Analysis Of Mechanical And Organic Solidarity

The Meaning of Durkheim’s Mechanical and Organic Society:
How effective does this theoretical distinction remain in light of subsequent social theory?

Emile Durkheim was a French sociologist who spent his educational career in Ecole Normale Superieure under the guidance of Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges.

Emile Durkheim was a well renowned sociologist and he was well known for hispositivist take on society. He was greatly influenced by Augustue Comte, also a French Philosopher who was the founding father of sociology and the doctrine of positivism.

This academic essay aims to differentiate and make it easier for the reader to understand Durkheim’s thought process on Mechanical Solidarity and Organic Solidarity. Along with understanding Durkheim’s thought process, we will belooking at subsequent Sociologists and see how influential Durkheim’s understanding of society influenced their own understanding of sociology.

In Durkheim’s point of view, men and women are creatures with unending desires. This is what separates us from other animals, the inability to be satisfied once our biological needs are fulfilled.

“The more one has, the more one wants, sincesatisfactions received only stimulate instead of filling needs. It follows from this natural insatiability of the human animal that his desires can only be helped in check by external controls that is by societal control. Society imposes limits on human desires and constitutes a regulative force [which] must play the same role for moral needs which the organism plays for physical needs.”

Emile Durkheimstates that there exist two kinds of Solidarity. The first is labeled as Mechanical Solidarity while the other is labeled as Organic Solidarity.

In a mechanical solidarity, the cohesion and integration of a society is dependent on the homogeneity of each individual. The society creates a similarity in the way life is lived within the confines of the society.

Durkheim states that:

“Thesociety can be strong only if the ideas and tendencies common to all the members of the society are greater in number and intensity than those which pertain personally to each member.”

In this statement, the mechanical society is driven by similarity rather than specific functions of each individual in a society. He continues on saying “The individual conscience, considered in this light, is asimple dependent upon the collective type and follow all of its movements, as the possessed object follows those of its owner”.

The first (mechanical) is possible only in so far as the individual personality is absorbed into the collective personality”

Following the statement above, it is to our standing that in a mechanical society, there does not exist a sole individual given that the coreof this type of society is dependent on each individual. No individual may fully function without the assistance of another of the group/society.

It can be said that early societies, which were normally small in scale, had little division when it comes to labor. It is in this type of society wherein individuals are asked to do essentially similar types of tasks so that people share the type ofwork they carry out. Mechanical societies are characterized by similarity, in which the individuals of a society share the same values, based on common tasks and common life situations and experiences.

A good example for a mechanical society would be a tribe. In tribes, the population is in the high fifties to the low one hundreds. Tribes often dedicate the men to hunting and providing food forthe tribe while the women are tasked with planting and taking care of the children. In certain tribes, there exist banishment from the tribe for doing something wrong. Such punishments and sanctions are characteristics of a mechanical law. It can be seen in the chart below the characteristics of mechanical societies and how it differentiates from organic.

The second kind of solidarity...