Emile Who and the Division of What?

Abstract

Durkheim believed division of labor could promote human fraternity, but today's world raises doubts. Has division of labor become more disintegrative than integrative? With 1,000 times as many occupations as in a preliterate tribe, industrial society has transcended limits of biological division of function by substituting sociocultural differentiation and technology for biological polymorphism and interspecific differences. But industrial-level division of functions entails four serious problems: Abrogation of responsibility, vested interests, predatory relations, and creation of supernumeraries. Two kinds of study are urgently needed. We must map out the unbalancing operations that foster predation and, aided by synthesis of several traditions, investigate social psychological mechanisms that enable people to treat humans as means rather than ends.

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