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Durkheim'sdivision of labor in society

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Abstract

The source of social life, according to Durkheim, is the similitude of consciousnesses and the division of labor. The former is best evident among primitive societies where a “mechanical solidarity,” evidenced by repressive law, prevails; the latter in advanced societies where populations evidence greater “dynamic density,” and juridical rules define the nature and relations of functions. In combating individualism and basing the existence of societies on a “consensus of parts,” Durkheim refutes his positivistic emphasis which denies the relevance of ends to a scientific study of society. In his discussion of social ends is a latent anti-mechanistic trend. The theory of unilinear development is established on deficient ethnographic data. It assumes the absence of division of labor among primitive societies and of any “mechanical solidarity” among modern societies. Repressive and restitutive law Durkheim seeks to use as indexes of mechanical and organic solidarity, but he does not establish with any precision the perfect associations which he assumes obtain between his types of solidarity and of law.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Sociology, Harvard University, 02138, Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA

    Robert K. Merton

Authors
  1. Robert K. Merton

Additional information

Reproduced from theAmerican Journal of Sociology, Vol. 40 (1934), pp. 319–328. (© 1934 by the University of Chicago. All rights reserved.)

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Merton, R.K. Durkheim'sdivision of labor in society . Sociol Forum 9, 17–25 (1994). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01507702

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