ABSTRACT

People’s relationships matter greatly to them. From a sociological perspective, it could be said that we are, at least partly, defined by whom we know. More broadly, though, bonds between people also serve as central building blocks of the larger social edifice. Of course, this isn’t a new idea. On the contrary, it was already present when the discipline of sociology was founded. Émile Durkheim, widely acknowledged as a central founding figure in nineteenth-century sociological thought, was particularly interested in the way that people’s social ties served as the thread from which a wider society wove itself together. He drew a sharp contrast between the ‘mechanical solidarity’ of pre-modern societies, where obedience to authority derived from habit and social bonds arose on the basis of similarities in status and routines, with the ‘organic solidarity’ of the mobile, highly differentiated social systems of modernity. Despite the number, range, complexity and transience that characterise modern social connections, Durkheim noted that society nevertheless

So the idea of social ties as contributing to the wider functioning of the community was well established long before the present debate began.