Emile Durkheim Rhetorical Analysis

Ladies and gentlemen, we present to you our candidate for the teaching position in the department of Sociology at the University of the West Indies, Cave Hill campus. Though the other candidates for the position are all very qualified, our candidate, Emile Durkheim is a step above the rest. Durkheim’s impressive resume shows that he is the most suitable candidate for the job within the department. Emile Durkheim was born on April 15th 1857 at Epinal in France to a rabbi. He was raised in a devout Jewish home, with a legacy of rabbis in his father, grandfather and great grandfather. However, in his early 20’s Durkheim turned his back on his Jewish heritage and began to view religion in an agnostic way that is he neither believed nor disbelieved …show more content…
He argued that traditional societies were made homogenous people that were either more or less alike with same religious beliefs, values and backgrounds. Durkheim has based his theory on the division of labour on that of Adam Smith in his book, “An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations” (1776). However unlike Smith who kept his theory bases solely on human beings, Durkheim influenced heavily by Charles Darwin and his theory of evolution, applied his theories to all organisms. Durkheim states that division of labour keeps the modern society together because everyone is dependent on each other because they specialize in different types of work. Durkheim was concerned about how division of labour changed how individuals feel as society as whole. The modern society is an organic solidarity wherein the collective conscience was weakened; the regulation of social behaviour was less primitive and more recitative in aiming to restore normal activity to the society. In comparison with the modern society, he states that societies with little division of labour people have similar responsibilities have a strong collective conscience, social norms which were strong and social behaviour was well