Durkheim (1858-1917)
€¢ He came from a Jewish family
€¢ Raised as both religiously Jewish and patriotically French
€¢ The war in 1870 changed his life, his lifetime goal became a search for the means to bring about a societal mortal unity
€¢ He attended l’Ecole normale in Paris where Comte attended too
€¢ Logical account and historical developmental account to describe society. Logical account, reality is structured in terms of number of levels. Each level is governed by its own laws but the laws of one level is useless in explaining the facts of another level and they range from the most simple to complex. These levels of reality are the physical, chemical, biological, psychological and social.
€¢ Mechanical unity came from likeness. People had no individuality and shared the same set of moral rules and perceptions.
€¢ Collective consciousness €“ in a mechanical society, each individual mind replicates the collective consciousness of society. In a more complex organic society, each person internalizes only a portion of the whole based on the person’s specialized position in society.
€¢ Anomie is a pathological condition in which the moral rules are in a weakened or confused state. Old rules have declined and new ones have yet to fully emerge.
€¢ Anomic society will have an abnormal increase in murder, other crimes, suicide and unhappiness.
€¢ Moral rules form an objective and scientifically discoverable feature of society
€¢ Individual representations reflect only isolated, unique individual experiences. Changes in social reality create new types of individuals

Two faces of Durkheim. Young Durkheim is a functionalist and positivist and he became a cultural analyst.
Interested in religion.
His impact was focused on sociology and identify himself as a sociologist. He lost his religious beliefs when he attended l’Ecole normale.
Dreyfus affair, Dreyfaus was Jewish and falsely accused to be a German spy and was imprisoned. Anti-Semitism.
1893, he wrote a dissertation on division of labour.
1897, he wrote suicide.
Solidarity, how strong and connected are members of society, what holds it together, not only as individuals but to the collective consciousness. Collective consciousness is not the sum of individual consciousness but the shared norms, beliefs and values which exist prior to the particular society. Durkheim uses the law as an example.
mechanical solidarity is typical of pre-modern society, it can be described as solidarity of sameness. We see ourselves the same in the group
organic solidarity, biological analogy. Society operates more like organism. Interdependence. In modern society, there is an increase of division of labour which changes the nature of social relationship as weber and Marx both note. Durkheim said each organ has its own distinct role but all are interdependent upon one another for the whole body to function.
S. Lukes 1973 Emile Durkheim his life and work, a historical and critical study Allen lane the penguin press
€¢ Born 15 april 1858 at epinal, Lorraine.
€¢ It advanced the claim that the functions once performed by common ideas’ and sentiments’ were now, in industrial societies, largely performed by new social institutions and relations.
€¢ what are the bonds which unite men one with another?
€¢ the object of sociology as a whole is to determine the conditions for the conservations of societies.
€¢ Organized societies, involving interdependent and multiplying specialized roles, beliefs and sentiments as opposed to the undifferentiated unity of uniform activities, beliefs and sentiments and rigid social control found in segmental’ societies
€¢ In mechanical solidarity, the social molecules, could only operate in harmony in so far as they do not operate independently’. In organic solidarity, society becomes more capable of operating in harmony, in so far as each of its elements operates more independently’.
€¢ As organic solidarity grows, division by territory ceases to approximate to the real and moral division of the population’ and becomes a merely arbitrary and conventional combination’
€¢ Punishment not only expresses the incidence of mechanical solidarity; it maintains that solidarity by reinforcing collective sentiments and values.
€¢ Durkheim saw the division of labour as the essential condition’ of organic solidarity and gradually replaces that engendered by social likenesses.
€¢ Organised social structures are characterized by a high degree of interdependence
€¢ The division of labour gives the rise to legal rules which determines the nature and the relations between divided functions €“ organic solidarity
€¢ Division of labour and abnormal forms €“ deviate from its natural course’
€¢ Durkheim argues that class society failed to produce solidarity because the distribution of social functions does not/no longer corresponds to the distribution of natural talents’.
€¢ Another abnormal form of division of labour existed where the functional activity of each worker is insufficient because of lack of co-ordination.
€¢ Solidarity breaks down, incoherence and disorder appears
€¢

Turner, B SEmile Durkheim on Civil Society Classical sociology, 1999 pp. 88-110 Sage
€¢ Durkheim says that teachers are an example of morality, the teachers authority represents to the child the general authority of society. Durkheim stresses that to be successful in moral socialization, the teacher also need to treat children in a consistently fair and just manner.
€¢ Durkheim reasoned that (all other things being equal) some social statuses are more anomic than others. this means they are less integrated into a system of sociomoral obligations. single men, with fewer family obligations than married men, so this means single men would have a higher suicide rate than married men.