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From Restitutive Law to Repressive Law Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society re-visited

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

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When Durkheim's The Division of Labor in Society first appeared in English translation in 1933, it was greeted by a terse and scathing critique by Ellsworth Faris, who suggested that there was no empirical foundation to Durkheim's thesis, and that subsequent anthropological research—in the forty years since the publication of the book in French—had rendered the work redundant. In particular, Faris called attention to the fact that in primitive societies—in stark contradistinction to Durkheim's basic theme—there was much division of labor and very little repressive law.

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Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1975

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References

(1) Durkheim, Éimile, The Division of Labor in Society, transl. by Simpson, George (New York, Macmillan, 1933)Google Scholar. All subsequent references are to paperback edition (New York, Free Press, 1964).

(2) Faris, Ellsworth, Book Review, ap. American Journal of Sociology, XL (1934), p. 367Google Scholar.

(3) Barnes, J. A., Durkheim's, Division of Labor in Society, Man [New Series] I (1966), pp. 158175Google Scholar.

(4) Giddens, Anthony, Émile Durkheim: selected writings (Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1972)Google Scholar.

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(7) See my later reference to Wallwork on pages 36 to 39.

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(9) Ibid. p. 159.

(10) Chambliss, William J. and Seidman, Robert B., Law, Order and Power (Reading, Massachusetts, Addison-Wesley, 1971)Google Scholar.

(11) Ibid. p. 32.

(12) Ibid. p. 33.

(13) Barnes, , op. cit. pp. 168169Google Scholar.

(14) SirMaine, Henry, Ancient Law [1861]Google Scholar. All subsequent page references are to the 10th edition (London, John Murray, 1919).

(15) Durkheim, , op. cit. p. 144Google Scholar.

(16) Malinowski, Bronislaw, Crime and Custom in Savage Society (Totowa, New Jersey, Littlefield, Adams, 1966)Google Scholar.

(17) Hoebel, E. Adamson, The Law of Primitive Man (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

(18) Durkheim, Éimile, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: a study in religious sociology, transl. by Swain, J. W. (London, Allen & Unwin, 1915)Google Scholar.

(19) Diamond, A. S., Primitive Law, Past and Present (London, Methuen, 1971).Google Scholar This is an extension of an earlier work by the author, Primitive Law (London, Watts, 1935)Google Scholar. See also Id. The Evolution of Law and Order (London, Watts, 1951).

(20) Seagle, William, The Quest for Law (New York, Alfred A. Knopf, 1941)Google Scholar.

(21) Durkheim, , Division of Labor, op. cit. p. 64Google Scholar.

(22) Ibid. pp. 138–139.

(23) Maine, , op. cit. pp. 326327Google Scholar.

(24) Ibid. p. 328.

(25) Ibid. p. 329.

(26) Ibid. pp. 329–330.

(27) Seagle, , op. cit. p. 234Google Scholar.

(28) Division of Labor, op. cit. p. 75.

(29) Ibid. p. 72.

(30) Ibid. p. 93.

(31) It should be noted that one of Durkheim's teachers, de Coulanges, Fustel, had in La cité antique (Paris 1864Google Scholar; English translation: Ancient City (New York, Doubleday Anchor, 1956)Google Scholar, made a notable contribution to the intellectual climate which had tended to stress the importance of religion in providing basis for legal and political development.

(32) Durkheim, , Division of Labor, p. 139Google Scholar.

(33) Ibid. p. 141.

(34) Seagle, , op. cit. p. 118Google Scholar.

(35) Diamond, , Primitive Law op. cit. 125Google Scholar.

(36) See, for instance, Shaskolsky, Rinah Lipis, The Prophets as Dissenters, Judaism, XIX (1970), pp. 1529Google Scholar.

(37) Diamond, , op. cit. pp. 137138Google Scholar.

(38) Wellhausen, Julius, Prolegomena to the History of Ancient Israel (New York, Meridian, 1957), p. 5Google Scholar. [Originally published in 1878 as volume I of a two-volume History of Israel.]

