Practice question · Put in order
Arrange the steps of Durkheim’s argument from population growth to a new kind of social bond.
- People specialise into distinct and complementary occupations
- Law shifts from punishing offences to restoring broken arrangements
- Individuals become unlike one another and dependent on one another
- Population grows and interaction between people intensifies
- Competition for the same social functions becomes sharper
Hints
- The argument begins with a demographic fact, not with a moral change.
- Specialisation is Durkheim’s solution to competition, not its cause.
Show the answer
- Population grows and interaction between people intensifies
- Competition for the same social functions becomes sharper
- People specialise into distinct and complementary occupations
- Individuals become unlike one another and dependent on one another
- Law shifts from punishing offences to restoring broken arrangements
Why
The step most often skipped is the second. Durkheim is not saying specialisation happens because it is efficient; he is saying it is how a crowded society avoids destroying itself through competition, on an analogy with species dividing an ecological niche. The moral consequences follow from that pressure rather than from anyone’s intention.
Practise The European Consolidation: Durkheim, Weber and Tönnies
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