SOCI 100 Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Mechanical And Organic Solidarity, Collective Consciousness, Class Conflict
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❏Solidarity
❏Durkheim sees a society around him riddled with class conflict due to
industrialization
❏What does it take to give a society solidarity?
❏How does a society reproduce itself?
❏Most of the time they don’t
❏Wants to figure out what kinds of rules, norms, and practices a society
should have to have more solidarity
❏Society- a cyclical existence full of bonds with other things and people
❏Society works bc it is inside us
❏Forms of solidarity:
❏Mechanical- the sense of connectedness with other people based on the
fact that they are like me
❏Fundamental way to think of solidarity
❏Collective consciousness- the totality of beliefs and sentiments
common to the average members of society
❏A mental attitude, a set of sentiments the average member
of society possesses
❏A mental disposition, structure that shapes us and orients us
to other people
❏Independent of the positions people find themselves in
❏The power of collective consciousness is that the norm is so
strong you cannot deviate from it
❏Need to look at how strong social pressure is
❏However, we are not dealing with societies frozen in time
❏Societies evolve from simple ones where everyone
is the same, and as they evolve, collective
consciousness gets weaker -> more room to be
individual
❏Social order, coherence, and individuality are all important
❏As the need to be just like everyone else weakens, we become
more individual
❏Organic- solidarity produced by the division of labor ties between people
❏Division of labor allows us to be individual but also keep us
together in codependence
❏Any given society is a mix of both organic and mechanical
solidarity
❏Primitive societies- non-western, non-industrial societies, more tribal
❏Societies wherein there is no room to be different, have to follow the
status quo
❏Measuring solidarity- quantitative measurements of organic and mechanical solidarity?
❏Brings in psychology, sociology, and law
❏Law and crime
❏In a way follows tocqueville
❏Law is an expression of a social order