Durkheim were alive today, what elements in the post-industrial world would he say are representative of "mechanical solidarity" and what elements represent "organic solidarity?" Could his theory account for both of these co-existing in post-modern society? Why or why not?

According to Ritzer, the sociologist Emile Durkheim viewed human solidarity under two basic divisions or constructs. The first is that of mechanical solidarity. If solidarity is a form of social cohesion, mechanical solidarity is based upon a sense of physical likeness or ritual similarities between individuals in any particular society. It is dependent on shared customs routines. Although Durkheim usually discusses this concept amongst prehistoric societies and suggests that the need for this solidarity has decreased in post-modernity, this may not be the case -- as much as the sociologist might have liked.

Firstly, the adoption of 'trends' from the street and the mechanical, commonly shared rituals of commuting to work with one's peers, the fact all individuals share the same biological needs of sleep and food and tend to adopt one another's practices and rituals regarding these (in everything from all-night coffee houses near campuses to fast food take out in suburbia) creates a sense of a mechanically shared life. Even the seasons with a particular area force one to adopt commonly shared rituals that differ from Southern California to Minnesota.

Human biology may explain mechanical solidarity, as well as a human drive to conform and to seek to be 'normal.' However, the fragmentation of the post-industrial world, and the increased ability to travel from one's family and home, despite the mechanization of life, leads to a different form of solidarity, an organic solidarity based on an interrelationship of shared but varied tasks -- as someone who is served by a waitress every night at a diner feels a solidarity with her, or even two individuals from different backgrounds share the same sense of music and the same television program.

The ritualized nature of the 9-5 workday and the standardization of post-industrial life may keep the rituals of mechanical solidarity alive, even in an ethnically and vocationally diverse society. But it is more and more incumbent upon the individual to seek organic solidarity as these trends render such mechanical solidarity less meaningful, and more commercially rendered, rather than produced by a common ethnicity, an old culture, and an equally shared sense of communal space.