Deconstructing Durkheim

A Post-Post Structuralist Critique

Jennifer M. Lehmann

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• eBook ISBN: 9781136164132
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Sociology
• Index: Social Sciences

The author analyzes Durkheim's social theory from the standpoint of critical structuralism. She explores Durkheim's discussion of the relationship between the individual and society. She also addresses the question of Durkheim's understanding of the relationship between the subject and object of knowledge, and the relationship between truth and ideology.

Part I

Durkheim’s social ontology

Chapter 1

The ‘structure’ of individuals

SOCIAL STRUCTURE AS ORGANISM

To understand Durkheim’s social ontology, it is necessary to scrutinize his conception of social ‘structure’. The most important factor in his thought here, as elsewhere, is his fundamental organicism.¹ The organic analogy, the comparison of society to an organism, is so pervasive in his work as to become inconspicuous, or taken for granted, like any permeating presence. His terminology provides overwhelming evidence of this practice. The phrases ‘social body’ and ‘social organism’ appear habitually, innumerably. ‘Morphology’ and ‘physiology’ are routine social concepts for Durkheim, as are ‘structure’ and ‘function’; ‘health’ and ‘pathology’. And he is quite conscious of this aspect of his theoretical framework. The ‘essential concepts’ from ‘other fields of knowledge’, ‘such as those of species, organ, function, health and morbidity, appear in sociology under entirely new aspects’.² This organicist metaphor qua social theory is crucial to Durkheim’s vision of social ‘structure’. In fact, in a sense, this is his vision of social structure.

A society, like an organism, is a supracomplex totality of complex elements. In the organism, these elements are organs, and their component elements, cells. Durkheim, while he occasionally mixes his metaphor, generally depicts society as an organism composed of institutions, which he compares to organs; and individuals, which he compares to cells. The most important systematic alternative to this schema is the comparison of occupations, rather than institutions, to organs. However, there are other, more confusing exceptions. For example, he often refers to individuals as ‘atoms’ rather than ‘cells’. On the other hand, he sometimes implicitly conceives of them as ‘organs’, particularly when he is discussing organic solidarity, or the interdependence of individuals based on their division of labor. Yet it is the model of individuals=cells and institutions=organs; and its major variation, in which individuals=cells and occupations= organs, which predominate.

The individual is to society what the cell is to the organism: ‘What is one man less to society? What does one lost cell mean to the organism?’³ Both the cell and the individual are simultaneously a totality, in relation to their own elements; and an element, in relation to the larger totality which they form in combination. Simple, inanimate molecules combine to produce complex, animate cells, which in turn are only themselves parts of even more complex wholes. How much more complex is society, whose elements are individual human beings. These social ‘cells’ are themselves the most complex combinations of natural elements in existence, and the totality they form is almost incomprehensible in its dimensions. In fact, there is an ascending ontological order of complexity, with society naturally at its apex. The physicochemical world provides the matter which combines to form the biological world; and this provides the basic matter of its most elaborate product, the psychological world of the human being. The physicochemical, biological and psychological human being, in turn, is not the ultimate in complexity nor the ultimate level at which causality resides, but merely an element itself in the social conglomeration. Social phenomena are ‘distinguishable’ from the lower levels ‘only by a greater complexity’.⁴ Yet despite the ‘extreme complexity’ of ‘social facts’ or ‘social things’, they are neither ‘inhospitable to science’ nor reducible to ‘their elemental conditions, either psychic or organic’.⁵ In the same way that an organism cannot be understood by analysis of its cells, but must be analyzed in all its complexity, so society cannot be understood by analysis of its individual human elements, regardless of the extreme complexity of these elements, to say nothing of their compound product. ‘Therefore, if the psychologist and the biologist correctly regard the phenomena of their study as well founded merely through the fact of their connection with a combination of elements of the next lower order, why should it not be the same in sociology?’⁶

Between the individual ‘cells’ and their complex unity, the ‘social organism’, there is an intermediate level, a complex unity situated or ‘intercalated’ between two complex unities. This is the social unit analogous to the organ in the biological organism. Durkheim conceives of this, as mentioned, in several ways. His most vivid metaphors are of social institutions conceived of as social organs. He concentrates on the institutions of morality (particularly religion), the state, and the economy. These he depicts repeatedly as the ‘heart’, the ‘brain’ and the ‘viscera’ of society, respectively. This schema is equivalent to the concept of ‘institutional specialization’.

