• Robbie McClintock, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 2nd floor, Gottesman Library
    Thursdays 4:00 to 6:00 pm and by appointment
    
• Frank Moretti, Instructor
  • Office hours @ 603 Lewisohn Hall, by appointment
    (Call Teresa Gonzales, 212 854 1962, or email her teresa@columbia.edu)

Meeting 3  •  September 16 — Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

See The Durkheim Pages for the pre-eminent online resource for the study of Durkheim.

• Jones, Robert Alun. "Émile Durkheim." The Blackwell Companion to Major Classical Social Theorists. George Ritzer, ed. (Blackwell Publishing, 2003). Blackwell Reference Online.

• Emile Durkheim. The Rules of Sociological Method (1895). W. D. Halls, trans., New York: The Free Press, 1982. Chapters I and II, pp. 50-84. Electronic Reserve. $17.95.

• Alexander, Jeffrey C. and Philip Smith. The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim. (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2005). Cambridge Collections Online.

• Thomson, David. "The transformation of social life" Chapter II. The Shifting Balance of World Forces 1898–1945. Ed. C.L. Mowat. The New Cambridge Modern History. Vol. 12, Cambridge University Press, 1968. Cambridge Histories Online.
• Lukes, Steven. Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1985). An excellent biography.

Pensees d'escalier "on" Emile Durkheim: A Follow-up to Our September 16th Class Discussion for Readings in Communication Theory and Social Research

We enjoyed a lively discussion on Emile Durkheim's "The Rules of the Sociological Method" on Wednesday, the main thrust of which was a general level of concern about what the practical application of Durkheim's methodologies (principally the "social fact") might be. This, you will recall, largely took the form of testing what we might call "broad nouns" (notably: "traffic jam") against a series of definitions of "social fact" provided in TRoTSM.

     To begin, I'll offer a treatment of the general arc of the class discussion, so that it's fresh in the mind. {{ind}We began trying to nail down the Durkheimian distinction between a "fact" and an "idea," and moved quickly on to the move to scientifically measurable applications in humanistic thought. Nick suggested that Durkheim had hoped to develop a "thermometer for his new discipline" and Robbie offered that this move for the scientific could well have it's roots in a reflexive reach for the quantifiable in response to the Dreyfus Affair (a highly publicized wrongful conviction military scandal, brought to light through the investigative reporting of Emile Zola, and involving the divulging of state secrets to the German Embassy, which crystallized tensions between royalists and conservatives in France). Colin then suggested that

Durkheim "despaired at the impotence of government," and, as a result, was moved to seek the "scientific"
bases of societies. Robbie offered the fact that he couldn't have been entirely hopeless, especially personally,
as he benefited greatly from his position at the Sorbonne. Ruthie suggested that while it was true that the
"soft" sciences suffer from the weight of preconceived notions, this only makes the idea/thing distinction 

resonate as a goal, but nonetheless difficult to practically apply to things like morality. Ori then urged us to return to a broader question, namely if we believed in social facts as concepts at all. Using the idea of

personal debt (owing me $5), we explored "debt" as a potential social fact. I suggested expanding our 

"hypothetical social facts" to more general nouns, and using Ori's scenario suggested "beholdenness" as

an H.S.F. Robbie introduces the idea that there is a difference between what is measured (say, suicide) and
the measurable rate of suicide. What do we make of of this gap between human experience and statistical 

manifestation? Ruthie suggests it's even more complicated--even if coming to conclusions about human experiences were possible, aren't they fundamentally convoluted and psychological? Isn't there an inverse relationship between potential for societal application and individual truth?

   Nick added that if we didn't establish what social facts are--or if the whole concept was ultimately no
different than what Durkheim derided as "ideas"--then what's the point of this alleged science? We then
discussed Durkheim's requirement that a social fact exert a "coercive" influence on people. Mark offered
that "the feeling of being coerced may not have much to do with whether or not you're actually being coerced."
Which is to say that one could be oblivious to societal coercion, as a rock is indifferent to its environs. 

Jonathan quoted: "air does not cease to have weight because we are not aware of it."

   Ori then questioned "the operationalising of ideas," as criticized by Durkheim, saying: "It's hard to 

imagine a handshake as anything other than a manifestation of overarching social fact." In other words, if you are compelled socially to do something, doesn't that process of capitulating to compulsion inherently contain a moment of ideation? Colin suggested that if the decision is, in effect manifest only in aggregation,

perhaps individuals aren't personally implicated. We then explored Ori's example of explaining handshakes
("an external signifier of amicability") to an imagined extraterrestrial alien. 
   THEN we moved onto the traffic jam as social fact, at Robbie's suggestion. You'll recall we spent considerable
time with this motif. I suggested that since significant portions of any population may readily design their lives
in a fashion which removes the possibility of being a part of a traffic jam (or the "coercion" to be in a traffic jam)
it doesn't qualify. Brice opined that perhaps the constituent and/or causal elements of a traffic jam might be
social facts. Robbie asks us if we believe bird flocks are coerced together, adding that new research suggests
that the group isn't forming either traffic jams or bird flocks--the group form rises from individual algorithmically 

predictable choices.

   I'd like to start my additional input in this Pensees d'escalier entry with some thoughts from a particularly general 

contextualizing text, "A Critical Dictionary of Sociology," in the 1989 translation, edited by Raymond Boudon and Francois Bourricaud. In its entry for Durkheim we read: "Durkheim strove in his major works to find a narrow

way between two opposing poles: on one hand, artificialist, voluntarist, and atomist conceptions of the social
order,for which he felt merely antipathy, and, on the other hand, the holistic and organicist ideas, for which he 

showed more sympathy. It is not certain that he altogether found his way through. Several of his fundamental concepts: society, collective conscience, for example, appear to be afflicted with an irremediable obscurity.

