Work · Sociology & Social Theory
The Division of Labour in Society
His doctoral thesis: as the division of labour grows, the “mechanical” solidarity of likeness gives way to the “organic” solidarity of mutual dependence – against Spencer’s view that contract and self-interest alone hold society together.
Introduction
De la division du travail social was Durkheim’s main doctoral thesis, defended in Paris in 1893 together with a Latin thesis on Montesquieu. He treats morality as a social fact to be studied scientifically and uses law as an index of the type of solidarity: repressive, penal law predominates where people are bound together by likeness, restitutive law – contract, commercial and administrative law – where they depend on one another’s specialised work. The last book examines “abnormal forms” of the division of labour, among them the anomic form, in which economic functions are left unregulated; Durkheim later developed the concept of anomie in Suicide. The preface to the second edition (1902) proposed reviving occupational associations as a remedy.
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Connections
Builds on
- Course in Positive Philosophy1830 · Auguste Comte
Criticizes
- The Principles of Sociology1876 · Herbert Spencer
More works by Émile Durkheim
- 1897Suicide
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