Emile Durkheim believed that the cooperative constitution of all modern social facts, like all the other social facts, have an opposing and balancing effect to the existence of natural facts and the natural individuals. In modern societies, as in the traditional societies, the cooperative achievement of social facts and character depends on the shared social practices and moral or sacred orientations. An innovative and important conception of constitutive practices played a key role in Durkheim’s theory. Durkheim found out that the idea of self-organizing constitutive practices presented a vision of a highly differentiated society. A case in point is whereby a society is strong, flexible and egalitarian but facilitates social coherence and solidarity without exerting any authority or constraint. This has become more evident in the modern contexts of work and occupations where these constitutive practices play an essential role. Durkheim believed that in as much as social facts are cooperative achievements, they orient the sacred. Social facts in traditional societies were found mainly through consensus unlike in the modern societies. Durkheim focused on the role of constitutive practices in the creation of modern facts in situations that lacked consensus. Durkheim acknowledged the transition to modernity and maintained that new constitutive practices would develop, replacing the traditional and religious commonalities. This would in turn make it possible for the modern society to produce collective solidarity and a new moral grounding in justice and freedom.
Modern society contains individuals pursuing conflicting beliefs but social coherence is made possible by virtues that include tolerance, equality and commitment to constitutive practices that are difficult to organize by a general consensus. Durkheim held the view that to allow medieval group consensus to play an organizing role in the modern society could be quite dangerous given that the needs present are so different from what was then, and also not everyone would agree to them given the different beliefs and practices held by different people. A conflict may always arise as some of them may feel that others are transgressing on that what they view as sacred. Durkheim argued that the weakening traditional beliefs can strengthen social solidarity through the facilitation of tolerance and mutual coherence. This, he further argued, can only be achieved when everyone in society developed a sufficiently strong moral orientation towards the constitutive practices of science, modern occupations and further to the commitment to the moral responsibility and justice. Most people’s lives are spent in the industrial and commercial sectors and this means that a greater part of their lives takes place outside their moral sphere. Durkheim found out that modern societies heavily relied on the constitutive practices to secure the moral centers of attraction.
Division of labor in society does not produce dispersion or incoherence as it is widely believed, but functions when sufficiently in contact with each other and would tend to regulate and stabilize each other. Durkheim further states that “a constituted society would enjoy the moral and material supremacy indispensable of making law for the individual, for the only moral personality above particular personalities is the one formed by collective living together”. There must exist or be formed a group which can constitute the system of rules that are actually needed to deal with any conflicts that may arise. Durkheim believes that any occupational activity can be efficaciously regulated by a group intimate enough to know how it functions, how it feels and able to know the variations that exist. A corporation or occupational group is formed by agents of the same industry and members of the same occupation to tackle a question of general interest. These occupational groups have the moral power capable of containing individual egos, maintaining a moral sentiment of common solidarity and the prevention from the law of the strongest.
According to Durkheim, social facts are cooperative achievements and orient the sacred. Social facts represent the essence of public morality if they facilitate or are facilitated by essential moments of mutual cooperation. He further noted that social acts are created and sustained through social practices. Durkheim believed that constitutive practices create the meaning of beliefs and symbols. Today, for effective communication and experience of moral coherence to take place, the constitutive practices for doing so and the moral distinctions must be in place. The fact that strangers can mingle freely and that people can share they have, shows the presence of mutual coherence that modernity has accomplished. Whereas traditional societies were grounded and specific, modern societies are more open as a result of the constitutive practices and the mutual commitment. Any violation to these constitutive practices would render modern life meaningless as it would be without social facts and social selves. Social practices hence in modern lives are viewed as achievements that make human lives possible.
Works Cited
Durkheim, Émile. The Division of Labor in Society. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1964. Print.
Rawls, A W, A Jeffery, and D Mann. "Locating the Modern Sacred: Moral/social Facts and Constitutive Practices." Journal of Classical Sociology. (2013). Print.
