Book: The Rules of the Sociological Method

• Sociology: scientific description, explanation and verification of social facts
  • Social Facts:
    • Externality
    • Constraint
    • Generality
    • Collective Independence
    • Patterned ways of thinking, feeling, acting

Book: Suicide

• 3 types of suicde:
  • Egoistic Suicide: low cohesion, integration
  • Altruistic Suicide: high regulation
  • Anomic Suicide: de- regulation

Book: Elementary Forms of Relgious Life

• Collective Representations
  • Religion is not about supernatural beings, but rather about beliefs and practices which are the collective representations of society and groups; god = social = human; power of god over man is really power of the group over the individual.

Book: The Division of Labor in Society (Rest of Durkheim Text is Based on This Book)

Three Topics of Division of Labour:

1. Functions
2. Causes
3. Pathological Forms

Method for Determining Function

1. Definition of function: need which division of labour satisfies
2. Function of div. of lab: to create solidarity among two or more persons

Conscience collective:

1. Definition: totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society.
2. Social Fact: It forms a determinant system having a life of its own; independent of individual
3. Diffused throughout society
4. Lasts through generations

Crime

Crime: "an act is criminal when it offends strong and defined states of the collective conscience" (Durkheim, Div. of Lab, p. 80)

1. Normal in all societies
2. Shocks common sentiments in society
3. Disapproved by most members of society
4. Punishment for a crime is not necessarily based on harm it does to society (e.g. murder does not hurt everyone in society)

Punishment:

1. Passionate reaction of graduated intensity for violation of sentiments of society;
   • more severe in primitive society because sentiments are stronger (extends to wife & children of offender)
2. Social, not individual; meted out by constituted authority

Two Aspects of Law:

1. Obligations
2. Sanctions for violating or not fulfilling obligations

Law:

1. Symbol of social solidarity because law reproduces social solidarity
   • (e.g. O.J.Simpson - sentiments re life, murder, race, gender, sex, sports)
2. Therefore classify different types of law to get different types of solidarity

Laws As Symbols of 2 Types of Solidarity:

1. Repressive, penal law = mechanic solidarity
2. Restitutive, civil law = organic solidarity

Laws classified by two types of sanctions:

1. Repressive Sanctions: penal law; suffering to violator (murder)
2. Restitutive Sanctions: return things to original state (car accident)
   1. civil law
   2. commercial law
   3. procedural law
   4. administrative law
   5. constitutional law

Mechanical Solidarity

Click Here to See Ball Analogy

Main Characteristics of Mechanical Solidarity

1. collective conscience dominates individual conscience
2. individual consciences ressembles each other
3. maximum likenesses among individual consciences
4. individual bound to society without intermediaries
5. society = organized totality of beliefs & sentiments common to all members of society
6. individual personalities have little independence separate from collective sentiments
7. typical of primitive societies

Mechanical Solidarity: "The social molecules which can be coherent in this way can act together only in the measure that they have no actions of their own, as the molecules of inorganic bodies. That is why we propose to call this type mechanical solidarity" (Durkheim, Div. of Lab, p. 130)

Quebec flag Symbolizing Mechanical Solidarity -- Why??

Organic Solidarity

3D Building as a Symbol of Organic Solidarity Why??

Main Characteristics of Organic Solidarity

1. Results from division of labour
2. Weakening of common collective conscience
3. Individual consciences have more autonomy from collective conscience
4. Individuals are different; do not ressemble each other
5. Solidarity in society results from cooperation of specialized functions working in unison
6. System of differential specialized functions which definite relations unite
7. Individuals depends on society because they depend on one another
8. Collective conscience now at group level:
   • occupational groups
   • work organizations
   • religious sects
9. Typical of advanced societies

Organic Solidarity: "...the unity of the organism is as great as the individuation of the parts is more marked. Because of this analogy, we propose to call the solidarity which is due to the division of labour, organic" (Durkheim, Div. Lab., p. 131)

Organic Solidarity Symbolized by Human Heart -- why??

