?Émile Durkheim, born in 1858, is considered, alongside Karl Marx and Max Weber, to be one of the "key figures whose influence on the development of sociology is unparalleled" (Thompson, 1988: 27). Throughout his life, Durkheim wrote four major, and influential works, one of which was The Division of Labour in Society, published in 1893. In this book, Durkheim creates a theory of societal transition from traditional societies to modern societies, where solidarity changes from technical to organic. He proposed that this change occurred through the growing division of labour (Durkheim, 1964). This essay will look at Durkheim’s explanation of how organic solidarity emerged as a result of the growing division of labor in society. I will first look briefly at Durkheim’s background and see how this prompted his interest in the discipline. The next few paragraphs will focus on the division of labour, and will explain what it is, and how it creates solidarity among people. I will then look at the characteristics of traditional societies and mechanical solidarity, and then onto the characteristics of modern societies and organic solidarity, which is the type of solidarity that the title refers to. Towards the end of the essay, I will explore the problems associated with Durkheim’s theory, and how there may not be a true organic type of solidarity. Durkheim was born in 1858 into a Jewish, rabbinical family in Epinal, Lorraine. After the Franco-Prussian War in 1871, Lorraine was overtaken by Germany and the Prussians occupied Durkheim’s hometown, which resulted in Durkheim’s family leaving Lorraine and inhabiting France. Durkheim’s later work came as a result of witnessing first-hand the rapid social change throughout France and Europe during the nineteenth century.1 Durkheim was also hugely influenced by the work of other theorists before him such as Herbert Spencer and his work on social evolution and the organic analogy, which will be touched upon later in the essay. The Division of Labour in Society (1893) was Durkheim’s first major work and, as by Thompson, it is "important for understanding the starting-point of his sociology and its subsequent course of development" (Thompson, 1988: 70). Durkheim was concerned with the relationship between the individual and society, but unlike Karl Marx, he was interested in the changes in social solidarity, as opposed to the changing social relations due to the emergence of capitalism: this work had its origins in the question of the relations of the individual to social solidarity. Why does the individual, while becoming more autonomous, depend more upon society? How can he be at once more individual and more solidarity? It appeared to us that what resolves this apparent antinomy is a transformation of social solidarity due to the steadily growing development of the division of labour (Durkheim, 1893: 37-38). Therefore, as mentioned previously, The Division of Labour in Society provides a theory of the transition from traditional societies to modern societies, where social solidarity changes from a mechanical type to an organic type. Perhaps it would be beneficial to define what we mean by the "division of labour." The Oxford Dictionary of Sociology says: "it denotes any stable organization, coordinating individuals, or groups carrying out different, but integrated activities" (Scott and Marshall, 2005: 162). Perhaps a more simple definition would be: "the way in which different tasks are allocated to different people' (Craib, 1997: 279). In other words, it is the specialization of specific jobs and tasks, which aims to increase efficiency and productivity. Durkheim proposed that as a result of this division of labour, arising from increasing industrialization and the process of modernization, societies changed from p