DURKHEIM'S DIVISION

OF LABOR IN SOCIETY
• Both Merton and Barnes gives emphasis on Durkheim’s view that society can be studied scientifically and this is
through social facts
Social Facts- Social forces in our environment that affects us. Social facts are “sui generis” (meaning of its own kind; unique). Ex.
Laws and customs. Laws and customs serves as constraints in pursuing individual’s unsocial ends. Social facts can be empirically
studied, are external to the individual, are coercive of the individual, and are explained by other social facts

Kinds of Facts
1. Internal facts- the events and phenomena that occur in the minds of individuals. We can study these internal facts
only through the external facts.
2. External Facts- belong to the intractable reality the observer records and which he seeks to understand. Durkheim
designates some facts as external because they are experienced or perceived by the actor as external to him. One
sub-class of external facts contains social facts.
EVOLUTION OF SOCIETY

Assumptions about societies (Merton, 1994)

• Durkheim assumes the absence of division of labor among
primitive societies and of any "mechanical solidarity" among
modern societies.
• Historically, the movement has been from mechanical to organic
solidarity, though the former never disappears completely.
• Caused by increased size and density of populations with
increased social interaction.
Image source:
• Leads to the intensification of struggle for existence that only https://i.ytimg.com/vi/XGargZd9KkQ/hqdefault.jpg?sqp=-oaymw
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through progressive differentiation of functions is survival
possible.
CENTRAL THESES OF DIVISION OF LABOR (BARNES, 1966)

Two central theses of Division of Labor

1. It asserted that societies may be placed on a morphological and at least partly historical continuum. At
one end of the continuum are primitive societies and the other end are the higher societies.
a. Primitive societies- characterized by internal differentiation into similar segments with negligible division of
labour, legal codes that are mainly repressive, a collective conscience that predominates in each individual
member's mind over the individual component, low moral density, small population and mechanical solidarity.
b. Higher societies- characterized by internal differentiation into many distinct organs, a great division of labour, a
legal code that is predominantly concerned with restitutive regulation of inter-personal rights, a collective
conscience that constitutes only a modest portion of the mind of each individual, high moral density, large
population and organic solidarity.
• Mechanical solidarity- Found in primitive society. It binds the individual directly to the society without any
intermediary. It is predominant in those societies belonging to the collective type, in which the beliefs and
sentiments of each member are the same because of their common membership in a specific society.
• People are engaged in similar activities which brought bonding among them.
• Collective conscience

• Organic solidarity- Modern society. The members or sub-units of a society differ from one another but depend on
one another and are controlled or constrained or regulated by one another or by some single specialized sub-unit.
• Product of the division of labour in society in which each member has his own specific activity and contributed to the lives
of other members. No member can live alone, for each depends on the activities of others for his own well-being
• Operates with the principle of interdependence
 PROPOSITIONS
(CENTRAL THESES OF DIVISION OF LABOR CONTINUATION…)

2. Society's movement away from the primitive and towards the higher
end of the continuum is due to a causal chain running as follows.
- Society begins to increase in population and have a higher population
density. Consequently, the struggle for existence becomes more acute
and, in order to survive, members of the society develop a division of
labour.
- The increasing division of labour then leads to a higher moral
density, a decline in the collective component in the conscience, a
shift in the structure of the law, and the growth of organic solidarity
at the expense of mechanical solidarity Image source: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yieo378YRD8
• Three Exceptional or Pathological Kinds of Division of Labor

1. Anomic form- arises from the inadequacy of contact between the various organs of society
due to the lack of juridical determination of the rights of capital and labor. As organized
society develops, the producer cannot appraise the market for his product at a glance. Hence
production becomes unregulated and there are periodic crises.
2. Forced division of labor- too much regulation. Overregulation, or occupational specialization
by prescription rather than by achievement, prevents that desirable state of affairs in which
social inequalities exactly express natural inequalities and labor is divided spontaneously.
This is achieved by contracts spontaneously entered into and adhered to.
3. Abnormal form- One might be tempted to reckon as irregular forms of the division of
labor criminal occupations and other harmful activities. They are the very negation of
solidarity, and yet they take the form of special activities.   There are circumstances under
which otherwise contiguous organs become separated like in cases of deviancies (crime).
• Durkheim’s presentation of societal evolution, from
mechanical to organic solidarity, miss to note the existence
of penal law in primitive society (Merton, 1994)
• Primitive societies possess also a corpus of restitutive, civil
law, involving rights and duties between individuals, and
kept in force by social mechanisms.
• The existence of this contractual relations among primitive
peoples weakens the point of Durkheim's theory of unilinear
Image source:
development https://media-temporary.preziusercontent.com/frames-public/4/d/1/3/6/5
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• Durkheim failed to recognize that the unity of a group becomes imperative during inter-
societal conflicts and is largely achieved through appeals to common sentiments.
• Durkheim's conception of this unilinear evolution must, moreover, be reconsidered in the
light of what has been appropriately termed the "principle of limits" of development.
• Merton (1994) pointed that “development in a given direction may continue until it
becomes self-defeating, whereupon reaction occurs in an opposite direction”
• Durkheim finds the "determining cause" of increased
division of labor in the growth and heightened density of
populations.
• The increased division of labor is associated with
increased social interaction and enhanced competition.
Durkheim termed this social factor as "dynamic density“
and this causes change to occur according to him.
• Dynamic density- amount of social interaction with
regards to population
Image source: https://img.youtube.com/vi/3VwoihGP_i8/0.jpg
• The division of labor in modern society does not emerge automatically but arises
“spontaneously” or “voluntary” (Appelrouth & Edles, 2008).
• Requiring the individual to perform in the division of labor will cause him to become
“isolated in his special activity” and can become “a source of disintegration” for the
individual and society as well.
• A stern and strict division of labor can be brought to the “the institution of classes and
castes” in the society that might brought dissension”. This is what Durkheim called
“anomie”, a condition wherein the division of labor brought isolation rather than
interdependence (Ritzer, 2010) and resulted in “abnormal” conditions of
overspecialization.
• Merton (1994) shared that Durkheim seeks to combat individualistic
positivism which ignores the relevance of social ends as partial
determinants of social action.
• He believes that if society were simply a resultant of temporary contractual
relationships among individuals just to satisfy their respective immediate
interests and social relation were based on economic reason, then we should
no longer have a society but Hobbes's "state of nature” and “all against all”
(Kavka, 1983)
Image source:
• This is related to Durkheim's description of anomie. But Durkheim believes https://i0.wp.com/mooretoons.com/wp-content/upl
oads/2013/09/durkheimRGB.gif?ssl=1
that even in highly contractual and "individualized" societies, this brutish
state of nature does not occur.
• “Consensus of parts," the integration of individual
ends and the social value-complex prevents the
anomie condition and can be dealt with social ends
(Merton, 1994)
• Evidence of this is the legal regulation of contracts
between individuals, for although it is true that these
contracts are initially a voluntary matter, once begun,
they are subject to society as the omni-present and
controlling "third party." (related to social contract Image source:
theory) https://i0.wp.com/revisesociology.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/09/functiona
lism-sociology-social-order.jpg?resize=840%2C594&ssl=1
• Through a system of law, an organ of social control, the accord of individual wills is
constrained for the consonance of diffuse social functions. Society plays an active role
for it determines which obligations are "just," (i.e. in accordance to dominant social
values and which are incongruent)
• In this way, Durkheim refutes one of the basic doctrines of an atomistic sociology
(individual as the basic unit of analysis)
• Complementary to Merton, Barnes also mentioned the significance of Durkheim’s notion
of constraint
a. Constraint as means to conform to social standards
b. Constraint as pressure stemming from persons with prestige or authority, or else for mere
mechanical necessity (Lacombe 1926:40- 8)

• Laws and customs and other external facts enable us to infer the presence of internal
facts, the most relevant internal fact being that of social solidarity.
• Durkheim makes a distinction between laws and customs classified according to the kinds of
sanctions attached to them.
• Law- means a law as written in a code of laws.
a. Repressive- consist essentially in suffering, or at least a loss, inflicted on the agent. They make demands
on his fortune, or on his honour, or on his life, or on his liberty, and deprive him of something he enjoys.
They constitute penal law'.
b. Restitutive- does not necessarily imply suffering for the agent, but consists only of the return of things as
they were, in the re-establishment of troubled relations to their normal state' (DOL 69).
1. Real rights- rights over things. It is preferential and successoral right
2. Personal rights- Right of credit. Durkheim makes use of this as the external sign of the inward organic solidarity.
• Custom- is not opposed to law but the basis of it.
• Social relations ensue from custom but they lack importance and continuity.
• Law produces those which are essential and they are the only ones we need to know according to Durkheim
(1893).
• Law is essential to social solidarity and supports the formation of conscience or consciousness (value system)
Types of consciousness
1. Collective- common to our group in its entirety. The society living and acting within us
a. Affective element- consist of sentiments and 'phenomena of sensibility‘
b. Representative element- consisting of ideas and doctrines
2. Individual- personal and distinct which makes us an individual
• Although Merton expressed his comments on Durkheim’s unilinear theory, he acknowledges
the siginificance of Durkheim’s work in providing a conceptual scheme in the interpretation of
processes of differentiation, integration, competition, and the like.
• Merton (1934) also appreciated Durkheim’s utilization of “indices” which Durkheim considers
as the "external," measurable translation of the "internal," not directly observable social facts.
• Durkheim hopes to use repressive and restitutive law as indexes of mechanical and organic
solidarity. But according to Merton, Durkheim fails to demonstrate the relationship between
the observed facts and types of solidarity in his work.
For Barnes (1966), he noted that:
• The virtues of the Division of labour must be found elsewhere.
• Values, beliefs and aspirations are shared significantly by members of a society by reason
of their membership.
• The form and content of these common values were likewise connected with the forms of
organization of the society, so that a change in organization was followed, sooner or later,
by a change in values, and vice versa.
 REFERENCES

• Appelrouth, S., & Edles, L. D. (2008). Classical and contemporary sociological theory: Text and readings. Pine Forge Press.
• Barnes, J.A. (1966). Durkheim's division of labor in society. Man, 1(2): 158-175
• Faris, E. (I934). Emile Durkheim on the division of labor in society. Review in Am. J. Sociol. 40, 376-7.
• Kavka, G.S. (1983). Hobbes's War of All Against All. Ethics 93 (2), pp. 291-310. Retrieved on November 4, 2020 from
https://www.jstor.org/stable/2380421
• Mauss, M. (I958). Introduction to the first edition. In Socialism and Saint-Simon, Durkheimn, Emile. Yellow Spring, Ohio: Antioch
Press.
• Merton, R. (1994). Durkheim's division of labor in society. Sociological Forum, 9(1), 17-25. Retrieved from
http://0-www.jstor.org.lib1000.dlsu.edu.ph/stable/684936
• Parsons, T. (I937). The structure of social action. Glencoe, Ill.: The Free Press (2nd ed., I949.)
• Ritzer, George (2010). Sociological theories. 8th edition. New York: McGraw Hill