Essay Example: Durkheim and the Division of Labor and Its Impact Upon Modern Society

Personal liberty increases with the labor division, according to Durkheim. Due to the apparent interconnection of the members, the components, in the organically whole, current societal sense of community creates a moral order. This procedure is moving in the right direction, and the result seems promising. Durkheim explains how the class division creates specific jobs for individuals' society by increasing a process's reproduction potential and the workers' skill set.

It also fosters a sense of camaraderie among those who combine such jobs. Furthermore, according to Durkheim, the division of work serves more than just economic interests: it also promotes moral and social order within such a society. "The division of labor could only take place among members of a pre-existing society," he claims. According to Durkheim, work specialization is proportional to a society's dynamic or ethical density. This is characterized as a mix of a society's population density and degree of socialization.

Density can arise in three ways: a rise in the physical concentration of population, the creation of towns, and an increase in the amount and effectiveness of communication systems. According to Durkheim, there are two types of social cooperation: organic and mechanical solidarity, which establishes a direct link between the individual and society. Civilization is organized collectively, with all group members performing the same jobs and holding the same essential ideas. According to Durkheim, the "collective consciousness," frequently interpreted as "conscience collective," means a standard belief structure and links humans to society.

On the other hand, society is more complicated in terms of a collectivist system of interconnected functions bound by defined ties. Each person must have a unique profession or activity and a different personality. Durkheim was specifically addressing guys in this passage. According to Durkheim, the philosopher remarked of women, "When one or more of these factors happen, labor begins to be separated, and jobs are becoming more specialized," according to Durkheim. Simultaneously, as duties become more complicated, the fight for a worthwhile life becomes more difficult.

The book's central focus is the distinction between advanced and developing cultures regarding how they view community cohesion. Another point of interest is each community views the legal system in addressing violations of social equality. Individuality grows as aspects of society become more complicated, Durkheim claimed, framing persons as males. As a result, society becomes more effective at moving in lockstep, yet each constituent element has more distinct movements. According to Durkheim, the more fundamental a community is, the more it will be marked by organic solidarity and similarity. People of agrarian civilization, for instance, are more inclined to look alike and have similar ideas and values than individuals of a technologically advanced and data society (Langer, pg70-75).

Individual members of civilizations become much more recognizable as they get more sophisticated and civilized. Executives, laborers, scientists, and farmers are all instances of people. As communities expand their work divisions, cooperation is becoming more organic. The laws of a society, according to Durkheim, are the most prominent representation of social unity and the most definite and permanent order of social activity. The neural system in beings is equivalent to the role of law in society. The nervous system coordinates all of the body's functions to work in unison. Similarly, the legal system governs all aspects of culture to ensure that they work successfully together (Bowring, pg21-38).

There are two sorts of law in human civilizations, which relate to a different kind of social cooperation: oppressive law and restitutive law. The center of widespread awareness is linked to repressive rule, and everybody evaluates and condemns the culprit. The seriousness of a crime is determined not through the pain it causes to a single victim rather than by the harm it causes to the community or social order overall. Crimes against by the collective are usually punished harshly. According to Durkheim, oppressive law is used in mechanical societies.

The second sort of legislation is restitutive law that focuses on the victim of a crime because there are no universally held opinions about what harms society. Restitutive law reflects society's physical state and is enabled by more specialized institutions like court systems and lawyers. The degree of growth of a community is closely associated with repressive and restitutive law. Repressive law, according to Durkheim, is widespread in primitive or mechanistic civilizations, when criminal consequences are often devised and agreed upon by the entire society. Individual crimes do occur in these "lower" civilizations, but they are on the lowest end of the criminal justice scale in terms of severity.

According to Durkheim, crimes against society take precedence in mechanical cultures since the emergence of the collective mind is widespread and robust while specialization has yet to occur. When there is a division of work and group consciousness is almost non-existent, the contrary is happening. The more civilized a society gets, and the implementation of labor, the more restitutory legislation is designed. Family and neighbors formed pre-industrial social groupings, but as Industrialization progressed, people have found new contemporaries within their workplaces and formed new groups of people with colleagues. According to Durkheim, separating society around minor employment divisions necessitated a central power control to govern relations between the various groups. Law codes had to arise as a visual expansion of such a state to ensure the orderly functioning of social interactions through reconciliation and civil law instead of imposing penalties.

A disagreement inspired Durkheim's explanation of organic solidarity with Herbert Spencer. He stated that industrial solidarity occurs naturally and that no coercive body is required to build or sustain it. Spencer felt that social harmony emerges spontaneously, whereas Durkheim disagreed. Durkheim spends a lot of time in this book debating Spencer's position and arguing for his own (Serpa., pg689-691)

All in all, Personal liberty increases with the labor division, according to Durkheim. Due to the apparent interconnection of the members, the components, in the organically whole, current societal sense of community creates a moral order. Density can arise in three ways: a rise in the physical concentration of population, the creation of towns, and an increase in the amount and effectiveness of communication systems.  Individual members of civilizations become much more recognizable as they get more sophisticated and civilized. Executives, laborers, scientists, and farmers are all instances of people. According to Durkheim, crimes against society take precedence in mechanical cultures since the emergence of the collective mind is widespread and robust while specialization has yet to occur.  A disagreement inspired Durkheim's explanation of organic solidarity with Herbert Spencer. He stated that industrial solidarity occurs naturally and that no coercive body is required to build or sustain it.

Work Cited

Bowring, Finn. "The individual and society in Durkheim: Unpicking the contradictions." European Journal of Social Theory 19.1 (2016): 21-38.

Langer, Beryl. "Emile Durkheim." Social Theory. Routledge, 2020. 70-75.

Serpa, Sandro, and Carlos Miguel Ferreira. "Anomie in the sociological perspective of Émile Durkheim." Sociology International Journal 2.6 (2018): 689-691.