Mechanical solidarity refers to social cohesion based on shared values and beliefs in societies with little division of labor. Organic solidarity arises from interdependence between specialized roles and occupations in societies with an advanced division of labor. While mechanical solidarity depends on similarity, organic solidarity stems from reliance on others to perform complementary economic functions.
Key Points
- Durheim believed that societies need to create a sense of social solidarity — making individuals feel as if they are part of something bigger and teaching them the standards of acceptable behavior.
- Organic solidarity is social cohesion based on the mutual trust of individuals in more advanced societies. It is based on the interdependence that results from work specialization and complementarity between people.
- Mechanical solidarity occurs in relatively small societies where individuals perform similar tasks. Meanwhile, organic solidarity develops in societies where people have highly specialized and differentiated tasks.
- While the common values of these societies can change overtime, this process is usually slow. This means that these values tend to be appropriate for the historical period they reside in (Merton, 1994).
Mechanical Solidarity
People in pre-industrial societies generally lived in small rural village communities characterized by mechanical solidarity. This means that people within social groups strongly identified with each other, and their sense of belonging to society (social integration) was very strong.
Before the Industrial Revolution (1760 – 1840), people successfully socialized according to the rules of society by their families and religious leaders. Moreover, they had such a great sense of belonging to society that conformity to the greater good was valued more than individualism, which was viewed as dangerous and deviant.
Early societies tended to be small-scale settlements localized in villages or rural areas with a limited division of labor, usually based on age or sex. In this type of society, people are similar to each other. Because people carry out similar tasks, people can share the type of work that they carry out and mutually support one another (Merton, 1994).
Conformity to social norms and values was also strengthened by fear of social controls, such as the extremely harsh punishments when members of society broke the rules of society.
In these early societies bound by mechanical solidarity, Durkheim argued that legal codes or the system of law tend to be either repressive or penal law. If there is a crime in society, that is to say, that the crime is an offense to all because it is an offense to the common morality – the shared system of values that exist.
Because most people are offended by this offense, severe punishment is likely to result regardless of how serious the crime was.
Penal law itself, in these small mechanical solidarity-based societies, is concerned only with sanctions, and there is no mention of obligations.
Punishment can consist of death or dismembership. Moral obligation and duty are not stated in punishment because they are generally understood as unsaid (Merton, 1994).
Organic Solidarity
Emile Durkheim argued that modern industrial urban societies were characterized by organic solidarity, and social cohesion was based upon individuals’ interdependence.
Consequently, value consensus and social integration have grown weaker in industrial society. People are less likely to agree and identify with one another. Consequently, people in modern industrial societies are likely to live in neighborhoods where community ties, duties, and obligations are weak.
- Value Consensus means that a majority of society agree with the goals that society sets to show success.
- Social integration means that people have a strong sense that they belong within society. There is a sense of community.
Durkheim believed that the complex development of the division of labor (the net sum of all the occupational roles or jobs) meant that the collective consciousness would decline in a society. In this situation, each individual begins to have a different set of tasks that they are engaged in.
There are now thousands of jobs in urban society, and although individuals perform different tasks and often have different values and interests, the order and social solidarity of society depend on the reliance of each individual to perform their specified tasks.
These different and specialized tasks lead to different experiences for each individual. The homogeneity of individuals, which created the common collective consciousness and mechanical solidarity, is disturbed, and individuals no longer feel connected through common experiences, such as work, family, or religious beliefs.
Instead, they have different settings, leading to a different individual consciousness (Merton, 1994).
The new solidarity that forms in this situation is organic solidarity, characterized by individuals’ dependence on each other within a division of labor and by cooperation as a result.
Nonetheless, there are still commonly shared values within societies, but they become generalized, a more general underpinning for social practices.
Durkheim notes that value consensus continues to exist in modern societies but in a weaker form because industrialization has resulted in people having greater access to a greater variety of knowledge and ideas, e.g., through the mass media and science.
Thus, social institutions have been weakened by industrialization because the division of labor has become more specialized and complex. Traditional agencies of socialization and social control, such as the extended family and religion, are no longer as influential as they were in the past.
Durkheim considered punishment to be less important in modern penal codes. Indeed, society is more concerned in modern societies with the restoration of the original, crime-free situation rather than exacting revenge on an offender.
This is to say, in societies that do not have a highly developed division of labor, the primary function of punishment is to protect and reaffirm the collective conscience in the face of acts that question its sanctity. Repressive or penal law can result.
Durkheim suggested that modern industrial societies were consequently characterized by moral confusion or ‘anomie’. This means that some members of society were more likely to challenge and reject shared values and norms of behavior, and this ‘normlessness’ often resulted in crime and deviance.
References
Durkheim, E. (1893). The division of labor in society. The Free Press, New York.
Durkheim, E. (1951). Suicide [1897]. na.
Merton, R. K. (1994, March). Durkheim”s division of labor in society. In Sociological Forum (Vol. 9, No. 1, pp. 17-25). Kluwer Academic Publishers-Plenum Publishers.