Anome, egoism, altruism, fatalism, the classic quartet of concepts tand out for their originality and their 

utility to be sure, but also for their impreciseness. The sociological literature on the 'exact representation' of the ideas of anomie or of egoism is almost boundless. Perhaps it indicates by its existence that these concepts are irremediably blurred." (Boudon & Bourricaud, 136)

  So, it seems we are, insofar as confronting a certain amorphousness in Durkheim, not at all alone. 
   But, personally, since in my initial undergraduate acquaintance with sociology as a discipline, I found
Durkheim's work ring with such truth, and his concepts provide such useful mental tools in examining 

(if not drawing any conclusions about) society, for me, a simple dismissal of his outlook on the primacy

of society (in generating religious expression, crime, suicide, and even morality) is gallingly unsatisfying. 
  Back to the books then. I came across a very interesting text in Stjepan G. Mestrovic's "Emile Durkheim
and the Reformation of Sociology." Altogether, Mestrovic finds a throughline of unexplored Schopenhaurean
resonance--that there is a connection between the philosopher's construction of "the will" and the sociologist's
concept of society, which might or might not bear fruit or further inquiry. But far more interesting for our 

purposes, is his focus on Durkheim's biography and legacy in France.

  To distill the biographical aspect: there is a tension between Durkheim's constant focus on working towards
scientific definitions and applications in sociology, and his own position as either the fourth or eighth 

generation (depending who you ask) in a long line or rabbis--who rejected that course to pursue his studies.

This is further complicated by his alleged "discovery" or religion in 1895 (elaborated on by Lacroix, in his 

"Durkheim and Politics"), which led, ultimately to his late career focus on the societal inevitability of religion. There is, you might note, an inference of equivocation to be found here.

  Mestrovic's comments on Durkheim's legacy are also interesting: 
   "The family grave in Epinal's Jewish Cemetery, where Moise and Melanie Durkheim are buried along side 

Gerson and Rosine Mauss, is remarkably well preserved. However, Durkheim's grave in the famous Montparnasse Cemetery in Paris is in sad disarray. The stone is crumbling, the chain had collapsed, and it does not

look cared for. M. Halphen could not remember the last time he visited his grandfather's tomb. This state of neglect 

is in sharp contrast to the freshly cut flowers on Jean-Paul Sartre's grave and the graves of other famous persons in Montparnasse...the disregard for Durkheim's birth and death relative to other great thinkers seems analogous, in some ways, to sociology's state of dereliction relative to other intellectual disciplines and enterprises...In the case of

Durkheim, the public has not really had a chance to form an opinion. Freud's name is a household word, but Durkheim's
name is unknown even to many social scientists. Paris and most French cities have named a street after Auguste Comte,
but only Epinal, and there only a small back street, commemorates Durkheim's name...The point is that Durkheim stood
for things that are difficult to grasp; the reconciliation of the object-subject debate, the science of morality, a new 

vision of society. He was truly ahead of his time. Collective representations have not had a chance to catch up with him,

because the representations he was using in his teachings were hardly born in his lifetime." (Mestrovic, 23/26)
  The point of the above quote is self-evident. But let's pair it with the summation of what I had previously (and 

erroneously) seen as his most important work, "Suicide."

  We read: "The only possible way, then, to check this current of collective sadness is by at least lessening the collective
malady of which it is a sign and a result. We have shown that it is not necessary, in order to accomplish this, to restore, 

artificially, social forms which are outworn and which could be endowed with only an appearance of life, or to create out of whole cloth entirely new forms without historical analogies. We must seek in the past the germs of new life which it contained, and hasten their development...only direct contact with things can give the teachings of science the definiteness they lack. Once the existence of the evil is proved, its nature and its source, and we consequently know the general features for the remedy and its point of application, the important thing is not to draw up in advance a plan anticipating everything, but rather

to set resolutely to work." (Durkheim, 391-2)
  So, where does that leave us? If we take anything away from these extra texts it might be:
  
  1.)  Durkheim's work is at least difficult to conceptualize/apply and perhaps even inherently problematic. 
  2.)  This difficulty has, on the one hand, created clouds and clouds of scholarship speaking to the dividends returning to his
work (and "scientific" tools) can pay---and on the other hand prevented his popular (read: external to the discipline) 

canonization.

  3.)  This problematization may have something to do with his roots in and work on religious tradition. 
  I would go further down the road trod by Mestrovic, and say that the problems with Durkheim are the problems with
sociology as a scientific discipline. We returned again and again in our discussion to this idea that it seems fundamentally
problematic to "measure" societal ramifications, genesises, coercions or "facts." It's unwieldy, unsatisfying, and seems
to again and again send us rather rapidly skipping over the lake of knowledge, hurtling through the aerie realm of 

philosophy (note that we are yet again metaphoric rocks). But, again, I don't think we can just throw up our hands and say, "Durkheim's HARD!"

   I suggest, honestly, a sort of professionalisation of the discipline. I'm thinking here of (certain elements of) the public 

life of political theorists, pollsters, and pundits. There is an admirable bifurcation there. On the one hand we have the quantified artifacts of statistically driven sociological investigation (the "poll" in the political realm); on the other we have the interpretation of this data ("spin" "politicking" and punditry in the political realm). I don't see any reason why sociologists should not be at the forefront of public intellectualism: subject to and submitted in the context of open debate. After all, our work should appertain most closely to the daily experience of the public at large. The sociological is, in this way, the fundamentally general. And while we can (and do) go back and forth on theory, interpretation, and recommendation after our research, is there not much greater consensus in our methodology, statistical frameworks, surveys, and field research optimization? I think there's something there, at least. Anyone else?

Also, this link is pretty good: