The Division of Labor in Society

The Division of Labor in Society by sociologist Émile Durkheim is best understood when placed within the socio-historical context of 19th-century continental Europe. Since The Division of Labor in Society reprises, expands, and comments on popular economic, moral, and scientific theories of the time, readers who are aware of these specificities are better equipped to grasp the assumptions and arguments Durkheim employs to support his reasoning. This guide will explore each of these three factors in turn.

The advent of the Industrial Revolution that began in the latter half of the 1700s created a profound shift in social and industrial organization across Europe. This period is characterized by a gradual shift away from crafting goods by hand toward a more mechanized production method. It is also accompanied by a population boom, technological and scientific innovation, and exploration as part of colonialism. Born in 1858, Durkheim lived in a society shaped by the first wave and in the middle of the second wave of the Industrial Revolution.

The effects of the Second Industrial Revolution are profound, but the most relevant factors to The Division of Labor include the inflation of large-scale mechanized industries; the expansion and saturation of towns; the further development of the railway; the expansion of migratory patterns; the division of science into various fields; and the fraying of traditional institutions such as religion. However, along with greater productivity, the division of labor also brought negative economic impacts: Poor working conditions and low wages caused frequent labor strikes; oversaturated towns became a breeding ground for disease; menial work was both underpaid and unfulfilling. Amidst these changes, economists began to hypothesize about the direction of human development. These theories, which informed Durkheim’s work, include Scottish economist Adam Smith’s liberalism, German sociologist Max Weber’s rationalism, and German philosopher Karl Marx’s socialism.

Philosophers of the time also debated the moral implications of modernization and social organization. Durkheim dedicates multiple paragraphs to refute English philosopher John Locke’s theory on the social contract, which argues that society came together when people agreed to limit certain individual freedoms in exchange for the protection and support of living in a collective. Durkheim proposes that it is not the contract that brought society about. Instead, it is social life, already pre-existing, that became the impetus for humans to develop a legal system to regulate their intra-personal relationships.

The 19th century also saw the rise of utilitarianism—the moral belief that the ultimate purpose in life is to maximize happiness. A popular theory explaining the advent of the Industrial Revolution argued that economic progress would bring about greater wealth and thus greater happiness. It concluded, in a utilitarian manner, that modernization is a moral endeavor. Durkheim dedicates Chapter 1 of Book II to refute utilitarianism as creating the division of labor and proposes an alternate theory that points to its moral weight.

Finally, the 19th century was a period of scientific discoveries, such as Charles Darwin’s theory of natural selection. Durkheim pulls most prominently on social Darwinism, a popular theory of the time, which argued that “civilized” European nations were more racially and biologically advanced than “primitive” societies in the rest of the world. Lamarckism and Herbert Spencer also drew from Charles Darwin’s research on heredity to argue that certain physiological traits learned through experience could be passed down genetically. Although both social Darwinism and Lamarckism have since been discredited, they inform Durkheim’s work and form the basis of some racist and inaccurate assumptions in The Division of Labor in Society.