Talk:Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

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Lead-off: Anima Tawasil

Contents 1 Studying Durkheim's life 1.1 Key dates 1.2 Life phases 1.3 Influential events and contexts 1.4 Significant interactions 1.5 Struggles and accomplishments 2 Durkheim's Key Works 3 Critical literature on Durkheim 4 Conceptual glossary for Durkheim 5 Talk 5.1 MSTU5606-2008 Discussion 5.1.1 Summary 5.1.2 Points of Reflection 5.2 MSTU5606-2006 Discussion 5.2.1 Background 5.2.2 Society: Externality and Constraint 5.2.3 The Division of Labor and the Theory of Modern Society 5.2.4 Queries and Points of Criticism 5.2.5 Concluding Comment 5.2.6 Relating Durkheim to Ruth Benedict and Kiri Narayan 5.2.7 Follow-Up on Durkheim - Two Weeks Later

Studying Durkheim's life

Key dates

Born April 15, 1858(1858-04-15) in Épinal, France

1879: enrolled in École Normale Supérieure (ENS)

1882: graduated from ENS

1887: travelled to Bordeaux to teach pedagogy and social science, reformed the French school system

1893: The Division of Labor in Society was published

1895: Rules of the Sociological Method was published and founded the first European Department of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux

1898: founded the journal L'Année Sociologique

1897: published Suicide

1902: became the chair of education at the Sorbonne

1912: permanently assigned the chair of education and sociology, published The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Died November 15, 1917 (aged 59) in Paris, France

Life phases

Early years Although coming from a line of Jewish rabbis, Emile Durkheim led a secular private life. His work in part sought to differentiate religion as rooted from social factors. He did not, however, forsake his family or the Jewish community. In 1879, Durkheim enrolled in École Normale Supérieure (ENS) where he became interested in a scietific approach towards social science research.

In 1887, he moved to Bordeaux, teaching in France's first teacher's training center. Though his views on religion and morality at this time continued to earn him many critics, in 1893 he published The Division of Labour in Society, his doctoral dissertation. Durkheim's deep interest in the social sciences stemmed from his politics geared towards socialism. Because the nationalistic approach in France polarized French politics a fter its defeat during the Franco-Prussian War, Durkheim's socialist politics was made more apparent to the public. In 1895, he then published Rules of Sociological Method, defining Sociology as a science, while establishing the first European Department of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux. And finally, in 1897, he published Suicide, a case study showcasing the use of quantitative methods in the study of crime and society.

Durkheim was appointed the chair of education at the Sorbonne in 1902, whereby secondary school teachers could seek technical training. This position had a significant influence in the development of the French school system. By 1912 he was assigned as permanent chair whereby he renamed his position as the chair of education and sociology. He published his final work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Durkheim's socialist politics made him a target by the growing French right during World War I. Not only was it more difficult to maintain his stature as a scholar, but his students were being drafted for the war. It is said that Durkheim never fully recovered from his son's death during World War I and suffered a stroke in 1917. Durkheim died the same year at the age of 59.

Influential events and contexts

The nationalistic sentiment in France post Franco-Prussian War in the early 1890's made Durkheim's socialist politics and Jewish identity stand out in the public eye. But instead of cowering, he continued to strengthen his stance.

Drawing a large number of student-following, in 1898 he founded the journal L'Année Sociologique in order to publish and publicize the work of his students and collaborators who developed his sociology program.

World War I took a toll on Durkheim's personal life. As the French Right grew in numbers, his students were drafted for the war and his own son died in the war. He never fully recovered and died in 1917.

Significant interactions

At the École Normale Supérieure (ENS), Durkheim studied with up and coming intellectuals of France, Jean Jaurès and Henri Bergson, who would go on to become major figures in France's intellectual history. Durkheim also studied with Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social scientific outlook. This is Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society.

Struggles and accomplishments

Aside from his published works, Durkheim held several notable positions.

Bordeaux 1887 - 1898: taught both pedagogy and social science, reformed the French school system and introduced the study of social science in its curriculum, founded the first European Department of Sociology at the University of Bordeaux, founded the journal L'Année Sociologique in order to publish and publicize the work of what was by then a growing number of students and collaborators.

Sorbonne 1902 - 1912: became the chair of education at the Sorbonne, provided technical institutions for training secondary school teachers, permanently assigned the chair and renamed it the chair of education and sociology.

One of the founding fathers of Sociology, specific to functionalism.

