1. During the late 17th and 18th centuries, Western Europe saw the emergence of radically new ways of thinking about the world. Referred to as ‘The Enlightenment’, these new philosophies established the human being at the centre of universe, and rational thought as the central features of the human being. The ability to think rationally and critically transformed the individual human being into both the producer and the user of all knowledge, the ‘knowing subject’.
2. On the other hand, only persons who could think and reason could be considered as fully human. Those who could not remain deficient as human beings and were considered as not fully evolved humans, as in the case of the natives of primitive societies or ‘savages’.
3. Being the handiwork of humans, society was amenable to rational analysis and thus comprehensible to other humans.
4. For reason to become the definite features of the human world, it was necessary to displace nature, religion and the divine acts of gods from the central position they had in earlier ways of understanding the world. This means that the Enlightenment was made possible by, and in turn helped to develop, attitudes of mind that we refer to today as secular, scientific and humanistic.
I. Mechanical Solidarity :
(a) Mechanical solidarity is founded on the similarity of its individual members and is found in societies with small populations. It typically involves a collection of different self-sufficient groups where each person within a particular group is engaged in similar acitivities of functions. As the solidarity or ties between people are based on similarity and personal relationships, such societies are not very tolerant of differences and any violation of the norms of the community attracts harsh punishment.
(b) In other words, mechanical solidarity based societies have repressive laws designed to prevent deviation from community norms. This was because the individual and the community were so tightly integrated that it was feared that any violation of codes of conduct result in the disintegration of the community.
II. Organic Solidarity :
(a) Organic solidarity characterises modern society and is based on the heterogeneity of its members. It is found in societies with large populations, where most social relationships necessarily have to be impersonal. Such a society is based on institutions, and each of its constituent groups or units is not self-sufficient but dependent on other units/groups for their survival. Interdependence is the essence of organic solidarity. It celebrates individuals and allows for their need to be different from each other, and recognises their multiple roles and organic ties.
(b) The laws of modern society are ‘restitutive’ in nature that in modern societies, the law aims to repair or correct the wrong that is done by a criminal act. By contrast, in primitive societies the law sought to punish wrong-doers and enforced a sort of collective revenge for their acts. Inmodern society the individual was given some autonomy, whereas in primitve societies the individual was totally submerged in the collectivity.
(a) Within the bureaucracy officials have fixed areas of‘official jurisdiction’ governed by rules, laws and administrative regulations. The regular activities of the bureaucracy organisation are distributed in fixed way as official duties.
(b) Moreover, commands are issued by higher authorities for implementation by subordinates in a stable way, but the responsibilities of officials are strictly delimited by the authority available to them. As duties are to be fulfilled on a regular basis, only those who have the requisite qualifications to perform them are employed. Official positions in a bureaucracy are independent of the incumbent as they continue beyond the tenure of any occupant.
(ii) Hierarchical Ordering of Positions : Authority and office are placed on a graded hierarchy where the higher officials supervise the lower ones. This allows scope of appeal to a higher official in case of dissastisfaction with the decisions of lower officials.
(iii) Reliance on Written Document : The management of a bureaucreatic organisation is carrided out on the basis of written documents (the files) which are preserved as records. There is cumulation in the decision-making of the ‘bureau’ or office. It is also a part of the public domain which is separate from the private life of the officials.
(iv) Office Management : As office management is a specialised and modern activity it requires trained and skilled personnel to conduct operations.
(v) Conduct of Office : As official activity demands the full time attention of officials irrespective of her/his delimited hours in office, hence an official’s conduct in office is governed by exhaustive rules and regulations. These separate her/his public conduct from her/his behaviour in the private domain. Also since these rules and regulations have legal recognition, officials can be held accountable.
(b) The scientific understanding of society that Durkheim sought to develop was based on the recognition of moral facts. He wrote, ‘Moral facts are phenomena like others; they consist of rules of action recognizable by certain distinctive characteristics, it must then be possible to observe them, describe them, classify them and look for certain laws explaining them.
(ii) According to Emile Durkheim : The moral codes were the key characteristics of a society that determined the behaviour patterns of individuals. Coming from a religious family. Durkheim cherished the idea of developing a secular understanding of religion. It was in his last book. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life that he was finally able to fulfil this wish.
(iii) Social fact existed as moral community : Society was for Durkheim a social fact which existed as a moral community over and above the individual. The ties that bound people in groups were crucial to the existence of society. These ties or social solidarities exerted pressure on individuals to conform to the norms and expectations of the group. This constrained the individual’s behaviour pattern, limiting variation within a small range.
(iv) Moral conduct codes were manifestations of particular social conditions : Moral codes were manifestations of particular social conditions. Hence the morally appropriate for one society was inappropriate for another. So for Durkheim, the prevailing social conditions could be deduced from the moral codes. This made sociology akin to the natural sciences and was in keeping with his larger objective of establishing sociology as a rigorous scientific discipline.
(v) Due to the moral code, behaviour can be predicted : Construction of choice in social action meant that behaviour could now be predicted as it followed a pattern. So by observing behaviour patterns it was possible to identify the norms, codes and social solidarities which governed them. Thus, the existence of otherwise 'invisible' things like ideas, norms, values and so on could be empirically verified by studying the patterns of social behaviour of the people as they related to each other in a society.
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