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Collective Consciousness
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Collective conscious or collective conscience (French: conscience collective) 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" (conscience morale), 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 (1893),
Rules of the Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary
Forms of Religious Life (1912). In The Division of Labour, Durkheim argued
that in traditional/primitive societies (those based around clan, family or tribal
relationships) totemic religion played an important role in uniting members
through the creation of a common consciousness (conscience collective in the
original French). In societies of this type, the contents of an individual's
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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.
—Emile Durkheim
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.
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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 (Tsoukalos,
2007). 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
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matches in thirty-nine countries, and discovered that stock markets dropped on
average forty-nine points after being eliminated from the World Cup, and thirtyone 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.
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