In a pre-industrial society, most people carry out the same range of tasks. In a subsistence, pre-industrial economy all are engaged in providing food, clothing and shelter for themselves and their families; there will be very few members of the society whose daily routines are different (priests and rulers, for example), and the majority will also share the tasks involved in providing for these exceptional members. Shared life experiences will make for shared beliefs, shared understandings, shared traditions. There will be a solidarity based on similarity. Durkheim calls this mechanical solidarity; perhaps someone writing today might call it homeopathic solidarity. The society's rules and customs will be functional to the survival of the society- for instance, the rules about marriage and kinship that arise in accord-ance with different societies' needs to keep the group tightly together or to recruit members of nearby societies. In such societies where people's experiences of life are similar, there will be, Durkheim tells us, a general belief in the rules and customs as essential; rules will in a very real sense be the rules of the whole society.