Ordine e disordine

In social thought, we can very schematically identify three main perspectives on the concept of order: i) order as intentionally planned social form: the idea of the order as a social result of a plan deployed from the top has a long history (from Platone to the totalitarian experience); ii) order as a non intentional spontaneous social form: opposite to the former perspective, this interpretation comes from the famous poem of Mandeville, through the works of authors like Smith, Durkheim and von Hayek; iii) moral order, that is the typical Durkheim’s concept that the social order expresses substantially a moral order corresponding, in the industrialised modern society, to the organic solidarity. The sociological traditional thought has two further possible perspectives for fruitfully exploring the issue of the social order: Simmel’s approach, emphasising the role of the level of social interaction; and Weber’s framework based on the famous typology of forms of social action. After introducing and discussing these perspectives, the author concludes pointing out three general conditions for maintaining the analytical usefulness of the dichotomy order/disorder.

Alessandro Cavalli, Ordine e disordine in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 105/2007, pp 35-48, DOI: