Durkheim’s The Rules of Sociological Method addresses what exactly is social fact. He introduces the concept that our behaviors arise from factors outside our individual consciousness. He describes an external coercive power that acts upon individuals to ensure they are behaving in a socially acceptable manner. He also introduces the notion of “social currents” which he describes as waves of emotion that overtake a crowd and do not come from the individuals within the crowd themselves. The Division of Labor in Society further expands these ideas by discussing a “collective consciousness” of society. This collective consciousness is the common beliefs of a society that determine how the society functions. He discusses crime as an offense to the collective conscious and punishment as a way to return the society to the state it was in before the crime occurred. He notes that the division of labor is directly impacted by the population and density of a society. In The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, Durkheim discusses how religion performs the same function in all societies. He claims that there can be no society without a collective conscious.
I found Durkheim’s notion of collective emotions in The Rules of Sociological Method to be particularly interesting. He claims that sudden outbursts of emotions in a crowd are not a result of “what all the individual sentiments had in common…it results from their being together”. Although it is slightly embarrassing, I can relate to this idea in the context of watching a Harry Potter movie in the theaters. On opening night, waves of emotion overtake the crowd. The environment is much different than watching a movie that does not hold the same collective sentiment for a crowd.
I am slightly confused about how Durkheim defines individual personalities in The Division of Labor in Society. It seems to me that he believes an individual cannot simultaneously be truly unique and a functioning member of the collective conscious of a society.
I too am a little confused on Durkheim's definition of the individual. I think it's through self-determination that one divorces them from the collective conscience and the separation may cause an inequity within the homogenous society. It's rather presumptive...
ReplyDeleteThank you for excellent formatting, in addition to excellent points :)
ReplyDeleteYour movie experience would be quite recognized by Durkheim; in fact one of the points he and many other theorists make is that what was one a sole purvey of a religious experience has now been significantly expanded to the world of mundane (entertainment).
As for the individual point both of you raise, Durkheim can be said to have an anti-individual bias. He argued, for example, that many phenomenon exist on the level of society and are nearly impossible to understand by an individual.