Émile Durkheim and Functionalism

Society and Social Interaction SOCI 1306 Émile Durkheim and Functionalism Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was a functionalist who emphasised the essential interconnectedness of all of society's components. Society was more than the sum of its components, in Durkheim's opinion. He said that analysing collective behaviour differed greatly from examining an individual's activities and that individual behaviour was not the same as collective behaviour. The collective conscience, according to Durkheim, is the set of shared values, attitudes, and beliefs within a community. He wrote, "If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed in my country and in my class, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as punishment" (Durkheim 1895) in an attempt to understand what causes people to act in similar and predictable ways. Additionally, Durkheim thought that a crucial element of social existence was social integration, or the degree to which individuals are connected to their social groupings. In line with the theories of Comte and Spencer, Durkheim compared society to a living person, in which every organ is essential to the organism's survival. As consequences for deviation strengthen established cultural values and norms, Durkheim said, even the socially deviant individuals of society are necessary. In other words, the act of punishing a criminal reinforces our moral awareness. In 1893, Durkheim observed, "A crime is a crime because we condemn it." According to Durkheim (1893), "An act is criminal because it offends that consciousness, not because it offends the common consciousness." These aspects of society are what Durkheim referred to as "social facts," implying that social forces should be taken seriously and seen as existing outside of the individual. As a social scientist, Durkheim was not totally content with the way society was going in his day. His main worry was that people were growing more polarised and that the cultural glue holding society together was breaking down. Durkheim claimed in The Division of Labour in Society (1893) that social order became organic rather than mechanical as society became more complicated. According to Durkheim, preindustrial cultures were bound together by a kind of social order known as mechanical solidarity, which was upheld by a culture's collective consciousness. Mechanically cohesive societies function mechanically; most things are done the way they have always been done. This way of thought was prevalent in preindustrial communities, such as hunter-gatherer tribes, where there was a minimal division of labour and strong familial relationships that fostered shared morals and values. According to Durkheim, those who perform similar tasks have a tendency to think and behave similarly. Organic solidarity, or social order predicated on the acceptance of social and economic inequalities, has supplanted mechanical solidarity in industrial cultures. According to Durkheim, the division of labour in capitalist society becomes so specialised that each person performs a distinct task. People with different views may coexist in a community when there is organic solidarity, as opposed to penalising members for not assimilating to the shared ideals. Laws are founded on reparation rather than retaliation and serve as codified morality. Although a society benefits in the long term from the shift from mechanical to organic solidarity, Durkheim pointed out that it may also be a chaotic and "normless" period. He identified social anomie as one of the effects of the shift. Anomie, which means "without law," is the state in which society lacks a strong sense of collective identity. Social standards are undermined. Even if people need to work together more to complete complicated jobs, they are also estranged from one another. Anomie arises during periods of societal unpredictability, such war or significant economic ups and downs. Societies that have grown to a point of organic solidarity reestablish a system of common rules to prevent anomie. Durkheim believed that a society's growth was complete when it attained organic solidarity.