What To Know About Collective Consciousness

By Sonya Riley


Collective consciousness, also seen as collective conscience, refers to a specific set of shared moral attitudes, ideas and beliefs. These shared things operate as a unified source within various societies. The term was first coined by a French sociologist by the name of Emile Durkheim in a book he wrote titled Division of Labor in Society, published in 1893.

Conscience, a French word, may be translated in the English language as conscience or conscious. It may also refer to awareness or perception. Some choose to use the word conscience as a untranslatable technical term or foreign word without considering its meaning in English. Generally, it does not reference moral conscience, but an understanding that is shared when it comes to social norms. When it comes to the word collective, Durkheim clearly states that he is not hypostatizing or reifying the concept. To him, this word merely refers to something common to most individuals, a social fact.

Durkheim employs this term often in four books: Suicide, The Division of Labor in Society, Rules of Sociological Method, and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. He thought that in traditional or primitive societies a totemic religion exists and plays a big part in uniting members. This is possible through development of common consciousness. In these societies, which are based around clan, family or tribal relationships, contents of consciousness of an individual are shared among others in the society. This creates mechanical solidarity via shared likeness.

This concept is used outside of the Durkheimian social theory. There are numerous forms of what may be known under this terminology found in modern societies that other sociologists have identified. This term is even used by parapsychologists.

Mary Kelsey, a lecturer of sociology, used this term in the early half of the 2000s. Kelsey used it in describing people within a social unit being aware of shared traits and circumstances. This awareness led people to act as a community in order to create solidarity. Rather than living as separate individuals, people came together in order to create dynamic groups that shared knowledge and resources.

A new theory has been introduced that suggests character of consciousness is correlated to the type of mnemonic encoding used in specific groups. For example, cohesive groups with informal structures usually represent major facets of a society as episodic memories. In turn, this creates influence on collective behaviors and ideologies. It usually leads to exclusive ethos, atmosphere that is indulgent and powerful solidarity.

Society consists of numerous collective groups, for example: organizations, regions, nations, family, community. These units have capabilities to act, decide, think, reform, judge, reflect, and conceptualize. Differing behaviors among such groups vary based on the different collective consciousness, which is to say variations in consciousness may have a practical meaning.

Collective consciousness was first introduced in an 1893 book written by Emile Durkheim. He was a French sociologist who used this term to reference shared ideas, beliefs and moral attitudes found among different societies. This particular concept has since been used by psychologists and sociologists in order to describe ideas and theories relative to the modern world.




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