(39) Kaufman, Yehezkel, The Religion of Israel (New York, Schocken, 1972), p. 340Google Scholar. Translated from the Hebrew and abridged by Moshe Greenberg from the first seven volumes of the History of Israelite Religion.

(40) Seagle, , op. cit. p. 233Google Scholar.

(41) Durkheim, , Division of Labor p. 95Google Scholar. For some of the Acts referred in the Ten Commandments, e.g., murder, adultery, theft, there were clear penalties, But, as Diamond presents the position, these penalties were not a result of the Ten Commandments themselves. By his thesis, these would, of course, be examples of acts which were prohibited both by morality (as evidenced by their inclusion in the Ten Commandments) and by specific law.

(42) Ibid. p. 95. The two passages are Numbers XV, 32–34 and Leviticus XXIV, 12–16.

(43) See, for instance, Cohen, Albert, The Soncino Chumash, p. 874Google Scholar.

(44) Diamond, , Primitive Law op. cit. P.150Google Scholar.

(45) Ibid. ch. XI and XII, pp. 124–154.

(46) Durkheim, , Division of Labor. p. 142Google Scholar.

(47) Ibid. p. 143.

(48) Diamond, , Primitive Law, op.cit. p. 121Google Scholar.

(49) Maine, , op. cit. p. 331Google Scholar.

(50) Malinowski, Bronislaw, Argonauts of the Western Pacific (London 1922)Google Scholar.

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(52) Ibid. p. 55.

(53) E. Adamson Hoebel, op. cit.; Hohfeld, Wesley N., Fundamental Legal Conceptions as Applied in Judicial Reasoning and Other Essays (New Haven Yale U.P. 1926)Google Scholar.

(54) Mauss, Marcel, Essai sur le don, forme archaïque de l'échange (Paris, 1934)Google Scholar. English translation: The Gift (Glencoe, Free Press, 1954)Google Scholar.

(55) See, for example, Gluckman, Max, The Judicial Process among the Barotse of Northern Rhodesia (Glencoe, The Free Press, 1955)Google Scholar; Bohannan, Paul, Justice and Judgement among the Tiv (London, Oxford University Press, 1957)Google Scholar.

(56) Schwartz, Richard D. and Miller, James C., Legal Evolution and Societal Complexity, American Journal of Sociology, LXX (1964), p. 166Google Scholar. See also the discussion as to the value of the methodological procedure used: Stanley Udy, H. Jr, Dynamic Inferences from Static Data, American Journal of Sociology, LXXI (1965), pp. 625–27CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Schwartz, Richard D., Reply, American Journal of Sociology, LXXI (1965), pp. 627–28CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Wimberley, Howard, Legal Evolution: one further step, American Journal of Sociology, LXXIX (1973), pp. 7883CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Note also my reference in footnote 83 of this article to the similar and earlier work of Freeman and Winch.

(57) For an example of the conflict approach to crime see Vold, George, Theoretical Criminology (New York, Oxford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; for an example of the labelling approach see Lemert, Edwin, Human Deviance, Social Problems, and Social Control (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1967)Google Scholar.

(58) Durkheim, Émile, The Rules of Sociological Method (New York, The Free Press, 1938), Ch. IIIGoogle Scholar: Rules for Distinguishing between the Normal and the Pathological.

(59) Mead, George Herbert, The Psychology of Punitive Justice, American Journal of Sociology, XXIII (19171918), pp. 577602Google Scholar; Coser, Lewis, Some Functions of Deviant Behaviour and Normative Flexibility, American Journal of Sociology, LXVIII (1962), p. 174Google Scholar; Erikson, K., Notes on the Sociology of Deviance, Social Problems, IX (1962), pp. 307314CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Cohen, Albert, Deviance and Control (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1966)Google Scholar.

