Social Solidarity?

Social Solidarity?

"...the economic services that it can render are insignificant compared with the moral effect that it produces, and its true function is to create between two or more people a feeling of solidarity." (17) This was the first line of text that really grabbed my attention. After reading through the entire text it has come to my conclusion that this solidarity and division of labor both brings people closer in society, yet also pulls them apart. To me solidarity means being separated and alienated from a society. This brings me to think that maybe it is like Karl Marx and his idea of alienation. I feel like they are similar because of the fact that alienation and solidarity seem as though they should go hand and hand with one another. Yet, it also seems that maybe Durkheim is trying to say that this social solidarity is what makes the social connections. He uses the example of a married couple and that the division of labor is also the division of sexes. To me, if I am not mistaken, he says that without this division of labor between the sexes were to go back to the natural sense, then it would go back to meaningless sexual relationships in order to reproduce. This all seems to resemble what we have been discussing in class over the past few weeks. If this division of labor were to go away completely we would not no how to have personal relationships because through this division of labor that has been created, we have created a dependence on others, which has created a division of labor based on sexes, which creates real relationships, like the marriage example. This all seems like it all connects and this is what I feel like i have taken out of the Durkheim reading. I may be completely wrong but this is what I feel connects these readings to what we have previously read.