Collective conscious or collective conscience is the set of shared beliefs,
ideas and moral attitudes which operate as a unifying force within society. The
term was introduced by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim in his
Division of Labour in Society in 1893. The French word conscience can be
translated into English as "conscious" or "conscience", or even "perception" or
"awareness", and commentators and translators of Durkheim disagree on
which is most appropriate, or whether the translation should depend on the
context. Some prefer to treat the word 'conscience' as an untranslatable
foreign word or technical term, without its normal English meaning. In general,
it does not refer to the specifically moral conscience, but to a shared
understanding of social norms. As for "collective", Durkheim makes
clear that he is not reifying or hypostasizing this concept; for him, it
is "collective" simply in the sense that it is common to many individuals; cf.
social fact. Collective consciousness in Durkheimian
social theory Durkheim used the term in his books The
Division of Labour in Society, Rules of the Sociological Method, Suicide, and
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. In The Division of Labour, Durkheim
argued that in traditional/primitive societies totemic religion played an
important role in uniting members through the creation of a common
consciousness. In societies of this type, the contents of an individual's
consciousness are largely shared in common with all other members of their
society, creating a mechanical solidarity through mutual likeness.
The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a
society forms a determinate system with a life of its own. It can be termed the
collective or creative consciousness. In Suicide, Durkheim developed the
concept of anomie to refer to the social rather than individual causes of
suicide. This relates to the concept of collective consciousness, as if there is
a lack of integration or solidarity in society then suicide rates will be
higher. Other uses of the term
Various forms of what might be termed "collective consciousness" in modern
societies have been identified by other sociologists, such as Mary Kelsey, going
from solidarity attitudes and memes to extreme behaviors like group-think or
herd behavior. Mary Kelsey, sociology lecturer in the University of
California, Berkeley, used the term in the early 2000s to describe people
within a social group, such as mothers, becoming aware of their shared traits
and circumstances, and as a result acting as a community and achieving
solidarity. Rather than existing as separate individuals, people come
together as dynamic groups to share resources and knowledge. It has also
developed as a way of describing how an entire community comes together to share
similar values. This has also been termed "hive mind", "group mind", "mass
mind", and "social mind". According to a new theory the character
of collective consciousness depends on the type of mnemonic encoding used
within particular groups. Cohesive groups with an informal structure, for
example, have a tendency to represent significant aspects of their community
as episodic memories and this has a predictable influence on their group
behavior and collective ideology. It usually leads to, among other things,
strong solidarity, indulgent atmosphere, and an exclusive ethos.
Society is made up of various collective groups, such as the family, community,
organizations, regions, nations which as Burns and Egdahl state "can be
considered to possess agential capabilities: to think, judge, decide,
act, reform; to conceptualize self and others as well as self's actions and
interactions; and to reflect."(italics in the original). Burns and Egdahl note
that during the Second World War different nations behaved differently
towards their Jewish populations. The Jewish populations of Bulgaria and
Denmark survived whereas the majority of the Jewish populations in Slovakia and
Hungary did not survive the Holocaust. It is suggested that these different
national behaviors vary according to the different collective consciousness
between nations. This illustrates that differences in collective consciousness
can have practical significance. Edmans, Garcia, and Norlia examined
national sporting defeats and correlated them with decreases in the value of
stocks. They examined 1,162 football matches in thirty-nine countries, and
discovered that stock markets dropped on average forty-nine points after being
eliminated from the World Cup, and thirty-one points after being eliminated
in other tournaments. Edmans, Garcia, and Norli found similar but smaller
effects with international cricket, rugby, ice hockey, and basketball games.
See also Notes
References Works by Durkheim
The Division of Labour in Society Rules of the Sociological Method
Suicide The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Works by others Gad Barzilai, Communities and Law:
Politics and Cultures of Legal Identities University of Michigan Press,
2003. ISBN 978-0-472-03079-8 Jary, David; Julia Jary. Collins
Dictionary of Sociology. Glasgow: Harper Collins. p. 774. ISBN 0-00-470804-0.
Williams, Swatos. "Émile Durkheim". Encyclopedia of Religion and Society.
Altamira Press. Retrieved 2007-02-03. Lloyd, Annemaree. "Guarding Against
Collective Amnesia? Making Significance Problematic: An Exploration of Issues".
Library Trends. Retrieved 2008-04-25.