Friday, February 6, 2009

Durkheim's Organic Solidarity in the ASUC

This essay uses our student government, the Associate Students of the University of California, to demonstrate Durkheim's theory of organic solidarity.
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7 comments:

  1. f0revershortFebruary 6, 2009 at 9:50 PM

    Emile Durkheim was convinced that the sociology was a social science. To answer his question of whether the division of labor is good, he examines the moral facts of society. For Durkheim, solidarity is always good. As a moral value, it’s a measure of the health of society, which Durkheim uses to measure whether the division of labor is good. Evaluating solidarity, Durkheim refers to two diametrically opposed forms of solidarity, mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity, one of which can very aptly be applied to the Associate Students of the University of California (ASUC), a college student government institution.

    In Durkheim’s writing, mechanical solidarity is directly connected through the similarities and likeness between its members. Because mechanical solidarity does not include the division of labor and specialization, there is a high degree of conformity to morals, which develops a collective consciousness in the community (D, 38). The dominant form of law in this society is repressive so that the state may defend and represent the collective consciousness. Therefore, a violation of the collective consciousness is a crime (D, 39), resulting in a public, passionate, and organized punishment by the state to show others not to disobey (D, 55-59).

    As a characteristic of pre-modern societies, mechanical solidarity is needed to gain cooperation of the division of labor. This leads to organic solidarity, which is based on complementary differences. These differences indirectly link us to society and help society to bond, due to the interdependence between individual entities. Durkheim compares this state of solidarity to that of a human body, using organs to symbolize the individual entities. Each organ has special characteristics and independence to make decisions. Combined, these organs create a healthy, functional organism (D, 85). As individuals, each specializes and develops an individual consciousness, which combined becomes stronger than the collective consciousness they share. The role of the state in organic solidarity focuses on restitutive laws, restoring society to a previous state of affairs (D, 167). The higher the division of labor, the more the state is needed to regulate and coordinate the relationship between organs in society, which therefore increase the restitutive laws (D, 28). The solidarity expressed by these institutional relationships is a result of the division of labor (D, 81). Organic solidarity works similar to glue, separate entities are brought together to form a society rather than an isolated community.

    The ASUC is a liberal acting body that represents and voices the opinions of students on the UC Berkeley campus. Marx would say that the ASUC is advocating for the student’s rights on campus, and therefore is acting like a union. Those who are voted into the office of the ASUC are regular students with a goal to create change. Unlike Lenin’s parliament, the ASUC is not backed up by a thousand threads, and therefore do not have an alternative political agenda to attend. In Durkheim’s analysis, organic solidarity can closely be related to the Associate Students of the University of California (ASUC), UC Berkeley’s student government. Modeled after the U.S. government, the ASUC has two main political parties and a couple of independent parties. The main political parties, CalSERVE and Student Action, represent the interests of a majority of the student body. These political parties are based on complementary differences, representing differing political agendas that are focused on multi-cultural awareness or educational opportunities. Through these goals, each political party is able to specialize and address their interests, therefore serving a variety of needs for the entire campus. By acting as one student government, each of the political parties, the organs, become interdependent on one another’s support to pass new bills/laws, put on a program, or change an on-campus policy. As a whole, the ASUC implements restitutive laws to help maintain a campus culture and relationship between itself and over 500 different student organizations on campus. Together, CalSERVE and Student Action serve to unify students on campus.

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  2. ChuckFebruary 8, 2009 at 3:30 PM

    This memo was nicely written. You did a good job in explaining how OS is born from MS. You touched on all major points of both solidarities and structured the paragraphs so they'd just flow from one point to another. Also the part on the ASUC was very informative, I never looked at it like that before. I feel like only CalSERVE and Student Action care about the campus as a whole, the other groups just want their 15 minutes of fame.

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  3. KristinaFebruary 8, 2009 at 4:48 PM

    I think the topic of the ASUC brings out an interesting point about the nature of opposing political parties. Yes political parties appeal to different constituencies, and in that way they are interdependent in representing the whole population. But if we view them as organs, they are organs that are trying to do the same function, run the government. To me, it seems that each party would ideally like the other parties to not exist. Perhaps the ASUC, by placing opposing parties in the same government, try to create solidarity by making the parties interdependent on each other to actually pass any policy. In this way the ASUC and all governments can effectively act as one body.

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  4. akapFebruary 8, 2009 at 5:32 PM

    Thinking about the solidarity of a student government like ASUC forced me to wonder exactly who is touched by such solidarity. Do the restitutive rules of the organization maintain relations of the organs of the campus community, or only within the organization itself? If the considering this solidarity as campus wide, we could almost question the moral function of the organization just as Durkheim does with the division of labor.

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  5. NickPFebruary 8, 2009 at 10:25 PM

    First off, well done. I never really pay attention to ASUC but drawing these connections (including to last semester) now makes it more interesting. But I too have questions that echo Kristina's. Aren't both parties really trying to defeat the other? It raises the point of legislatures in general in Durkheim's theory. If the parties are more divided, I don't think there will be complementary differences that lead to cooperation. If the parties are very similar, they don't really represent the complex DL of society and there's no real point to having two parties. I was also wondering if ASUC by-laws require two parties or how else did the party system arise?

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  6. NickPFebruary 8, 2009 at 10:29 PM

    First off, well done. I never really paid attention to ASUC but now it seems quite interesting. But I also have questions echoing Kristina's. Aren't the parties really trying to defeat each other? It also raises questions of legislatures in Durkheim's theory in general. If the parties are very different then I don't think the differences are complementary and will lead to cooperation. If the parties are very similar then they don't really represent the complex DL of societies with republican governments, and so there's no real purpose to having different parties. I was also wondering how the party system arose in ASUC. Is it in the by-laws or somehow natural?

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  7. NickPFebruary 8, 2009 at 10:30 PM

    Sorry, frickin thing said my first comment timed-out. Only read one: they say the same thing pretty much.

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