The Division of Labor: Social Solidarity by Emilie Durkheim

Emilie Durkheim is one of the most important people for sociology with Karl Marx and Max Weber. Durkheim took the importance from the environment which he grew up and also from the thinkers which he had the opportunity to discuss about sociology. Emile Durkheim has many contributions to sociology by his Works and studies. Also, He is considered to be one of the founding fathers of sociology and is especially known for his studies on social solidarity and order, with his scientific discipline and his studies on the subject of sociology. His Works are building blocks of the sociology. When his Works and his thoughts considered, if they are did not exist, sociology would not have been that important. This essay will include his background, his contributions on sociology and counterarguments.

Every thinker is born in an intellectual World and this World of meaning directly affects scientists' ideas and Works. Emilie Durkheim was born at France. He is the son of a Jewish family. Also his father, grandfather and great-grandfather had been rabbis. He began his education at a religious school however an early age he decided to not follow in his family's footsteps and changed the schools. Durkheim led a completely secular life. The chances for Durkheim to get an appointment in Paris were inhibited by his approach to society. After that he taught philosophy at different schools. İn 1885 he decided to move to Germany. One of the his reason to move was that in France there was no sociology school or sociology thinkers. Although the word sociology was first used by Comte, a French thinker, there was no sociological field of activity. Durkheim’s times in Germany gave rise to the publication of numerous articles on German social science on German social science and philosophy; Durkheim was particularly admired by the work of Wilhelm Wundt, who was known as one of the founders of modern psychology. Also, Durkheim was living at during the France-Germany war. When France lost the war they faced to an economic crisis and rebellions. The need to revitalize the idea that destroying the traces of this defeat is to revive the fundamental dynamics that make up the society and raise patriotic generations who will not hesitate to sacrifice themselves for morality, religion, the national anthem and their country. Durkheim's time frame has clearly manifested itself in his works and thoughts and has guided his work. However one of the biggest contributions of Durkheim is the division of labour.

Durkheim Introduces the Division of Labour

According to Durkheim, the industrial society and people have been disconnected from traditional production and consumption habits and social institutions have been shaken. If we consider a village of people with values ​​and lifestyles, we can explain the social order in this village with the concept of 'mechanical solidarity'.

In this form of solidarity, people are not different from each other in terms of their work, appearance or lifestyle. However, this is not the case in many of today's modern societies. People live in big cities with many different people. Thus, a new form of solidarity emerged from the classical one. Durkheim named this new form of solidarity 'Organic Solidarity' and distinguished it from 'Mechanical Solidarity' seen in traditional societies.

In addition to the types of social solidarity, Durkheim's other important contribution to the history of sociology is his emphasis on the concept of 'anomie', a concept related to social order and solidarity. Social change in societies has occurred so quickly that this has eroded values ​​and traditions, disrupted the social order and caused the anomaly. Durkheim defines the concept of anomie as 'an irregularity situation that prevents individuals from becoming unknowing the norm as a criterion when they need to behave in a behaviour.' Behaviours such as crime and suicide increase with the rise of anomie in society. Durkheim's most known and most important study is his study on suicide, which he sees as one of the most important consequences of anomalism. Durkheim presented this finding as proof to the hypothesis that “a healthy social life can only be possible through social commitment and solidarity”. which he regards as one of the most important consequences of the anomic situation. He made the definition of suicide by saying 'every death event that is a direct or indirect consequence of positive or negative action by knowing that it will result in death by the deceased person is suicide'. In Durkheim's opinion, there is 4 type of suicide:  selfish suicide, altruist suicide, anomic suicide, and fatalist suicide. While egoist suicide connects the individual to isolation in society, altruist suicide, which is the opposite of egoist suicide, explains the person's attachment to society or a  group. Anomic suicide equals irregularity and transmits it as suicides caused by the resolution of norms in society (especially at the time of the economic crisis). It also contrasts fatalist suicides with anomic and is the name it gives to the category of suicides caused by social pressure. he gave slave suicides as examples of fatalist suicides.

Although Durkheim’s contribution to sociology is an undeniable fact, it has not been accepted by some groups.

Durkheim’s suicide theory has been extensively argued by next scholars and a few criticisms have emerged. As an example of the logical error termed the ecological fallacy however diverging views have contested whether Durkheim’s work really contained an ecological fallacy. Some, such as Inkeles, Johnson and Gibbs, have claimed that Durkheim's only intent was to explain suicide sociologically within a holistic perspective, emphasizing that 'he intended his theory to explain variation among social environments in the incidence of suicide, not the suicides of particular individuals'. Also, Durkheim’s religious perspective has been criticised by many. One of the most important critiques came from Durkheim’s contemporary, Arnold Van Gennep, an expert on religion and ritual systems, and also on Australian belief systems. Van Gennep argued that Durkheim's views of primitive peoples and simple societies were 'entirely erroneous'. Van Gennep further argued that Durkheim demonstrated a lack of critical stance towards his sources, collected by traders and priests, naively accepting their veracity and that Durkheim interpreted freely from dubious data. At the conceptual level, van Gennep pointed out Durkheim's tendency to press ethnography into a prefabricated theoretical scheme.

In conclusion, Durkheim has many assumptions about society some of them still keep their importance but some of them do not. Durkheim’s thoughts shed light upon to the modern World. One of the main assumption of him, which can clearly be seen, is the division of labour of people moving from the village to cities and mechanical solidarity turn into organic solidarity. Also, his works still attract attention and it will keep important in the future.