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An Imperfect and Troubled Solidarity ?mile Durkheim (1858-1917), originally destined to become a Jewish Rabbi like his father before him has become something greater:
Submitted by mramos on March 26, 2008
Category: Social Issues
Words: 1481 | Pages: 6
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Émile Durkheim (1858-1917), originally destined to become a Jewish Rabbi like his father before him has become something greater: the main figure behind the concept of “The Forced Division of Labor” and unequivocally, one of the greatest minds to have ever lived during the 18th and 19th century (Morrow 2005, 158). Durkheim following his precocious career as a graduate student from the famous École Normale Supérieure (ENS) in Paris, France 1882 was baptized immediately into the field of Sociology “…in response to traumatic events in France that led him (and the liberal and socialist reformists of his generation) to question the capacity of the older conservative elites to manage France in the new industrial age” (Morrow 2005, 158). More specifically, his influential reconstruction of French traditional social theory was in response to France’s embarrassing defeat during the Franco-Prussian War of 1870 (Morrow 2005, 158). Durkheim attributed this defeat to the inability of mechanical solidarity to effectively account for differentiation stemming from conservative French industrial society, which resulted in a politically and economically disorganized France (Morrow 2005, 162). In this paper, I will discuss Durkheim’s description of mechanical solidarity, more specifically, how Durkheim explained that a shift from mechanical to organic solidarity in French society was needed (reversal of Toennies), and how this shift was accomplished through the use of Durkheim’s “The Forced Division of Labor” (Durkheim, 1893). Finally, I will conclude with the notion that a real-life employment of “The Forced Division of Labor” (organic solidarity) can never truly distinguish itself from the repressive nature of mechanical solidarity, because the fundamental basis of such a theory relies too heavily on assumptions and specific contingencies.
France’s defeat at the hands of Prussia was a tremendous shock for the French people...
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