sociology of law

Learning goals:

What is Durkheim’s theory about why people obey the law?

1. People obey repressive law due to mechanical solidarity 2. People obey restitutive law due to organic solidarity

Durkheim p105-6, 109-110, 111, 129-130, 132

Division of Labor in Society

What holds society together?

Social solidarity arising from the division of labor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGargZd9KkQ

Solidarity = social cohesion

Two forms of solidarity – mechanical and organic

Mechanical and Organic Solidarity

In a society exhibiting mechanical solidarity, its cohesion and integration comes from the homogeneity of individuals. People feel connected through similar work, educational and religious training, and lifestyle. Mechanical solidarity normally operates in “traditional” and small-scale societies, and it is usually based on kinship ties of familial networks. Organic solidarity is social cohesion based upon the dependence individuals have on each other in more advanced societies. It comes from the interdependence that arises from specialization of work and the complementarities between people—a development that occurs in “modern” and “industrial” societies.

https://socialsci.libretexts.org/Bookshelves/Sociology/Book %3A_Sociology_(Boundless)/6%3A_Social_Groups_and_Organization/ 6.6%3A_Social_Structure_in_the_Global_Perspective/6.6A%3A_Durkheim %E2%80%99s_Mechanical_and_Organic_Solidarity

1. People obey repressive law due to mechanical solidarity

What is repressive law?

Laws that punish crimes

Examples?

Why repressive law?

To maintain mechanical solidarity

How does repressive law maintain mechanical solidarity?

“If, then, we wish to know what crime essentially is, we must extract the elements of crimes which found in all criminological varieties in different social systems.”

A crime is a crime because we punish it. Why?

Criminal acts are criminal because they offend the well-defined states of common consciousness

Collective consciousness = totality of beliefs and sentiments of common members of society

 This links together people across space and time  Includes morality and religion  Judicial, government, scientific, and industrial orders are outside of

common consciousness

“The only one which would satisfy this condition is that opposition between a crime, whatever it is, and certain collective sentiments. It is, accordingly, this opposition which makes crime rather than being a derivative of crime. In other words, we must not say that an action shocks the common conscience because it is criminal, but rather that it is criminal because it shocks the common conscience”

P105

Not only do citizens love each other and seek each other out in preference to strangers but they love their country. They will it as they will themselves; hold to it durably and for prosperity, because, without it, a great part of their psychic lives would function poorly. Inversely, society holds to what they present in the way of fundamental resemblances because that is a condition of its cohesion.

We have two consciences – our individual conscience and the collective conscience

“It is this solidarity which repressive law expresses, at least, whatever there is vital in it. The acts that it prohibits and qualifies as crimes are of two sorts. Either they directly manifest very violent dissemblance between the agent who accomplishes them and the collective type, or else they offend the organ of the common conscience.”

We punish acts that (1) break social cohesion between the individual and society, and/or (2) offend “common conscience”

Why do we punish these acts with repressive law?

“In short, in order to form an exact idea of punishment, we must reconcile the two contradictory theories which deal with it : that which sees it as expiation, and that which makes it a weapon for social defense,. It is certain that it functions for the protection of society, but that is because it is expiatory. Moreover, if it must be expiatory, that does not mean that by some mystical virtue pain compensates for the error, but rather that it can produce a socially useful effect only under this condition.”

2. People obey restitutive law due to organic solidarity

What is restitutive law?

What distinguishes this sanction is that it is not expiatory, but consists of a simple return in state. Sufferance proportionate to the misdeed is not inflicted on the one who has violated the law or who disregards it; he is simply sentenced to comply with it..» If certain things were done, the judge reinstates them as they would have been. He speaks of law ; he says nothing of punishment. Damage-interests have no penal character ; they are only a means of reviewing the past in order to reinstate it, as far as possible, to its normal form.

Why restitutive law?

To maintain organic solidarity

How does restitutive law maintain mechanical solidarity?

Negative relations = “you cannot do X”

Positive relations = “you can do X”

In class activity

Mechanical solidarity = interdependence through similarity

Organic solidarity = interdependence through dissimilarity

1. Find or draw an image that represents mechanical solidarity. Explain why in 100 words.

2. Find or draw an image that represents organic solidarity. Explain why in 100 words.

3. Upload to blackboard