Specialized occupations are equally treated by Durkheim as organs in the social body, without apparent regard for the conceptual difficulties this usage engenders. The problem for Durkheim is a more practical one. He is concerned with the nature of the relations among the various occupations, just as he is concerned with the nature of the relations among the specialized individual elements, and among the specialized institutional elements. For the ‘organization’ of society, which is how he refers to occupational specialization, is a new phenomenon. Societies were originally simple undifferentiated units. They were composed of ‘masses’, ‘amorphous or without structure’. The first ‘political’ or compound societies were themselves composed not of diverse occupations, but of ‘a number of elementary societies’ and were thus not ‘organized’ but ‘polysegmental’. It is only more advanced ‘political societies’ which are composed of other ‘secondary groups’, particularly the ‘professional groups’ or occupations.⁷ Thus, a second sense of organic solidarity would be the relations, real or ideal, obtaining among the diverse occupations which form modern society as diverse organs form advanced organisms. ‘All the functions of society are social, as all the functions of the organism are organic.’⁸

There is a second way in which Durkheim’s organicism informs his conception of social ‘structure’. He conceives of any given society as an organism; that much is obvious. But more than this, he can only conceive of different societies, different social structures, as different types of organisms. Therefore he is led by the logic of his own theory to posit two basic social structures (or ‘types’ or ‘species’), located at either end of a continuum of social evolution, and corresponding to two basic organismic categories, located at either end of a continuum of biological evolution; simple, or segmental (‘mechanical’); and complex, or differentiated (‘organic’).⁹ The first of these two social types, so-called ‘inferior societies’, are compared to ‘monocellular organisms’ while the second, ‘elevated societies’, are compared to ‘organisms of higher type’. ‘Primitive’ societies are like ‘protozoans’. The first ‘social type’ is a ‘veritable social protoplasm’, which forms simple segments or aggregates. These in turn combine in repetition ‘analogous to the rings of an earthworm’.¹⁰ That which differentiates societies is ‘differences in types of association’ of their elements, like the ‘differences … between the lower and higher organisms, between highly organized living things and protoplasm, between the latter and the inorganic molecules of which it is composed’.¹¹ Durkheim goes so far as to claim that this typology of societies is not merely metaphorical. He contends that societies literally undergo the same evolution as biological organisms, as this evolution is part of a universal natural law:

the law of the division of labor applies to organisms as to societies … the more specialized the functions of the organism, the greater its development … It is … a phenomenon of general biology whose conditions must be sought in the essential properties of organized matter. The division of labor in society appears to be no more than a particular form of this general process; and societies, in conforming to that law, seem to be yielding to a movement that was born before them, and that similarly governs the entire world.¹²

Durkheim defines ‘social evolution’ as a ‘double movement’ wherein segmental organization is gradually supplanted by ‘occupational organization’ until ‘our whole social and political organization will have a base exclusively, or almost exclusively, occupational’. He goes on to say that:

‘The same law holds of biological development … lower animals are formed of similar segments … at the lowest rung of the ladder, the elements are not only alike, they are still in homogeneous composition’. These organisms are ‘colonies’ and the individuality of the colony, including its ‘structural plan’ and its form of solidarity, is ‘identical with that of societies that we have termed segmental’. The colonial type ‘disappears as we go up in the scale of organisms’, ‘even as the segmental type becomes effaced as we advance in the scale of social evolution’. Colonies give way to earthworms, which give way to molluscs and eventually vertebrates. At this point the ‘analogies’ are between the animal type and ‘organic societies’: ‘In the one case as in the other, the structure derives from the division of labor and its solidarity’.¹³ There are, then, two types of social structure, one of which is merely a developed form of the other. There is ‘a social structure of a determined nature to which mechanical solidarity corresponds’. It is characterized by ‘a system of segments homogeneous and similar to each other’. On the other hand, there is ‘the structure of societies where organic solidarity is preponderant’. These ‘are constituted, not by a repetition of similar, homogeneous segments, but by a system of different organs each of which has a special role, and which are themselves formed of differentiated parts’. These ‘social elements’ are ‘not of the same nature’ and are ‘not arranged in the same manner’. They are not simply ‘juxtaposed’ nor ‘entwined’ but are ‘co-ordinated and subordinated one to another around the same central organ’.¹⁴

