Module 2 Topic 2 Notes

1. Mechanical and Organic Solidarity (Émile Durkheim)

1.1 Fundamental Question
● How can modern society facilitate individual autonomy while increasing people's
dependence on others?
○ Individuals become more dependent on society while becoming more autonomous
in current times due to the influence of organic solidarity in modern society
○ As society advances, the tendency is for more complex disciplines to be
developed.
○ For that to occur, funds and manpower need to be divided to ensure there is
advancement in each part of the discipline.
○ Due to this division of labor, the commonality of each individual with society
decreases, leaving more parts of the individual conscience free to think for itself
in ways the individual could advance his/her own speciality.
○ However, as each speciality is a part of a larger discipline which could only
function when all its parts work together, this also leads to more
interdependence between people → Organic solidarity.
1.2 Mechanical and Organic Solidarity
● Mechanical solidarity characterizes traditional society
● Organic solidarity characterizes modern society
● Autonomy and solidarity develop in parallel fashion
○ There is a transformation of social solidarity due to steadily growing development
of labor division
1.3 Labor Division
● Tendencies of modern industry:
○ Advancement toward powerful machinery drives great concentrations of forces
and funds, which drives extreme division of labor
○ Occupations are separated and specialized, and each product becomes a speciality
dependent on others
○ Occurs with unprecedented spontaneity
1.4 Negative and Positive Solidarity
● Personality: comprises individual qualities that distinguishes individual from society
● Negative solidarity: acting superficially aligned with society's interest while primarily
and self-evidently being driven by self-interest
● Two consciences: a collective conscience and a distinguishing conscience
○ Solidarity and individuality have a inversely proportional relationship
○ Collective is centripetal, individual is centrifugal
● Two kinds of positive solidarity
○ Mechanical: binds the individual directly to society with no intermediary
■ Society is an organized totality of beliefs and sentiments common to all
■ Also called collective solidarity
■ Can only be strong if common ideas and tendencies are greater in number
and intensity than individual ones
■ Personal rights are not distinguished from real rights
■ Individuality belongs to society where mechanical solidarity is strong
 ■ Links man less strongly than organic solidarity and grows weaker due to
advancements in society
○ Organic: individual dependent on society due to being dependent on its parts
■ Society is a system of different interconnected and specialized functions
■ Collective conscience leaves part of the individual conscience, allowing
special functions that it cannot regulate be established
■ While one depends more strictly on society as labor is divided, the activity
of each is much more personal and specialized despite conforming to
common practises of a speciality
■ The extent one needs to submit to society is less, allowing more place to
develop one's own autonomy
■ Society becomes more capable of collective movement while the freedom
of each of its elements grows
2. Social Fact (Émile Durkheim)
2.1 Fundamental Question
● What is the unique scope of sociology that distinguishes it from other sciences?
○ The uniqueness of sociology lies in its distinct scope of study comprising social
phenomena or facts.
○ Social facts are ways of acting, thinking and feeling that are enforced on an
individual and cause the individual to feel restraint when he/she acts against it.
○ General behaviors of a society originate, such as birth rates and mannerisms,
originate from their unique social facts.
○ People spontaneously contribute to social facts and experiences attributed to
social facts are often felt as belonging to society rather than the individual
○ Social facts can belong within or outside a defined social organization
○ Those without a distinct social organization, like TikTok trends, are called social
currents.
2.2 Social Fact
● Social fact (also known as social phenomena)
○ Every way of thinking and acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the
individual an external constraint → forces that have impact of individual
behavior
○ Characterized by the collective aspects of beliefs, tendencies and practices of a
group
○ Going against social facts leads to punishing consequences eg. social isolation
○ Proper subject matter unique to sociology
○ Social facts can exist inside and outside of social organizations
■ Social facts not belonging to a social organizations are called social
currents
● Spread of social facts
○ Social facts consist of ways of seeing, feeling and acting which could not have
manifested spontaneously eg. ways of expressing grief and love
○ They are spread by repetition and rigidity through word of mouth, education and
writing
○ People spontaneously contribute to the production of common emotion, and
experiences when acts are part of a social fact and done along differ radically
 ○ When a social fact dies out, emotions felt due to it seem foreign to an individual
and are no longer recognizable as his/hers
● How social facts manifest
○ Social facts manifest in general behaviors, behaviors in a group that are
generalized as characteristic of that group eg. high suicide rates, low marriage
rate, low birth rate
2.3 Limitations of Durkheim's Social Fact
● He failed to acknowledge that while circumstances affect people, they can also affect
their circumstances
3. Alienated Labor (Karl Marx)
3.1 Fundamental Question
● How does man come to externalize his labor?
Man externalizes his labor when his labor becomes an avenue of basic survival, and basic
survival becomes an avenue for primarily his work.
● How is alienation grounded in human development?
○ Human development is defined as the process of enlarging people's freedoms and
opportunities, and improving their quality of life.
○ As such, alienation is firmly connected to human development because the
elimination of alienation is the only way that human development for workers can
occur.
○ When the worker is given job opportunities and wages that allow him/her the
chance to use his/her intellect to contribute to a cause he/she is passionate about
and have ample disposable income to pursue his/her interests outside of work, the
worker experiences an improvement in his/her satisfaction with life.
○ This is because when the worker is able to contribute to the world in a domain
he/she likes, the work he/she does no longer becomes alien to him/her as the tasks
he/she fulfills are something he/she can call his/her own.
○ A comfortable salary with ample disposable that allows the worker to get his/her
wants in addition to his/her needs diminishes labor alienation as labor is not
longer a mere avenue for the worker to exist but also an avenue for the worker to
enjoy his/her existence through the expenditure of his/her resources on wants.
3.2 Alienated labor
● Also known as externalized labor
● Alienated labor causes
○ Loss of control of means of production causes workers to be alienated from goods
they produce, the process of work, and from others, themselves and nature
○ Wage labor reduces workers to the level of a commodity, an object
→ Objectification
○ The misery of the worker is inverse to the power and size of his production
● Capitalism (also known as political economy)
○ Competition in capitalism results in accumulation of capital in a few hands
○ Restores monopoly, and distinguishes the capitalist and landlord, from peasant
and worker → society is divided only into these two group
○ Private property belongs to capitalist and landlord, and associated with selfishness
and alienation if workers with the money system
○ Labor, and capital and land are separated
● How alienated labor occurs
○ Occurs when worker puts his life into an object, causing it to belong to the object
and not him/her
○ The greater the activity, the more the worker is without the object
○ Ways a worker becomes a slave to an object:
■ Alienation of goods produced: Objects a worker produces becomes objects
of labor that he/she cannot call his/hers.
■ Alienation from labor: The worker received labor in the form of work
which acts as his source of sustenance. Without his work, he cannot
sustain himself and will die, and without his life, he cannot be a worker.
He exists to work, and works to exist.
■ Alienation from himself, others and nature: The worker feels only when
doing animal functions such as eating, drinking and procreating. He is
reduced to his basic functions where his work becomes a mere action to
survive. Work, vital activity and productivity appear as means to
satisfying the need to preserve the worker's life.
● Unresolved contradiction of capitalism
○ Despite starting from labor, capitalism contributes everything to private property
and nothing to labor
■ Private property is a manifestation of alienated labor
○ Freedom of society from private property is expressed politically as freedom of
the workers