SOC-UA 1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 3: Mechanical And Organic Solidarity, Social Integration, Deskilling

• School: New York University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOC-UA 1
• Professor: Arum Richard

Document Summary

Durkheim: division of labor, organic/mechanical solidarity, social integration and functionalism, neo-functionalist: modernization theory. People don"t behave out of fear, they behave because it is internalized. Rather than technological changes, leading to more similarity/conformity of workers (marx"s deskilling of labor-force), durkheim argued that technological advances in society let to increases human density. Increases human density led to greater differentiations and specialization. Because everyone specialized in different activities, everyone was increasingly interdependent. Mechanical solidarity based on similarities of activity/consciousness. Organic solidarity based on complementary differences. Organic solidarity replaces mechanical solidarity as primary organizing feature of modern society. Functionalist approaches view society as a whole as a living organism; social activity generally was expected to serve a function for the larger health of society (although there were rare cases of pathological or dysfunctional exceptions). Social integration is critical challenge facing individuals and society anomie and suicide in modern secular world: suicide is driven be lack of social integration.