Question

It takes 200 pairs of hands in one country to make and deliver gym shoes to players on a basketball team in another country. According to Durkheim, the solidarity that binds the team to these strangers who make their shoes is ____.

Answer 1

Durkheim's concept of organic solidarity defines the connection between the basketball team and the gym shoe makers; this interdependence is based on the specialized roles within industrial societies.

Step-by-step explanation:

According to Émile Durkheim, the solidarity that binds the basketball team to the individuals who make their gym shoes is referred to as organic solidarity. Durkheim identified that in industrial societies, the complex division of labor means that individuals perform highly specialized roles. This specialization leads to a mutual interdependence, where people rely on each other's distinctive contributions to society, even across global distances.

Durkheim contrasted this with mechanical solidarity, which was characteristic of preindustrial societies where shared traditions and values from similar work bonded people together. Organic solidarity, on the other hand, emerges because the different functions everyone performs are all necessary for the complex operation of the society as a whole, thus allowing individuals with differing values and roles to coexist harmoniously.