2 Types of Organic Solidarity:

1. Negative: laws creating boundaries separating people
   1. Real rights: rights to property: direct relation to a thing; right I have to a thing excludes someone else to that thing (e.g. ownership with no debt)
   2. Personal rights: right to a thing through another person; right I have to something is shared by someone else (e.g. ownership with debt)
2. Positive: laws creating cooperation between people; laws which create likeness between people; attraction of like to like.
   1. Domestic Laws: Assigning rights & duties of domestic functions to mother, father, child ("the particular solidarity which unites the members of a family in accordance with the division of domestic labour" (Durk, Div. Lab., p. 123)
   2. Contract Laws Division of labour establishing cooperation between parties to contract. Recriprocal exchange of obligations to accomplish common task. E.g.
      • buyers and sellers
      • employees and employers
      • tenant and landlord
      • lender and borrower
   3. Other Laws:
      • Commercial law (business)
      • Procedural law (legal proceedings in court)
      • Administrative law (organizations)
      • Constitutional law (governments)

Co-existence of mechanic and organic solidarity:

both types are always found in the same society, though one predominates over the other

1. Yes Demo (Montreal)

2. No Rally: Bouchard

3. Leger et Leger Poll on the Quebec Referendum

4. Cree Media Ad on Partition of Quebec.

5. The Breakup of Quebec?

Law <=> Solidarity:

• Penal Law + repressive sanctions manifests mechanic solidarity
• Civil Law + restitutive sanctions manifests organic solidarity

Obligations vs Sanctions:

1. Penal Law: obligations not stated (already understood); sanctions stated = indicates mechanic solidarity
2. Civil Law: obligations explicitly stated (not understood); sanctions are secondary = organic solidarity

Sentiments Behind Laws:

1. Strength: sentiments stronger behind penal than civil laws
2. Precision: sentiments more precise behind penal than civil laws

Summary:

1. Crime threatens collective sentiments
2. Punishment, which avenges the crime, functions to maintain & strengthen collective sentiments
3. Crime's positive function: contributes to sharper definition and maintenance of collective conscience

Strength of Mechanical Solidarity depends on three properties of collective consciences:

1. Volume (number of collective consciences relative to individual consciences)
2. Intensity or strength
3. Determination, precision or definiteness

Transition from Mechanic to Organic Solidarity:

1. Volume of collective & individual consciences stays same
2. Intensity of Collective Conscience decreases
3. Determination by Collective Conscience decreases

Social Structure of Mechanic Solidarity:

1. Horde: homogeneous mass of individuals whose parts are indistinguishable from each other (e.g. Iroquois Tribes in N.A.)
2. Clan: association of hordes
3. Segmental Societies: association of clans related by blood; common ancestor (e.g. 12 Tribes of Israel)

Essential Feature of Mechanic Solidarity:likenesses, similarity, and homogeneity of the segments

Social Structure of Organic Solidarity:

System of different organs:
1. each with special role,
2. each composed of sub-parts
3. parts coordiated and subordinated to each other, and to central organ which exercises moderating action over entire system

Transition between 2 mutually contradictory social structures:

Lineage replaced by parts performing special functions (occupational groups)

Mechanic Territorial Units:

Segmental units persist in advanced society in the form of territorial units: e.g.

• Quebec?
• Croatia?
• Serbia?
• Slovakia?
• Ukraine?

1. Disappearance of segmental type of organizations
2. Increase in dynamic or moral density: increase in contacts between units that formerly had no contact.
3. Increase in volume or population of society

Click on Chart: Density & Volume -> Division of Labour (specialization) -> organic solidarity

1. Anomic division of labour: extreme development of div. of labour, resulting in conflict between capital and labour; collective conscience can not prevent the conflict
   • cause: rapidity of change in work
2. Forced Division of Labour: conflict between upper and lower classes caused by lower classes trying to move into upper classes but being prevented from doing so by upper classes
3. Uncordinated Division of Labour: intensity, or the relation between specialized functions, is not coordinated.