THE COLLECTIVE BODY

‘Structure’, thus conceived, is not the ultimate, ulterior causal factor for Durkheim. Structure, in the organicist sense, is the shape or morphology of the social body. It has two basic variants: simple and complex. These variants themselves are produced by underlying ‘conditions of existence’, the ‘internal milieu’ of the organism. Structure is thus not ‘absolute’, but rather is itself determined by a substructure upon which it rests. There is a deeper level of ‘anatomic or morphological’ social facts. The ‘substratum of collective life’ is, primarily, ‘the number and nature of the elementary parts of which society is composed’.¹⁵ It is ‘the number of social elements and the way in which they are grouped and distributed’.¹⁶ The ‘content’ of the ‘social substratum’ is, ‘first of all, the total mass of the population in its numerical size and density’.¹⁷ The formula that the division of labor is the result of population ‘volume and density’ can thus be understood as a causal relation between substructure and structure.

The division of labor varies in direct ratio with the volume and density of societies, and, if it progresses in a continuous manner in the course of social development, it is because societies become regularly denser and generally more voluminous.¹⁸

This pattern has the force of a ‘law’, according to which ‘the growth and condensation of societies … necessitate a greater division of labor … it is its determining cause’. Furthermore, this law is another which is considered by Durkheim to be universal, applying equally to natural organisms and social bodies. Thus,

We shall not be astonished by the importance attached to the numerical factor if we notice the very capital role it plays in the history of organisms … As the constitutive parts of the animal are more numerous, their relations are no longer the same, the conditions of social life are changed, and it is these changes which, in turn, determine both the division of labor, polymorphism, and the concentration of vital forces and their greater energy. The growth of organic substance is, then, the fact which dominates all zoological development. It is not surprising that social development is submitted to the same law.¹⁹

The mechanism through which the substratum, the quantity of elements, determines the structure, the quality of the whole, is presented in several ways. Sometimes emphasis is placed on the nature of the relations among the individual elements. Individuals who are numerous and interconnected either through physical proximity or the means of transportation and communication, should have more frequent interaction with each other. This intensity of social intercourse, or ‘moral density’, transforms society, producing a greater ‘vitality’ along with the division of labor and ‘civilization’. On the other hand, the increase in numbers creates ‘pressure’ or competition for scarce resources. In this view, the division of labor is the result of disequilibrium and conflict brought about by the change in population size. It intervenes as ‘a mellowed denouement’ of ‘the struggle for existence’.²⁰

Regardless of the mechanism, it is curious that Durkheim regards social elements, individuals, as having causal precedence in relation to the structure of the whole. Society ‘has no other substratum’ than the individuals which form it.²¹ ‘Society has for its substratum the mass of associated individuals.’²² This can be more readily understood in the light of the fact that Durkheim conceives of society as a collectivity, of the social body as a collective body. There is a ‘collective reality’, a ‘collective entity’, a ‘collective being’ which emerges from the combination of individuals and this is the ‘thing’ which Durkheim indicates when he uses the term ‘society’. The unity of associated individuals is the social fact for Durkheim; it is society.

The ‘association of individuals’ is used interchangeably with ‘society’, as it identifies the same concept. Thus, Durkheim can say that ‘as the association is formed it gives birth to phenomena which do not derive directly from the nature of the associated elements’.²³ Or that there remains, beyond the individual, ‘only a single, empirically observable moral being, that which individuals form by their association – that is, society’.²⁴ Elsewhere, he says that ‘every aggregate of individuals who are in conti...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgements
• Introduction: Durkheim/deconstruction/structuralism
• Part I Durkheim’s social ontology
• Part II Durkheim’s (social) epistemology
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Bibliography of Durkheim’s works
• Index