Durkheim's Key Works

The Division of Labor

Rules of Sociological Method

Suicide

The Elementary Forms of Religious Life

Critical literature on Durkheim

• Bottomore, Tom. “A Marxist Consideration of Durkheim.” Social Forces 59, no. 4, Special Issue (June 1981): 902-917. CU JSTOR.

• For a brief bio, see Who's Who in the Twentieth Century

• Steven Lukes.  Emile Durkheim, His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study.  Stanford: StanfordUniversity Press, 1985.  The standard intellectual biography for Durkheim.

• Search for JSTOR articles on Emile Durkheim.

• Search for JSTOR reviews of books about Emile Durkheim.

• Search for JSTOR articles by Emile Durkheim.

• Susan Stedman Jones.  Durkheim Reconsidered.  New York: Polity Press, 2001.

• Search Barnes & Noble for books by and about Emile Durkheim.

• Emile Durkheim via Google Images.

Background to The Rules of Sociological Method

• Durkheim may have seen himself doing for sociology what Francis Bacon did for natural science. (See Rules, p. 62).

• The sociology Durkeim sought to displace was that primarily of Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer. Search JSTOR for articles on Comte and Spencer, referring to Durkheim as well.

• Durkheim felt a need to distinguish his position from that of Gabriel Tarde, a prominent social thinker in late-19th-century France. (Article in Encyclopedia of World Biography, 2nd ed. 17 Vols. Gale Research, 1998.) Search for JSTOR articles on Gabriel Tarde.

• Articles in JSTOR on the history of sociology and Durkheim and articles on Durkheim and sociology as a discipline.

Conceptual glossary for Durkheim

The Division of Labor: Specialization of labor within a modern, industrialized society.

Mechanical Solidarity: Groups form around common cultural rituals. Lessens in a modern, industrialized society.

Organic Solidarity:

Individuals relying on other individuals for survival. The individual has different skills and values, but ultimately needs the specialties of others.The hallmark of a modern, industrialized society.

Talk

MSTU5606-2008 Discussion

Lead off: Amina Tawasil

Summary

In an attempt to engage with Durkheim’s The Division of Labor, I have divided this paper into two parts. In the first half I attempt to summarize the literature. The second portion consists of both what I thought to be a significant component of his theory as well as concepts I continue to be challenged by. What does Durkheim refer to when he says division of labor? Though he does not define it directly at first, he alludes to its concept when he says, “To co-operate, in fact, is to share with one another a common task. If this task is subdivided into tasks qualitatively similar, although indispensable to one another, there is a simple or first level division of labor. If they are different in kind, there is composite division of labor or specialization proper” (Durkheim 1984:10). Here, we may deduce that division of labor is a formation of a specialization in labor.

In explaining its function, Durkheim says, “Thus to ask what is the function of the division of labor is to investigate the need to which it corresponds” (Durkheim 1984:11). To make his point clear, Durkheim draws on the sciences to first explain how division or separateness would manifest itself in an organism. He says that in order for that organism to function, each part within it performs a unique task. While all the components are distinct from one another, they all work together as part of that single organism. He then pushes this analogy further into social interactions, specifically in the formation of friendship. With this he says that friendships founded on either similarities and dissimilarities exist in nature (Durkheim 1984:16). He unpacks this notion by dissecting the dissimilarities between individuals. He states, “The fearful are attracted to those who are decisive and resolute, the weak to the strong, and vice versa. However richly endowed we may be, we always lack something, and the best amogh us feel our own inadequacy” (Durkheim 1984:17).

In culmination, he concludes that aside from its economic advantages, there is a more pressing moral effect it produces. That is, to create between two or more people a feeling of solidarity. Durkheim proceeds to explain division of labor in light of marital relationships for the same reasons mentioned above. He adds that although men and women, when isolated from each other, are anatomically similar, through time, labor was divided up between sexes (Durkheim 1984:20). “It might be said that the two great functions of psychological life had become as if dissociated from each other, one sex having taken over the affective, the other the intellectual function” (Durkheim 1984:20), implying that both male and female complement each other. Durkheim states that without sexual division of labor, relationships formed between a man and a woman would be nothing but a sexual one. Division of labor not only increases the productivity of their functions, but more importantly, it links individuals to one another who would otherwise develop independently.

