Durkheim, Émile

Bibliography

See biographies by S. Lukes (1985) and M. Fournier (2012); studies by S. Lukes (1972), R. A. Nisbet (1965 and 1974), N. Smelser (1963), and D. La Capra (1985).

Durkheim, Emile (

His first major work, The Division of Labour in Society (1893), rests on the important distinction he drew between MECHANICAL AND ORGANIC SOLIDARITY. His argument was that while in small-scale societies, with only a limited DIVISION OF LABOUR, people were bound together by similarity and a common COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE, in more complex societies with an advanced division of labour, this division of labour itself acted as the basis of social integration. Two further vital concepts in Durkheim's sociology, which also make their first appearance in The Division of Labour, are his suggestion that in modern societies the division of labour is often marred by ANOMIE (i.e. is unregulated by society or social values), and that the division of labour is also often ‘forced’, which is to say that, as the result of unfairness and inefficiency in the operation of the educational system and in the processes of occupational selection, many people are made to occupy roles for which they are unsuited (see FORCED DIVISION OF LABOUR). Durkheim's objective in The Division of Labour, and subsequently, was to establish, both theoretically and practically, the conditions for social solidarity in modern societies which would combine individualism and collectivism. He rejected any suggestion (such as SPENCER's) that society could operate effectively on principles of self-interest, without collective norms. On the other hand, he was equally opposed to a strongly centralized state. He suggested, instead, that the organization of society into occupationally-based, intermediate groupings, standing between the state and the individual, might prove the best way to organize a modern society based on the division of labour. A network of such groups would perhaps be well placed to place moral restraints on egoism and to regulate the group conflicts which modern societies inevitably generate.

In The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Durkheim laid out his overall approach to sociological explanation, including his doctrine of ‘social facts as things’. But this work is perhaps equally important for its contribution to the formulation of modern FUNCTIONALISM. Central to Durkheim's functionalism was a distinction between healthy and ‘pathological’ forms of social organization. As Durkheim puts it, ‘it is the function of the average organism that the physiologist studies; and the sociologist does the same’. ‘It would be incomprehensible’, Durkheim suggests, ‘if the most widespread forms of organization were not the most advantageous’. Thus, the ‘healthy’, or the ‘functional’, social form is usually that which is present in the average at a given level of social development. For modern industrial societies, where the evolution of this type has not yet run its full course, Durkheim recognized that assessment of functionality was more difficult. Here, therefore, one must also seek to establish with some care that the generality of a phenomenon is actually bound up with the ‘general conditions of collective life’ for this social type. As well as establishing the function of a phenomenon, one must also always independently establish its cause.

In Suicide (1897), a work seen as a ‘methodological classic’ by some and as greatly flawed by others, Durkheim employed what would now be called the SECONDARY ANALYSIS of existing OFFICIAL STATISTICS, seeking to demonstrate how SUICIDE is a social, and thus a sociological, phenomenon rather than a purely individual one. After first ‘eliminating’ existing non-sociological explanations – including climatic factors and ‘normal’ and ‘abnormal’ psychological factors, such as ‘racial’ characteristics or insanity – three main types of suicide were identified by Durkheim as corresponding in each case to distinct types of social situation. Thus, altruistic suicide, he suggested, was caused by strong mechanical solidarity (e.g. the suicide of the old and infirm in simple societies, or suicides of onour in the army); egoistic suicide, he suggested, was caused by excessive individuation in modern societies (e.g. the higher incidence of suicide among Protestants compared with Jews or Catholics, and among the divorced compared with the married); and anomic suicide was said to result when disruptions of normal social expectations occurred (e.g. a sudden change in economic circumstances, and as a general tendency in modern societies in their unregulated forms). A fourth type of suicide – fatalistic suicide - also occurs where social regulation leaves no scope for autonomous action apart from death (e.g. the suicide of the slave). For those who admire it, Suicide is both a sophisticated work and a precursor of later forms of MULTIVARIATE ANALYSIS (see also CROSS-TABULATION). To its critics, however, it is a work in which Durkheim uses statistics in a manner that imposes MEASUREMENT BY FIAT, with little guarantee that actors’ beliefs and values are as he assumed them to be.

In Elementary Forms ofReligious Life (1912), Durkheim returned to an examination of the nature of the ‘collective conscience’ within simpler societies. This study of religious beliefs and practices in what he took to be their most elementary form (especially Australian aboriginal society) became the basis of much of the modern sociological study of religion (see RELIGION, FUNCTIONALIST THEORY OF RELIGION, SACRED AND PROFANE). The decisive idea in Durkheim's account of religion is that religion functions as a symbolic representation of society, in which the beliefs and practices relative to the 'S acred’ continually reaffirm communal values. In view of this, one of the tasks of Durkheim's sociology was to discover what have since been called FUNCTIONAL ALTERNATIVES OR FUNCTIONAL EQUIVALENTS to religion in increasingly secular modern societies (see also CIVIL RELIGION; compare SECULARIZATION).

In addition to these four main works, Durkheim published much else, including numerous essays. Among the most important of these (written with Marcel Mauss) is Primitive Classification (1903), in which the basic categories of human thought, including time and space, and number, are seen as reflecting patterns of social organization. For example, classification is seen as reflecting the division of human societies into clans (see also SOCIOLOGY OF KNOWLEDGE). Also of importance are Durkheim's essays on TOTEMISM and on KINSHIP. Along with the ideas contained in Elementary Forms, these essays exerted a strong influence on the formation of modern STRUCTURALISM (see also MYTHOLOGIES).

As well as the works published in Durkheim's lifetime, many of his lectures, together with fragments of books left unfinished, were published after his death, including Moral Education (1925), Socialism and Saint-Simon (1928), and Professional Ethic and Civic Morals (1950). As one of the founding fathers of modern sociology, Durkheim was also associated with the journal which attracted around it many celebrated sociologists, anthropologists and historians, amongst them, Marcel Mauss, Maurice Halbwachs and Levy-Bruhl.

On socialism, Durkheim's position was sympathetic but non-Marxist. As pointed out by Gouldner (in the introduction to the English version of Socialism and Saint-Simon, 1959), contrary to suggestions that Durkheim was, above all, a conservative, an emphasis on social conflict and social change is an enduring element in his sociology, deriving from Saint-Simon. The possible role Durkheim saw for occupational intermediate groupings in modern societies places him closest to guild socialism. A ‘moral conservative’ Durkheim may sometimes have been, but he was not a political conservative. Nor was normative integration Durkheim's exclusive focus; relationships of reciprocal interdependence as well as normative integration are recognized as the basis of social order.

Debate surrounds Durkheim's work in general, as to how far it does, or does not, succeed in satisfactorily combining an emphasis on social structure with individual agency in sociological explanation (see also STRUCTURE AND AGENCY). For the most part, Durkheim's sociology has been seen as overstating general normative and social structural influences at the expense of individual agency, although it was always Durkheim's intention to leave scope for the latter within his sociology. Durkheim's two main goals were to establish sociology as an autonomous 'S cientific’ discipline, and to establish the practical requirements for social order in modern societies. In neither of these can Durkheim be regarded as having the last word. What is undeniable is that his influence on modern sociology has been immense, with many modern statements about the subject still being presented as positions either for or against Durkheim.

Two important biographical and critical studies on Durkheim's life and work are by Lukes (1973) and PARSONS (1937).

Durkheim, Émile