity and should therefore also be punished collectively.When with the division of labor collective responsibility gradually declines, the individual comes to the focus of attention and the deprivation of his freedom is a natural consequence.

5. The Social Regulation of Economic Life: The Corporation

With his study of the division of labor Durkheim wanted to show that the "cult of individualism" and the persistence of collective consciousness are not mutually exclusive, but on the contrary that the division of labor produces and necessitates a different kind of social solidarity. Under exceptional circumstances, however, Durkheim maintained that the division of labor often did not produce organic solidarity, because it was produced under conditions of an absence of rules regulating social relations (anomie), or forced under conditions of economic-material inequalities. Economic life as such is not normal or pathological, Durkheim contends, it is the (lack of) its regulation which should be dealt with. The intervention of the state Durkheim saw in this regard necessary but insufficient because the state is too far removed from the concrete lives of people and the specific needs of their different professions (the state is too general).Therefore, Durkheim proposed that a secondary groups placed between the individual and the state should take care of this function. He judged the corporation or professional group to be ideal in this regard.

Durkheim first discussed the professional group in some detail in his work Suicide. As a remedy to egoistic and anomic suicide, he argued that a restoration of man’s attachment to, and regulation by, society is needed, and that this role should be taken up by the corporation. Political society is too far removed from the individual to affect him, religious society is generally in decline (secularization), and the family’s duration is too brief (it has become a non-entity). The corporation, on the other hand, could fulfill the function of investing society in the individual, because it has a strong cohesion and its influence on individuals is "not intermittent, like that of political society, but it is always in contact with them by the constant exercise of the function of which it is the organ and in which they collaborate". To take up this function the corporation has to become a definite and recognized organ of public life "instead of remaining a private group legally permitted, but politically ignored".It has to be moved between the state and the individual to form "a cluster of collective forces outside the State, though subject to its action, whose regulative influence can be exerted with greater variety". The state remains important to fulfill the function of opposing "the need for organic equilibrium to the particularism of each corporation".

In the preface to the second edition of The Division of Labor and in the posthumously published Professional Ethics and Civic Morals further expands this idea. In the preface, he reasserts that a society "cannot be maintained unless, between the state and individuals, a whole range of secondary groups are interposed". Of these secondary institutions only the corporation can ‘tame’ the economy. The family can no longer take up this function since it has lost much of its integrative and regulatory force. Corporations should take over because the profession under conditions of the division of labor determines our life more and more.Such corporations already exist since, like other secondary institutions, "as soon as a certain number of individuals find they hold in common ideas, interests, sentiments and occupations which the rest of the population does not share in, it is inevitable that, under the influence of these similarities, they should be attracted to one another. They will seek one another out, enter into relationships and associate together".The existing corporations, however, should be reformed: they must set codes guiding each of the professions (regulatory) and they must be well-organized groups (integrative) constituting a moral force upon and not a servant of the economy. Then, their activities will not only be professional but also educational, providing mutual assistance and friendship, and it will form the basic political unit of the nation. The state will not be abolished: it remains necessary to lay down the general principles for industrial legislation.But the diversity of the various types of industry the state cannot see. Here corporations, distinct and autonomous from the state but also in contact with it, can fulfill their role.

6. Political Society and State (II)

In his work Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, Durkheim explicates the underlying viewpoint of his political-sociology in his discussions of the role of corporation. He draws a sharp distinction between political society and state (which, as Durkheim admits, he did not always make himself in his earlier work). Political society refers to an opposition between governing and governed, in which the governed must be a coming together of different secondary social groups (families, professions or classes), subject to the same authority, and this authority "is not itself subject to any other permanently constituted superior authority".Territory is not a defining characteristic of political societies, since the "geographical expression" of a nation is only a recent phenomenon, and "in the past it was the number of citizens and not the territory that was considered to be the primary element of the state. To annex a state was not to annex the country, but its inhabitants and to incorporate them within the conquering state...; where prime importance attaches to national territory, it is of comparatively recent date.". The recent identification of state with territory is the result of many factors, one of them is perhaps "the relatively greater importance that the geographical bond has assumed since other social ties of a more moral kind have lost their force.We see the society of which we are members more as a defined territory because it is no longer perceived as essentially religious, or identified with its own unique set of traditions or with the support of a particular dynasty".

The political society for Durkheim thus refers to a sovereign authority.The state has a more specific meaning to refer to the "particular group of officials entrusted with representing this authority...; the state is a specialized agency whose responsibility it is to work out certain ideas which apply to the collectivity. These ideas are distinguished from the other collective representations by their more conscious and deliberate character". As said before, Durkheim does not want to abolish the state and neither does he favor an all-encompassing authoritarian state.Durkheim does acknowledge that there is today nothing "in the realm of public life which cannot become subject to the action of the state...Every society is despotic, at least if nothing external intervenes to restrain its despotism".The state’s role, therefore, is not restricted to the regulation of economic life alone: "It is not merely a matter of increasing the exchanges of goods and services, but of seeing that they are done by rules that are more just; it is not simply that everyone should have access to rich supplies of food and drink. Rather it is that each one should be treated as he deserves, each be freed from an unjust and humiliating tutelage, and that, in holding to his fellows and his group, a man should not sacrifice his individuality".Durkheim also contends that the state cannot fulfill this function by itself: if the state "is to be the liberator of the individual, it has itself need of some counter-balance. It must be restrained by other collective forces, that is, by the secondary groups... [which] are essential if the state is not to oppress the individual: they are also necessary if the state is not to be sufficiently free of the individual".The secondary groups thus form intermediate institutions that come in between the individual and the state, and, because economic life has gained so much importance, the professional group Durkheim considered best suited to fulfill this need. Like the state, the secondary groups fulfill not economic functions alone: "Their usefulness is not merely to regulate and administer the interests under their supervision. They have a more general role; they form one of the conditions essential to the emancipation of the individual". Professional groups would thus form the basis of political life: "The idea is already gaining ground that the professional association is the true electoral unit". Since no less than all of society is affected by a smooth functioning of political life, Durkheim would go as far as to make membership in corporations compulsory: "...it is beyond me to understand the scruples that some feel in this case against any suggestion of compulsion".
 

 

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