Social Settings - Essay Example

Social Settings According to Durkheim, people organize into groups for one of two primary reasons – either mechanical or organic. In mechanical organization, people come together because of shared beliefs and sentiments while organic organization brings people together based on specialization and interdependence. This particular view of social settings applies to my own life in two different ways. My social circle, my family and friends, are linked by mechanical forces in that we are linked by feeling and shared beliefs.

I would consider this my primary group because it is the group in which I feel I am most myself, most relaxed and most able to explore those elements of my interactions with others without expectations or strict boundaries. However, there is another world in which I operate that would be classified in terms of the organic as my association with business people is based on an interdependent web of specialized skills. I would consider this my secondary group because I have less personal emotion tied up in this group and my time spent with this group is a matter of necessity for the welfare of my primary group rather than primarily being a matter of choice.

This also falls in line with Durkheim’s theories as the mechanical organization is primarily within kinship ties and the organic organization is within the larger sphere of my life in the city of New York. It was Ferdinand Tonnies who suggested much the same sort of distinction between social groups as that offered by Durkheim, namely that people tended to form social groups around either shared emotion and beliefs or around more intentional codependence on speciality and proximity. He also indicated that these groups had more specific settings in which to form.

In terms of the emotional group, the rural setting or the small town seems to be what he had in mind, where each individual shared much of the same lore, mythology and concepts of self-preservation for the community at large while the other group was more abstract and distant, focused more on the welfare of the city or state. While I see how these ideas may be valid, I feel my personal life falls more within Durkheim’s system in which both systems might exist simultaneously within the same context.

My family and friends are a close-knit group who share many of the same interests and sometimes the same background while my co-workers are equally close based upon our shared interest in the welfare of the organization for which we work. While I gain my sense of status within both of my identified societies from the secondary group, it is equally as a mother and transplanted Russian that I derive much of my sense of self-worth and identification. My role in my primary group is not as strictly defined as that found in my secondary group, where I operate as a CFO, yet I find it is just as challenging and rewarding.

In this sense, it is difficult for me to completely grasp the concepts of Lenski, who seems to feel that with greater technological advancement, the concept of what Durkheim terms the mechanical society falls away to replaced by the organic. Thus, in the end, I must conclude that the social structure proposed by Durkheim comes closest to matching my individual social setting.