Under one of the seven traits in Max Weber's rational social
organisation in today's industrialised society.
1) Distinctive social instititions
2) Large-scale organisations
3) Specialised tasks
4) Personal discipline
5) Awareness of time
6) Technical competence
7) Impersonality. Finally, in a rational society, technical
competence takes priority over close relationships, rendering the
world impersonal. Modern social life can be viewed as the interplay
of specialists concerned with particular tasks, rather than people
broadly concerned with one another. Weber explained that we tend to
devalue personal feelings and emotions as "irrational" because they
are often difficult to control.
Rationality
and alienation
Bureaucracies, Weber warned, treated people as a series of cases
rather than as unique individuals. In addition, working for large
organisations demands highly specialised and often tedious
routines. In the end, Weber envisaged modern society as a vast and
growing system of rules seeking to regulate everything and
threatening to crush the human spirit.
An irony found in the work of Marx reappears in Weber's
thinking: rather than serve humanity, modern society turns on its
creators and enslaves them. In language reminiscent of Marx's
description of the human toll of industrial capitalism, Weber
portrayed the modern individual as "only a small cog in a
ceaselessly moving mechanism that prescribes to him and endlessly
fixed routine of march". Thus, knowing well the advantages of
modern society, Weber ended his life deeply pessimistic. He feared
that the rationalisation of society would end up reducing people to
robots.
Durkheim explanation of modernity & anomie and evolving
societies.
Modernity and
anomie
Compared to traditional societies, modern societies impose fewer
restrictions on everyone. Durkheim acknowledges the advantages of
modern freedom, but he warned of a rise in anomie,
a condition in which society provides little moral guidance to
individuals. What so many celebrities describe as "almost
being destroyed by their fame" is one extreme example of the
corrosive effects of anomie. Sudden fame tears people away from
their families and familiar routines, disrupting society's support
and regulation of an individual, sometimes with fatal results.
Durkheim instructs us, therefore, that the desires of the
individual must be balanced by the claims and guidance of society -
a balance that has become precarious in the modern world.
Evolving
societies: the division of labour
In pre-industrial societies, explained Durkheim, strong
tradition operates as the social cement that binds people together.
In fact, what he termed the collective conscience is so
strong that the community moves quickly to punish anyone who dares
to challenge the conventional ways of life. Durkheim called this
system mechanical solidarity, meaning social
bonds, based on shared morality, that unite members of
pre-industrial societies. In practice, then, mechanical
solidarity springs from likeness. Durkheim described these
bonds as "mechanical" because people feel a more or less automatic
sense of belonging together.
Durkheim considered the decline of mechanical solidarity to be a
defining trait of modern society. But this does not mean that
society dissolves; rather, modernity generates a new type of
solidarity that rushes into the void left by discarded traditions.
Durkheim called this new social integration organic
solidarity, defined as social bonds, based on
specialisation, that unite members of industrial societies. In
short, where solidarity was once rooted in likeness, it now flows
from differences among people whose specialised pursuits make them
rely on one another.
For Durkheim, then, the key dimension of change is a society's
expanding division of labour, or specialised
economic activity. As Max Weber explained, modern societies
specialise in order to promote efficiency. Durkheim fills in the
picture by showing us that members of modern societies count on the
efforts of tens of thousands of others -- most of them complete
strangers -- to secure the goods and services they need every
day.
So modernity rests far less on moral consensus (the
foundation of traditional societies) and far more on functional
interdependence. That is, as members of modern societies, we
depend more and more on people we trust less and less. Why, then
should we put our faith in people we hardly know and whose beliefs
may differ radically from our own? Durkheim's answer: "Because we
can't live without them". In a world in which morality sometimes
seems like so much shifting sand, then, we confront what might be
called "Durkheim's dilemma": the technological power and expansive
personal freedom of modern society come only at the cost of the
receding morality and the ever-present danger of anomie.