(60) The most recent collection of articles in this area is the proceedings of the First International Conference on Victimology, held in Jerusalem, Israel, September 1973; Drapkin, Israel and Viano, Emilio (eds), Victimology: the new focus (Lexington, Mass., D.C. Heath, 1974), 5 volsGoogle Scholar.

(61) See, for example, Schaefer, Stephen, The Victim and his Criminal (New York, Random House, 1968)Google Scholar, ch. I: The History of the Victim.

(62) Carlston, Kenneth S., Social Theory and Africana Tribal Organizations (Urbana, University of Illinois Press, 1968), p. 412Google Scholar. —It is also possible to argue that the major aim of the blood-feud was to effect a primitive means of redressing a wrong, and though cruel and repressive in its form, was basically restitutive in its motivation and philosophy.

(63) Tallack, William, Reparation to the Injured, and the Rights of the Victim of Crime to Compensation (London 1900)Google Scholar; as quoted in Schaffer, , op. cit. p. 21Google Scholar.

(64) Rusche, Georg and Kirchheimer, Otto, Punishment and Social Structure (New York, Columbia University Press, 1939)Google Scholar.

(65) See, for example, Morris, Norval and Hawkins, Gordon, The Honest Politician's Guide to Crime Control (Chicago, University of Chicago Press, 1970)Google Scholar; Cross, Rupert, Unmaking the Criminal Law, Melbourne University Law Review, III (1962), p. 415Google Scholar; Schur, Edwin, Crime Without Victims: deviant behavior and public policy (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1965)Google Scholar; Packer, Herbert, The Limits of the Criminal Sanction (Stanford, Stanford University Press, 1968)Google Scholar.

(66) For a succint analysis of these laws, see Milton, J. R. L., South African Criminal Lam and Procedure (Capetown, Juta and Co., 1971), pp. 318323 and pp. 329–343Google Scholar.

(67) See, for example, Cohen, Jerome A., The Criminal Process in the People's Republic of China: 1949–1963 (Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1968, pp. 535547)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hazard, John N., Communists and their Law (Chicago, The University of Chicago Press, 1969), pp. 7375, 447–448Google Scholar.

(68) See especially Hart, A.H.A., Law, Liberty and Morality (New York, Vintage Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

(69) See especially Glenn, Michal K., The Crime of Pollution: the role of federal water pollution criminal sanctions, The American Criminal Law Review, II (1972), 835882.Google Scholar For a survey of some of the recent articles on ecology see Leon Sheleff (Shaskolsky), Tradition and Innovation in Legal Approaches to the Environment, Regulapaper presented at the First International Conference of the Society of Engineering Science, on “Pollution Engineering and Scientific Solutions”, held in Israel, June 1972; for an example of the problem of using coercive legal means to control the growth of population, see Note: Legal Analysis and Population Control: The Problem of Coercion, Harvard Law Review, LXXXIV (1971), pp. 1856–94Google Scholar. For an analysis of the role of criminal law in the field of commerce, see Kadish, Sanford H., Some Observations on the Use of Criminal Sanctions in Enforcing Economic Regulations, University of Chicago Law Review, XXX (1963), pp. 423449.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

(70) Cohen, Morris Raphael, Reason and Lam: studies in juristic philosophy (Westport, Conn., Greenwood Press, 1972), p. 16Google Scholar.

(71) Ibid. pp. 16–17.

(72) Wallwork, , op. cit. p. 113Google Scholar.

(73) Nisbet, Robert A., Émile Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 30Google Scholar.

(74) Giddens, , op. cit. p. 12Google Scholar.

(75) Durkheim, Éimile, Deux lois de l'évolution pénale, Année sociologique, IV (1900), pp. 6595Google Scholar. For English translation, see Durkheim, Émile, Two Laws of Penal Evolution, Economy and Society, II (1973), p. 285CrossRefGoogle Scholar; see also Tiryakian, Edward, Durkheim's Two Laws of Penal Evolution, Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, III (1964), pp. 248254Google Scholar; and Giddens, , op. cit. p. 129Google Scholar.

