The primitive sympathetic magic which kept such simple tribesmen together Durkheim christened 'mechanical solidarity'.

Such punitive gestures fulfilled the important function of maintaining mechanical solidarity at the requisite pitch.

Malinowski's natives were real people; not over-socialized cardboard figures locked in everlastingly mindless mechanical solidarity.

Durkheim identified mechanical solidarity as involving custom, habit, and repression that was necessary to maintain shared views.

In mechanical solidarity, people are self-sufficient, there is little integration and thus there is the need for use of force and repression to keep society together.

He explains that, in societies with more mechanical solidarity, the diversity and division of labor is much less, so individuals have a similar worldview.

In this context, Durkheim distinguished two forms of structural relationship: mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity.

In the social sciences, the organic model has been drawn upon for ideas such as mechanical and organic solidarity and organic unity.

He equated homogeneous (redundant) skills to mechanical solidarity whose inertia retarded adaptation.

Durkheim contrasted the condition of anomie as being the result of mechanical solidarity: