Mechanical and Organic Solidarity: One in the Same?

Trying to find a flaw in Emile Durkheim’s research was like examining the fracture lines in a geological sample. You know it’s there, but the definitions are a bit skewed, and detours fill your mind with strife and inquiries. Without the help of Krouber, I would have never had a starting point, and he laid the foundation. Krouber believed Durkheim was a positivist and I firmly believe this notion as well.

Durkheim states, “as long as society is essentially segmental [and solidarity is mechanical] towns do not exist”. I vehemently disagree with this statement. Even if individuals work separately on an occasional basis, it doesn’t necessarily mean a town can’t form. Yet, this statement hardly encompasses Durkheim’s complete view, or separation of societies, based on simple characteristics. Durkheim believes that mechanical solidarity leads to, or is the result of, individualism. Members of the society, therefore, don’t need each other for survival.

He then places Native Americans within this classification, which ultimately perplexed and infuriated me. Native Americans may not have lived in an excepted form of a town, however a reservation, which surrounds a central chief, is the very essence of one. Furthermore, Native Americans hunt as a collective and bring back their kills, which is then divided amongst the people. Can’t a mechanical society form around a central organ, characterized by organic solidarity? Can they do this on their own? Of course they could, but they depend on one another to make the hunt a more sacred experience. Durkheim makes the mechanical classification using no ethnographic analysis.

Durkheim further mentions that “we cannot survive without others”, as our lifeline is based upon the production and reliance on others to produce food, perform certain tasks, and provide us material items. This I do agree with, but why separate mechanical solidarity from organic? All people work separately at some point in their life and their results are presented to a central figure or are performed for a certain purpose. In essence, society is a network of capillaries, connecting to a central organ. All those separate parts act on one another and build upon the reactions to make the organ operate. Can the development of mechanical and organic solidarity only be at the expense of the other? Why separate mechanical solidarity from organic, when societies all operate as living organisms? This question brings up the textual jargon, “social organism”, whereby external forces may lead to homeostasis. Yet, this does not account for conflict which leads to social transformation.

Durkheim doesn’t address origin, but function. He doesn’t answer the question as to why, historically, one society differs from the next, but how it functions and in what way it should be classified. He never mentions conflict or cause, rather comparison of a unit instead of its subunits. Conflict leads to transformation, which leads to classification, eventually giving us an historical basis for comparison. Durkheim never addressed these issues.

The Anthropology of Hemispheric Localism Pertaining to Latina Gangs

The term “gang-talk is hemispheric localism” describes both Nortenos and Surenos who are territorialized based on their customs of race, language, class, and national identity.

The gang members’ concepts of the mission and purpose of the gang as a social union respond to broader contextual pressures that include a members’ familiarity of Latin migration dynamics and their own gangs’ internationalization, as well as their understandings of worldwide political relations.

Therefore, hemispheric localism refers to, in this particular situation, the “North” and “South” and their “webs of signification”.

Read Gang Talk is Hemispheric Localism @ Factoidz By the Ancient Digger

"The President's Speech": An odd reaction to the President's Speech

You gotta love how language and culture collide especially when reading Oliver Sack's article, The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat (And Other Clinical Tales). Yes, the title had be rolling for a bit since I'd never really read the story per se. I had certainly never heard about aphasia before this witty piece.

The basis of this amusing yet educational article was how and why aphasia patients started to laugh as one of the most prolific speakers in presidential history, Ronald Reagan, spoke to the American public on television.

Aphasia.org defines aphasia as an acquired communication disorder that impairs a person's ability to process language, but does not affect intelligence. Aphasia impairs the ability to speak and understand others, and most people with aphasia experience difficulty reading and writing.

The President's Speech: the reaction

There he was, The Old Charmer, the Actor, with his practiced rhetoric, his histrionisms, his emotional appeal . A typical American would have reveled in the president’s keen words and delighted in the fact this president was able to inspire a nation.

On the other hand and in another realm, so to speak, the aphasia ward, filled with “crazies”, exploded with laughter. Why he or she may ask?

Albeit these eccentric individuals couldn’t see the meaning of words, they could understand prose and body language and they couldn't believe the fantastic lies they were being told live on by the President.

Aphasia patients can understand natural speech, as most men and women speak this way every day. Natural speech, the meaning, is somewhat detectable and understandable to patients. Mannerisms and simple utterances flow naturally, and to an aphasia patient, they are more normal. Contrived hand gestures and body movements seem robotic, as seen in the president’s speech.

Furthermore, the tone of the speech most definitely set the patients off, so much so, their laughter flooded the room. Henry Head mentions “he speaks of “feeling tones” in his treatise aphasia, and stresses how it is preserved, and often enhanced, in aphasiacs.”

What does this mean?
 
You cannot lie to aphasiacs. Body language and expression are much more powerful because words have no meaning. Therefore a slight smirk or wink will immediately set aphasiacs off, as a light bulb in your head goes off when you have an idea. It’s immediate sometimes and it acts on reactions, which are normally the right ones the first time you have them.

Therefore the aphasiacs are laughing at the falsified gestures and cadences and the abnormal tone of the speech.


Have you read The Man Who Mistook His Wife For a Hat by Oliver Sacks? Look at page 80 (Chapter 9). Once you have, tell me what you're interpretation was?

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