Sociology, Anthropology, and Law and Society: Identity,
Integration, and Anomie
According to Durkheim, even in the most complex, highly
differentiated society some sense of mechanical solidarity, based
on shared beliefs and values and the sense that we are all, at
some level, the same, is necessary. Thus, in the contemporary
U.S. we may celebrate our differences, but we all recognize that
we are all, at some level, Americans. Similarly, here at Purdue
we celebrate diversity. We are faculty, staff, and students from
a variety of disciplines, departments, and schools, and this
diversity is the source of our strength. We recognize that we
need each other (organic solidarity), but we also feel that, at
some level, we are all members of the Purdue community and in
this sense we are all the same (mechanical solidarity).
So, with this in mind, how do Law and Society majors
experience and express their solidarity as members of the
Department of Sociology and Anthropology? It seems that there
are two sets of problems here. First, it is not clear that
undergraduates experience a sense of belonging or membership
in their major departments, since academic departments in large
public universities seem to be primarily focused on graduate as
opposed to undergraduate education. Second, it is not clear that
applied research or career-oriented educational programs are
well integrated into departments that are organized on the basis
of disciplinary standards for pure research. These two problems
are apparent in the history of the Law and Society program in
the Department of Sociology and Anthropology, which seems to
be suffering from a lack of integration and a pervasive sense of
anomie.
Because they are primarily oriented toward graduate
training and research, academic departments at large public
universities frequently face serious problems in accommodating
or attracting undergraduate majors, who provide the rationale for
funding graduate teaching assistants, who can supplement or
assist the efforts of faculty teaching large undergraduate survey
courses. In the 1970s the Department of Sociology developed
undergraduate programs in Social Work and Criminal Justice to
attract undergraduate majors and thereby continue to support
their graduate program in sociology. This created a serious
integration problem, however, since there was no graduate
program in social work or criminology. Thus the undergraduate
major in Social Work was discontinued, and the Criminal Justice
program was changed to Law and Society, and course
requirements were changed so that the program became virtually
indistinguishable from the Sociology major. At the same time, a
Law and Society section of the graduate program was
developed, in efforts to better integrate the graduate and
undergraduate programs. Ultimately, however, there is an
imbalance between an undergraduate program that attracts the
overwhelming majority of our majors and a graduate program
that is relatively small.
In this case, Law and Society students and the Sociology
faculty and graduate students who teach them may not share a
collective identity. The faculty and graduate students see
themselves as sociologists, but the undergraduate students may
not share that identity. To some extent, that is true of all majors,
even biology majors may not see themselves as biologists, but
this problem seems to be aggravated in the Law and Society
major by the divergent career paths of the undergraduate and
graduate students. Law and Society students are generally
pursuing careers in law or law enforcement, each of which
require an undergraduate degree but no particular major.
Graduate students are planning to become sociology professors.
In fact, Law and Society may be an attractive major for students
planning to apply to law school or to apply for law enforcement
occupations. On paper, it looks like a better fit than Sociology.
Nevertheless, the discrepant identities and career paths suggest
that it may be difficult to sustain a sense of collective identity
and solidarity. In some sense, Sociology and Law and Society
are interdependent. We need each other because Sociology
lacks undergraduate majors and Law and Society students need
an undergraduate degree that might provide access to law school
or law enforcement careers. The problem, however, is that we
cannot develop this sense of interdependence (organic
solidarity) without an underlying base of mechanical solidarity.
Thus the apparent lack of integration or anomie results not from
an inadequate sense of interdependence but from an inadequate
sense of shared identity.