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Emile Durkheim: Individuals
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In his review of the works of Marx and Durkheim, Alexander outlines Durkheim’s theory of modern society as forming a hierarchy of processes and institutions ranging from the particularism of individual life to the universalism of culture. At the most general level, culture refers to the cognitive, moral and aesthetic representations of collective life that inform the rest of society. It refers to what Durkheim described as the "collective consciousness", society as it thinks of itself, the morality of society which regulates the social institutions as well as economic life. Beneath culture, the state and the law represent this universal culture in a more particularistic way and organize the lower levels of the educational, occupational and domestic institutions.The individual is at the bottom of the social hierarchy. Some central elements emerging out of this scheme are Durkheim’s notion of culture and morality, state and politics, law and punishment, the corporation or occupational group, and the characteristics of modern economic life.Durkheim’s ideas on these issues have undergone changes in the course of his work; basically in The Division of Labor he argued for a materialist interpretation, while in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life he gives an idealist account.This presentation rests on his first major excursion in The Division of Labor in Society, but when necessary I will indicate if and how Durkheim’s ideas have developed in his later works.
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In the same year the Annee was born, Durkheim published his famous paper on Individual and Collective Representations, which served as a kind of manifesto of sociological independence for the Durkheimian school. A series of other seminal papers, some published in the Annee and some elsewhere, followed in the next decade and a half. These included "The Determination of Moral Facts," "Value Judgments and Judgments of Reality," "Primitive Classification" (with Marcel Mauss), and "The Definition of Religious Phenomena."
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Durkheim was a strong advocate of morality in society. He believed that having good strong morals would prevent individuals from 'disintegrating'. Disintegration would happen if the collective conscience became weak. The collective conscience was a term coined by Durkheim which meant that individuals shared common beliefs and sentiments. Without this consensus or agreement on fundamental moral issues, social solidarity would be impossible and individuals could not be bound together to form an integrated social unit. In order to prevent society from disintegrating Durkheim believed that punishment was necessary.
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Durkheim was concerned with the characteristics of groups and structures rather than with individual attributes. He focused on such problems as the cohesion or lack of cohesion of specific religious groups, not on the individual traits of religious believers. He showed that such group properties are independent of individual traits and must therefore be studied in their own right. He examined different rates of behavior in specified populations and characteristics of particular groups or changes of such characteristics. For example, a significant increase of suicide rates in a particular group indicates that the social cohesion in that group has been weakened and its members are no longer sufficiently protected against existential crises.
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Durkheim distinguished between types of suicide according to the relation of the actor to his society. When men become "detached from society," when they are thrown upon their own devices and loosen the bonds that previously had tied them to their fellow, they are prone to egoistic, or individualistic, suicide. When the normative regulations surrounding individual conduct are relaxed and hence fail to curb and guide human propensities, men are susceptible to succumbing to anomic suicide. To put the matter differently, when the restraints of structural integration, as exemplified in the operation of organic solidarity, fail to operate, men become prone to egoistic suicide; when the collective conscience weakens, men fall victim to anomic suicide.
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Durkheim presented a definitive critique of reductionistexplanations of social behavior. Social phenomena are"social facts" and these are the subject matter ofsociology. They have, according to Durkheim, distinctive socialcharacteristics and determinants, which are not amenable toexplanations on the biological or psychological level. They areexternal to any particular individual considered as a biologicalentity. They endure over time while particular individuals dieand are replaced by others. Moreover, they are not only externalto the individual, but they are "endowed with coercivepower, by . . . which they impose themselves upon him,independent of his individual will."1Constraints, whether in the form of laws or customs, come intoplay whenever social demands are being violated.
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