You are 12 years old
again walking through the halls of your middle school. It is close to noon and
you know the least favorite part of your day is coming up: lunchtime. You have
friends, yeah, but there are unspoken rules here. You can’t sit with just
anybody, you can’t eat what you want to eat, people are watching. It’s that
exaggerated high school drama film, there are the jocks, the cool girls, the
nerds, the Goths, and you have to find where you fit in, but more importantly, you
have to figure out where OTHERS think you fit in. In the lunchroom you are in
a room filled with your peers, but this place isn’t pleasant.
In reality, this may
not have been you. Maybe the lunchroom wasn’t so terrifying and ominous, but we
all experienced a lunchroom which had a certain function and social
constraints. You knew how you contributed to this place; very rarely was the
order here shaken up. And now Durkheim comes into play. I was thinking about
how social cohesion, collective conscience, and structural-functionalism really
exists in most, or every, situation. I found this theoretical approach interesting
when interpreting this situation because I felt that it wasn’t completely
straight forward; the concepts did not fit as perfectly as I had assumed they
would have, therefore the application of this theory on the middle school
lunchroom brings to light some new aspects of the theory.
Let us start with the concept
of social cohesion and solidarity. The words cohesion and solidarity have a
positive connotation. We automatically assume a positive situation; a society
which stands together. However, by looking at this concept through the lens of
a middle school lunchroom, we may decide to throw out some our ideas concerning
the positive connotation of the words and take a more neutral stance. I had
made the assumption that social cohesion was an idea like nationalism or
patriotism, representing the societal desire to stick together. But I would no
longer say this is the right way to understand the idea of social cohesion and
solidarity. Rather it is more natural as it is what keeps people together,
whether that be positive or negative. To be solid does not mean to unite forces
and to stand proudly together, but rather suggests a whole mass which in some
way is the same.
The next question is: does
the lunchroom have any social cohesion at all? I think that in the lunchroom
there is definite solidarity; all the students recognize their peers as being a
part of their “society” as they all live under the same social facts and
unspoken rules. This concept refers to the connection and collection of people
who function together through a collective conscience, whether in a positive or
negative way, which is something I had missed because of my misunderstanding of
the terms.
The collective
conscience exists within the cafeteria and suggests social cohesion. The
students express cohesion through a collective conscience with shared beliefs
and symbols, which shape, regulate, and bind members. The students have symbols
within their cafeteria life, possibly pictures of broccoli and carrots on the
wall symbolizing health, or food lines and fixed chairs symbolizing order which
would seem abnormal to a working adult.
They are also bound and
regulated by the social facts. Social facts are the ways of acting that have a
coercive effect on individuals. Concretized laws exist within the lunchroom and
are enforced by teachers, but there are also unspoken rules which impact the
actions of an individual. I would say that these unspoken rules which dictate
where and with who you sit would act as social facts, as they are independent
of the individual manifestations.
By applying the basic
concepts of Durkheim’s theory, we are able to see how broadly these concepts
apply to most, or possibly any, situation. We are also able to see how
solidarity may not always be as positive as word connotation suggests, possibly
interfering with people’s understanding of the concepts.
I think your comparisons between the lunchroom and Durkheim’s are very interesting and really solid! When reading and discussing Durkheim’s ideas you’re right, I certainly didn’t think that cohesion and solidarity could also be applied in a negative way. I agree with you when you reference the collective conscious. Stereotypically, when people move through a lunchroom full of cliques and groupings – may it’s as bad as Mean Girls, but maybe not – there is certainly a system of shared values that regulate our behaviors and actions. I think Durkheim would probably say that our individual behaviors or consciousness are undermined, or at least overshadowed by, the “collective conscious” of the lunchroom.
ReplyDeleteI think what you have to say about solidarity making its way into the picture is also very interesting! It makes sense that solidarity could be people who unite on some other level, and stick together to make these unspoken rules a reality. The only thing that I might raise as a challenge (or rather just a question) is the common conception that solidarity occurs when people unite for a common interest or cause. This might not necessarily have to be positive, as you point out, but what would the common interest in the lunchroom be? Perhaps it is just maintaining the status quo… I don’t know but it’s really interesting to think about!!
I think it might also be interesting to use Durkheim’s social facts to analyze the lunchroom scene. In class we talked about how laws are social facts, and I would argue that the theoretical or metaphysical or what have you laws that govern the lunchroom are social facts as well. One does not sit at the cool kids table if they are not cool. This social fact is coercive to the individual and is completely independent of individual manifestations. I think Durkheim would have a lot to say about the points that you raise, and I really liked reading what you had to say!
This is a really interesting post that I had not thought about. Applying Durkheim's collective consciousness and other ideas to the (stereo)typical middle school lunchroom was a really creative way of applying his ideas to the modern world. I think you are right in questioning the positivity of solidarity and cohesion when in this particular environment. The middle school lunchroom can be a very hostile place. You absolutely do have only a few options when it comes to seating. For me, there was always the table near the middle in which my friends and I always inhabited, and the same groups of kids sat at their almost predetermined tables. It was just understood where you went, and if you had nowhere to go, even those tables existed. So, if we look at the solidarity in the way you put it, as “a whole mass which in some way is the same,” you’ve got it. There is no positive, nor a negative, in this case, it is simply a lunchroom full of individuals brought together because they are all students.
ReplyDeleteI think we could also look at the lunchroom in terms of mechanical and organic solidarity. If we take the lunchroom as a whole, complete with all of its different cliques and individuals, we have ourselves an example of organic solidarity. The lunchroom works as a whole because of all of its different and specialized parts: the cliques of similar individuals that ultimately create and adhere to a social hierarchy. We could also break it down to a smaller level, inspecting each individual group we can see the mechanistic solidarity that brings them together. In middle school especially, people tend to make friends based on who is similar to them because they are in a very anxious and awkward psychological state that makes them feel as if all eyes are on them. They either try to stand out because they feel they are on the spot, or disappear to get away from it.
I think that this is a really interesting way to apply Durkheim’s idea of collective consciousness. In fact, I think that you can go further and apply his ideas of organic solidarity to this lunchroom example. Durkheim states that diverse groups find solidarity because they were different. The fluid operation of the system at large is a result of all the individual parts operating differently but towards cohesion. As you said, walking across the lunchroom there were “the tables”. Unwritten rules prohibited mixing jocks and bandies, skaters and thespians, rebels and honor students. I believe that these differences are what made the lunchroom operate the way it did. I would argue this is what allows so many different groups to interact peacefully and without argument.
ReplyDeleteI grew up in a very small town and when I went to middle school and high school the first day of school determined where groups would sit for the rest of the school year. There was no deterrence from this social norm and no one would dare take a table from another group. There was no question on who sat where so there were never arguments on stealing seats or crossing territories. This unspoken agreement allowed peace to reign supreme in our small cafeteria and it allowed us to cohere with the different groups.