Q.What is the difference between 'mechanical' and 'organic' solidarity?

In Division of Labour in Society, Durkheim classified societies according to the type of social solidarity -- the underlying bonds that hold their members together -- that each depends on, and identified two contrasting types: mechanical and organic solidarity. Mechanical solidarity is characteristic of primitive, small-population societies whose members closely resemble one another. Such societies are made up of self-sufficient groups whose members perform broadly similar activities and functions, and the ties binding people together rest on this shared similarity and on close, personal relationships. Because the community's cohesion depends so heavily on everyone thinking and behaving alike, mechanical solidarity societies tend to be intolerant of difference, and any violation of communal norms is felt as a genuine threat to the community's integrity -- which is why such societies rely on repressive law, punishing wrongdoers harshly as a way of reaffirming and protecting the shared moral order. Organic solidarity, by contrast, characterises modern societies with large, heterogeneous populations. Rather than resting on similarity, it rests on interdependence: modern society is organised into specialised institutions and groups, none of which is self-sufficient, each depending on countless others for its own survival -- much as different organs in a body depend on one another, which is where Durkheim's term 'organic' comes from. Because relationships in such a society are necessarily more impersonal (a large population cannot be held together purely by personal ties), its laws tend to be restitutive rather than repressive: aimed at repairing or correcting the harm caused by a wrong, as in compensation or contract law, rather than at collectively punishing the offender. Organic solidarity also grants individuals …