Emile Durkheim

Durkheim, Émile 

Born Apr. 15, 1858, in Épinal; died Nov. 15, 1917, in Paris. French positivist sociologist and founder of the French school of sociology. Professor of sociology and pedagogy at Bordeaux (from 1896) and at the Sorbonne (from 1902). Founded the journal L’Année sociologique in 1896.

Durkheim’s sociological ideas were formed under the influence primarily of Montesquieu and, particularly, Comte, as well as through his polemics against individualistic psychological and biological theories. According to Durkheim, the object of sociology must be social facts, which have two distinguishing characteristics: objectiveness (exteriority) and a constraining effect in relation to individuals (Metod sotsiologii, Kiev-Kharkov, 1899, pp. 8-9). In contrast to “atomistic” concepts (society is the sum of the individuals composing it), Durkheim interpreted society as a reality of a special kind, which could not be reduced to an aggregate of individuals.

Durkheim insisted on the need for using objective methods in sociology, methods analogous to those of the natural sciences, and he put forth the principle that “social facts must be viewed as things.” He was one of the first in sociology to try to combine theoretical and empirical analyses of social phenomena.

Durkheim was one of the founders of the structural-functional school of sociology. He considered the fundamental postulate of sociology to be the following proposition: “Human institutions cannot be based on delusion or falsity: otherwise they could not continue to exist. If they were not based on the nature of things, they would encounter opposition from them that they could not overcome” (Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse, Paris, 1912, p. 3). Thus, Durkheim asserted that every social phenomenon corresponds to a particular need of society. He interpreted social conflicts primarily as pathological manifestations. This view was reflected in his work The Division of Labor in Society (1893; Russian translation, 1900), in which solidarity is regarded in essence as a synonym for the social condition. Durkheim distinguished two types of social solidarity: mechanical and organic. Mechanical solidarity prevails in archaic, primitive societies; organic in modern societies. The former type is based on the homogeneity of individual consciousnesses, which are entirely subordinated to the collective consciousness. As the division of social labor develops, mechanical solidarity gives way to organic, which is based on separation of functions and individual differences.

In the work Suicide (1897; Russian translation, 1912), Durkheim showed convincingly, on the basis of an analysis of statistical evidence, that the number of suicides depended on the nature and intensity of social bonds. Of the greatest importance is Durkheim’s analysis of anomic suicide, which is the result of social disorganization. Anomie, in Durkheim’s view, is expressed in the breakdown of the system of social norms. The concept of anomie has acquired great importance in modern sociology.

In his last major work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life: The Totem System in Australia (1912), Durkheim showed, using the beliefs held by the Australian aborigines as an example, that religion and knowledge are socially determined and their role is to maintain social unity.

Durkheim’s attitude toward Marxism was contradictory. Certain ideas from historical materialism influenced his views. At the same time, he oversimplified and distorted the materialist conception of history, treating it as “econoinic determinism,” and had a negative attitude toward the idea of the revolutionary transformation of society by the working class, preferring a bourgeois-reformist path of social reorganization.

His collaborators on the journal L’Année sociologique, including M. Mauss, M. Halbwachs, G. Davy, and C. Bougié, belonged to the French school of sociology, which played a leading role in French sociology right up to World War II (1939-45).

WORKS

Education et sociologie. Paris, 1922.
Sociologie et philosophie. Paris, 1924.
L’éducation morale. Paris, 1925.
Le Socialisme. Paris, 1928.
Leçons de sociologie: Physique des moeurs et du droit. Paris, 1950.
Pragmatisme et sociologie. Paris, 1955.
In Russian translation:
“Sotsiologiia i teoriia poznaniia.” In the collection Novye idei v sotsiologii, collection 2. St. Petersburg, 1914.

REFERENCES

Kovalevskii, M. Sovremennye sotsiologi. St. Petersburg, 1905.
Kon, I. S. Pozitivizm v sotsiologii. Leningrad, 1964.
Alpert, H. Emile Durkheim and His Sociology. New York, 1961.
Duvignaud, J. Durkheim. Paris, 1965.

E. M. KORZHEVA