(76) Lukes, , op. cit. pp. 258262Google Scholar.

(77) Durkheim, , Two Laws of Penal Evolution, loc. cit. p. 285Google Scholar. It should be noted that in this article, Durkheim concentrates on the nature of punishment, and not on the nature of law. Nevertheless, he does make reference to the nature of law.

(78) Ibid. p. 288.

(79) Ibid. pp. 288–289.

(80) Ibid. p. 289.

(81) Richter, Melvin, Durkheim's Politics and Political Theory, in Wolff, Kurt H., Essays on Sociology and Philosophy (Émile Durkheim, 1858–1917) (New York, Harper Torchbooks, 1964), p. 193Google Scholar. See also Lukes, , op. cit. p. 259Google Scholar, for approving reference to Richter's work.

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(83) Freeman, Linton C. and Winch, Robert F., Social Complexity: an empirical test of a typology of societies, American Journal of Sociology, LXII (1957), pp. 461466CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(84) See Leon (Shaskolsky) Sheleff Criminal Law and Politics (to be published in Israël Studies in Law)

(85) Gasset, Ohtega Y, The Revolt of the Masses (1932) (New York, New American Library, 1950)Google Scholar; Mills, C. Wright, White Collar: the American middle classes (New York, Oxford University Press, 1951)Google Scholar; Riesman, David, The Lonely Crowd (New Haven, Yale University Press, 1950)Google Scholar; Marcuse, Herbert, One-Dimensional Man (Boston, Beacon Press, 1964)Google Scholar.

(86) Ranulf, Sv., Moral Indignation and Middle Class Psychology: a sociological study (Copenhagen, Levinard, 1938)Google Scholar.

(87) Becker, Howard, Outsider: studiess in the sociology of deviance (New York, The Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar.

(88) Faris, , op. cit. p. 367Google Scholar.

(89) Crime and Custom, op. cit. p. 79.

(90) Marcuse, Herbert, Eros and Civilization (New York, Beacon Press, 1955), p. 88Google Scholar.

(91) Op. cit. p. 293.

(92) Fred DuBow, “Nation-Building and the Imposition of Criminal Law”r, unpublished discussion draft of paper delivered at American Sociological Association Annual Meeting, August 1974, in Montreal, Canada.—This paper came to my attention only after my paper had been accepted for publication, and I have accordingly only been able to give passing reference to it. I find the paper an extremely interesting analysis, similar to mine in some respects, but differing substantially in regard to the nature of the law of the modern state. As I suggest, it will be necessary for meor focused research to determine the true nature of modern law, and whether the historical development of law is from restitutive to repressive as I have suggested, or from restitutive to repressive to restitutive as DuBow has argued.

(93) Kirchheimer, Otto, Political Justice: the use of legal procedure for political ends (Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1961)Google Scholar.

(94) Goodell, Charles, Political Prisoners in America (New York, Random House, 1973)Google Scholar.

(95) Burns, Haywood, Political Uses of the Law, Howard Law Journal, XIV (1972), pp. 769774Google Scholar. For further examples of the manner in which law can, and has been, used for exploitative purposes, see Shaskolsky, Leon, The Legal Institution: the legitimizing appendage, in Reynolds, Larry T. and Henslin, James M. (eds.), American Society: a critical analysis (New York, David McKay, 1973), pp. 294332Google Scholar; and Wolff, Robert P. (ed.), The Rule of Law (New York, Simon and Schuster, 1971)Google Scholar.

(96) Seagle, , op. cit. p. 236Google Scholar.

(97) See, for example, Kremeh, Gerhard F., The Influence of National-Socialism on the Courts of Justice and the Police, in The Third Reich (London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1955)Google Scholar.

(98) Berman, Harold J., Justice in the U.S.S.R. (New York, Vintage, 1963), p. 368CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

(99) See especially Szasz, Thomas, Law, Liberty and Psychiatry (New York, Collier, 1968)Google Scholar.