Durkheim and Spencer Complexity and Social Order Term Paper

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Abstract

Both Emile Durkheim and Herbert Spencer proposed an evolutionary sociology, whereby societies become increasingly complex and naturally exhibit changes in their social orders. Essentially functionalist in their respective approaches, Durkheim and Spencer also show how the division of labor functions to create social solidarity in complex societies. However, Durkheim and Spencer differ in their evolutionary analysis. Durkheim is far more optimistic than his predecessor, believing that the division of labor does not necessarily lead to pathological individualism. Moreover, Durkheim believes in an organic model of social order. Spencer, on the other hand, proposes a more utilitarian function of both cooperation and social order. Whereas Spencer believed in mutual cooperation for rational, self-seeking ends, Durkheim believed in interdependence for its own sake, as societies take on a life of their own.

Introduction

Concurrent with the social science zeitgeist of the nineteenth century, Emile Durkheim and Herbert Spencer studied the evolution of human societies from an evolutionary standpoint. While both Durkheim and Spencer occasionally referred to the biological underpinnings of human nature and thus, society as collective human nature, both also shifted attention towards overarching social structures. Yet neither Durkheim nor Spencer was concerned with formal social structures or institutions such as government or organized religion, or even kinship. Rather, Durkheim and Spencer looked towards the burgeoning field of economics to describe the ways societies evolve from being simple, relatively small, and kinship-based towards being more based on the economic expediency of exchange and the production of material goods. As technologies evolve and societies become even more economically productive, the role of institutions like government or religion become far less important or necessary. Having lost their function in promoting social order, political and social institutions give way to the overarching institutions that enable social stability and order.

On Division of Labor

Both Durkheim and Spencer viewed the division of labor as a natural outcropping of increasingly complex societies. Likewise, both Durkheim and Spencer viewed the division of labor in societies from an evolutionary perspective: as societies evolve, growing larger, more industrialized, and more complex, division of labor becomes “the supreme law of human societies and the condition of their progress,” (Jones, 1986, p. 1). Spencer likewise viewed “the history of social evolution as a process of increasing size, division of labor, differentiation, and mutual cooperation,” (LaPorte, 2015, p. 312). Division of labor is necessarily in complex societies, for the same reason it is necessary for the production of complex goods or technologies. Individuals who specialize can contribute to the production of a whole: that whole can be a product or society at large.

Durkheim was more optimistic than Spencer in his assessment of human nature and the role division of labor plays in the society.

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For Durkheim, “the division of labor does produce a kind of solidarity, and that the division of labor is highly developed in advanced societies,” (Jones, 1986, p. 1). Spencer did not necessarily view the division of labor as enhancing solidarity in any way. If solidarity results from division of labor, then it is because division of labor has utility: it functions as a means to make the society run more efficiently (La Porte, 2015). Durkheim also understood that the division of labor may enhance the predisposition of human beings towards individualism, which can become excessive, as with the development of anomie (Lizardo, 2009). However, Durkheim remains an optimist, claiming that in spite of the dualistic nature of human beings, individuality and solidarity have grown stronger together (Pope & Johnson, 1983).

On Social Solidarity

Although both Durkheim and Spencer recognized that complex societies evolve their own, more abstract and informal, means of maintaining order and solidarity beyond the need for formal institutions, their views on social solidarity differed. To a degree, both Durkheim and Spencer believed that division of labor leads to solidarity, and solidarity leads to greater integration, and greater integration can create stability (Jones, 1986, p. 1). Moreover, Durkheim believed in two types of social solidarity or social integration: the type that is mechanistic, and the type that is organic (Shortell, n.d.). Mechanistic social solidarity relies on the enforcement of rules via punitive measures, which is the most common type of social mechanisms in more simple societies that still depend on collective belief systems, collective consciousness, and formal structures. Organic social solidarity, on the other hand, emerges from increasingly complex societies. As societies evolve into more complex organisms, organic solidarity entails “principles of exchange and restitution, rather than punishment,” to enforce norms, laws, and cohesion (Shortell, n.d.). Essentially, Durkheim believed that societies are organic entities. Their institutions arise organically as a process of natural selection, with different parts that functioned to ensure the smooth and orderly operation and evolution of society,” (Sociology of Emile Durkheim,” 2003). However, Spencer did conceptualize several types of human “superorganisms,” the overarching structures in the society that can be also understood via their functions including resource production, regulation or power, and distribution of power and resources (Turner & Abrutyn, 2016, p. 7). These are the informal social institutions that both Spencer and Durkheim agreed upon in their respective analyses.

Spencer’s view of why human beings agree to perpetuate social solidarity was totally….....

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