The Criminal Justice System and Types of Society - Essay Example

What did Emile Durkheim understand by the division of labour in society and mechanical and organic solidarity? For there to be social stability and order in a society Durkheim believed it was necessary for people to have shared values and beliefs. Describe how the state and education can contribute to this social order with reference to contemporary Britain. The French sociologist and writer Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) was concerned with finding ways to study society that used modern scientific methods. In his book The Division of Labour in Society (Durkheim, 1997) he homes in on an important distinction in human societies, namely that between those where people live in small, largely self-sufficient units, and those where people specialise in specific jobs and roles. A rural community in a developing country like Ethiopia or Yemen, or a remote Scottish crafting community in medieval times are examples of the first type of society. Modern Britain is an example of the latter kind of society, where people have highly specialised jobs and live in a variety of different contexts and styles. Durkheim observes that in first kind society people live a fairly uniform kind of life. Everyone has a home and a few animals, and perhaps a patch of land and the families engage in food production and small scale crafts, relying on their own kinship units to provide for all their needs. Durkheim calls this kind of mutual support “mechanical solidarity, or solidarity by similarities” (Durkheim, 1997, p. 31). He notes that people have a tendency to be drawn to those who are similar to themselves, and in such a society there is a widespread shared understanding of the challenges and joys of life together. The example that Durkheim cites of this kind of society is the North American indigenous peoples who live in extended kinship structures, where most people have a similar role and status. In Durkheim’s view this kind of shared experience produces a strong “collective or common consciousness” (Durkheim. 1997, p. 39). This similarity helps to create strong values and beliefs in the community. These strong values and beliefs in turn form the basis of a shared understanding which defines what kind of behaviour is acceptable conduct in that society and what is not. These societies can be repressive in enforcing social values and this makes the group very cohesive. The more developed countries of the twentieth and twenty first century are, however, not marked by such a uniform social structure. Durkheim’s theory implies that a system of division of labour creates different experiences for sections of society, and this weakens the shared understanding between people. A clear example of this can be seen in modern cities such as London where some people live in luxury flats and have well paid jobs in city banks and offices, while others live in housing schemes or tower blocks and have difficulty finding suitable work. When work is available it tends to be manual or semi-skilled and it does not bring very much material wealth. It is not surprising that people in these two different situations view the world very differently and do not share the same collective consciousness or hold the same values. In spite of this loss, there is nevertheless still a considerable level of solidarity in such societies, and Durkheim calls this “organic solidarity” and likens it to the way that different parts of the human body work together. The nervous system, heart, respiratory system etc. all perform very different functions but the living organism is able to bring them all together into a coherent, unified whole (Durkheim, 1997, pp. 301-303). A key feature of Durkheim’s world view is the role that formal institutions play in ensuring that the different elements of society work together smoothly. In his opinion organisations like local government, the schools and colleges of the education system, the police, prisons and the healthcare system all help to create stability in society as a whole (Abercrombie and Hill, 2006, p. 158). The state takes on a responsibility to guide and control people’s behaviour, and enacts laws to define what is acceptable, and what happens when someone steps outside societal norms and commits acts which harm others and disrupt the stability of society as a whole. There may not be a natural and widespread collective consciousness arising out of shared experiences in such a fragmented society, but there are many institutions which strive to create just such a collective view, and to take action when the stability of society is threatened. The education system is a vital part of modern organically structured societies. Children are socialised there, and some of the very great differences that exist between different families are ironed out through a relatively uniform national curriculum which includes subjects like citizenship and moral or religious education. Critics have noted that in later works Durkheim came to view the civilising function of education as increasingly important, (Arnason, 1988, p. 94). Instead of the rather antagonistic view of social differences that was part of Marxist ideology (Marx and Engels, 1848), Durkheim sees them as being a necessary and useful part of human society. The criminal justice system is another area that Durkheim regarded as being very important in both mechanistic and organic types of society. This is where morality is encoded and enacted, and in Durkheim’s view morality as a fundamental part of what binds people together. In the UK there is clear evidence of a criminal justice system which is not absolute and tied to one single moral or religious view, but rather one which is open to debate, and is regularly reviewed and reformed. The recent riots in major cities in Britain caused considerable debate about how to punish such clearly destructive and destabilising behaviour, but at the same time questions were asked by many people about the reasons why young people in particular were so ready to take up arms and steal property. Issues like youth unemployment and social deprivation were brought into the debate, and this shows that a modern organic society has mechanisms to allow for collective views to be debated and established. The state responds with both punitive and supportive measures and this highlights the fact that there are elements of both permanence and development in the collective consciousness of modern Britain. No single world view prevails, but there is a willingness to debate the issues, and there are mechanisms by which people can express views and politicians can amend the law or influence the conditions in which people live. References Abercrombie, N. and Hill, S. (2006) The Penguin Dictionary of Sociology. Sixth edition. New York: Penguin. Arnason, J.P. (1988) Social Theory and the Concept of Civilisation. Thesis Eleven 20, pp. 87-104. Durkheim E. The Division of Labour in Society. New York: The Free Press 1997. Marx, K. and Engels, F. (1848) The Manifesto of the Communist Party. Translated by Samuel Moore. Available at: http://www.marxistsfr.org/archive/marx/works/download/manifest.pdf Read More