Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel and Ferdinand Tönnies: Social Differentiation and Functionalist Sociology

Abstract

• General presuppositions and/or theoretical affiliations and influences: functionalism, history as a process of social differentiation; Auguste Comte, Wilhelm Wundt, Georg Simmel, American Pragmatism.

• Model/paradigm(s): primitive and modern society.

• Concepts: mechanical solidarity (under the conditions of a minimal division of labour, no developed forms of individuality, enforced collective rules and repressive forms in primitive society); organic solidarity (under the conditions of a highly developed division of labour, developed forms of subjectivity, with voluntary associations and the internalisation of norms in a modern society); anomie.

• Empirical environment(s): France, modern Continental Europe.