The Division of Labor in Society by Durkheim Case

In "The Division of Labor in Society", Durkheim mainly argues that the only way to

overcome the anomie between employers and employees is the creation of "professional

groups" which constitute by participants in a certain industry. Durkheim predicts that such

local groups would become the dominant unit of social organization as industry continues to

expand. Effective regulation between employers and employees can only be made by those

who work in the certain industry and come together to form a "corporation". However, the

absence of sustained interaction between participants in a certain industry disables the

emergence of such a corporation in modern society. Also, the professional group should serve a

moral role, in creating solidarity as well as preventing excessive exploitation in industry. In a

primitive society, people acting and thinking similarly and with a collective conscience and this

similarity allows social order to be maintained but it is very unstable. While in an industrial

society, division of labor turns out to be more complicated. People are allocated in society

according to merit and rewarded accordingly: economic life decides the organizational

structure of a professional group. Thus regulations of economic activities are necessary to

maintain solidarity. Meanwhile, as the expansion of industry and its complexity, the

corporation would expand as well and gradually become the essential foundation of political

organization in future.

Based on Durkheim's prediction and the argument of two groups: critics of class

analysis who advocate ceasing the analysis of class and Marxists who nominally apply class to

large groups but without little empirical evidences, Grusky and Sorensen bring out the concept

"disaggregation" which is about maintaining class analysis, but shifting the unit of analysis to

much smaller "occupational associations". They state the virtues of disaggregation in four

aspects: class identification, social closure, collective action, and class outcomes. Workers

probably would have trouble to identify with aggregated Marxist classes while it is much more

convenient for them to identify with occupational groups which are formed by functional

positions. The aggregated class model does not have any empirical support about social closure

but actual exclusionary practices occur within smaller scale professional associations. And

collective action often happens among occupational associations, not aggregate classes.

Local associations prefer to pursue specific occupation benefits rather than large scale Marxist

objectives. The outcomes prove that Marxist's status-based structuration has proceeded at the

wrong level, in fact, socialization processes are consistent within occupational groups. Grusky