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What Function Did Emile Durkheim Think Was Carried Out By The Division Of Labour In Society?

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What function did Emile Durkheim think was carried out by the division of labour in society?


In 1893, Emile Durkheim wrote what he believed to be the functions that the division of labour carried out. He believed that there was two main functions the division created. The first was ‘mechanical solidarity through likeness’ and the second was ‘organic solidarity due to the division of labour‘.

If we take a look at the first function we mentioned, mechanical solidarity. Today, there are altruistic sentiments which present this character most markedly; but there was a time, not far distant from ours, when religious, domestic, and a thousand other traditional sentiments had exactly the same effects. But we have not defined crime when we say that it consists in an offence to collective sentiments, for there are some among these which can be offended without there being a crime. The collective sentiments to which crime corresponds must, therefore, singularise themselves from others by some distinctive; property; they must have a certain average intensity. Not only are they engraved in all consciences, but they are strongly engraved.

They are not hesitant and superficial desires, but emotions and tendencies which are strongly ingrained in us. The proof of this is the extreme slowness with which penal law evolves. Not only is it modified more slowly than custom, but it is the part of positive most refractory to change. For example, what has been accomplished in legislation since the beginning of the nineteenth century in the different spheres of juridical life; the innovations in the matter of penal law are extremely rare and restricted compared to the multitude of new dispositions introduced into the civil law, commercial law, administrative law, and constitutional law.

It is not enough that the sentiments be strong; they must be precise. In effect, each of them is relatively to a very definite practice. This pract...

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