Moving from marital relationships, Durkheim for the last time uses this point to the level of social groupings. He then sets out to prove his theory by comparing different social bonds ranging from what he calls primitive to advanced societies, and by using historical analysis looking purposely at the causes and effects of division of labor. In quoting Comte, “Thus it (division of labor) is the continuous distribution of different human tasks which constitutes the principal element in social solidarity and which becomes the primary cause of the scale and growing complexity of the social organism.” (Durkheim 1984:23, secondary reference) Therefore, according to Durkheim, the key function of division of labor is social solidarity.

Having established its function and in context to using historical analysis to prove his theory, Durkheim introduces the manifestations of collective consciousness in opposition to division of labor. He does this by expounding on the extent to which laws are applied in different types of societies. In societies he categorizes as having achieved solidarity through similarities or mechanical solidarity, penal laws based on collective vengeance, often times violent in nature, are recurring. On the other hand, societies which have achieved organic solidarity or solidarity through division of labor are more likely to implement cooperative laws or restitutory laws. While division of labor provides a means for solidarity, Durkheim acknowledges its need for positive intervention in the form of contractual agreements between individuals or groups in order to guard against self-interest. “Undoubtedly when men bind one another by contract it is because, through the division of labor, whether this be simple or complex, they have need of one another… The conditions for their cooperation must also be fixed for the entire duration of their relationship. The duties and rights of each one must be defined, not only in light of the situation it presents itself at the moment when the contract is concluded, but in anticipation of circumstances that can arise and can modify it. Otherwise at every moment there would be renewed conflicts and quarrels” (Durkheim 1984:160).

Points of Reflection

To engage in Durkheim’s work is not an easy task. Here, I can only begin to share my novice reflections. Three persistent themes continue to be explored from the moment I began this reading; Kropotkin’s mutual aid, the role of gender, and the intersection between the creation of an obscure institution and its potential location for power. Durkheim’s explanation of organic solidarity, cooperation, and altruism reverberates at its core, at least in my mind, Mutual Aid, a social theory introduced circa 1900 by Petr Kropotkin (Kropotkin 1902).

In his response to Huxley’s Survival of the Fittest, Kropotkin puts forth the notion that cooperation between organisms as being equally important as competition is to the evolution of species. At the onset, Durkheim proposes that this exists between individuals as well as social groupings. While political economists traditionally claim the correlation between the increase of division of labor with the increase in happiness, Durkheim argues that had it been only for happiness, it would have been short-lived. Instead, Durkheim formulates that the division of labor is directly proportionate to the volume and density of societies (Durkheim 1984:14). When competition increases between isolated individuals unknown to each other, competition potentially separates them more. The more alike two organisms are the more likely they will compete with each other. In this context, division of labor becomes the intervention, the catalyst which makes individuals feel they are a part of the same society, the same network in order to survive. This is reminiscent of Kropotkin’s argument.

On a different note, Durkheim’s construct of sexual division of labor is a challenging one. While division of labor on one hand, values the separation between maleness and femaleness in labor, it also implies the femaleness as being held captive to inferiority with regards to how each labor is deemed valuable. First, he states that the study of science allows individuals to have access to more clarity in a world that is changing rapidly. He asserts, “This is why intelligence, guided by science, requires to assume a greater role in the process of collective life” (Durkheim 1984:14). Meaning, those engaged in the sciences assume a greater role in society. He then states, “But even in the sphere of activity, the woman brings to bear her own nature, and her role remains very special, one very different from that of the man. What is more, if art and letters are beginning to become matters that occupy women, the other sex appears to be abandoning them so as to devote itself more especially to science” (Durkheim 1984:21). If science is perceived at a higher level, what is one to conclude about women in the arts and letters? Coupled with Durkheim’s description of the male and female brain as having developed differently with the advancement of civilization, I am concerned about its implications today in terms of how gender would be socially produced and reproduced, and how it would be related to class analysis in this context.

This brings me to my last point of reflection. Creating division of labor may lends itself to constructing society into unequal social classes. This is echoed by Antonio Gramsci when he says, “Every social group, coming into existence on the original terrain of an essential function in the world of economic production, creates together with itself, organically, one or more strata of intellectuals which give it homogeneity and an awareness of its own function not only in the economic but also in the social and political fields” (Gramsci 1974:5).

This seems to be problematic since social groups have a tendency to attach meaning and importance to different kinds of labor. Meaning, not all labor would be held in the same esteem. As noted above, Durkheim himself describes science as part of an enlightened consciousness. (Durkheim 1984:14). In my mind, does this then imply that those engaged in labor-intensive roles are less intellectual? How would this impact access to opportunities? In the same breath, I am also inclined to think that perhaps when Durkheim describes positive intervention in the form of different contractual agreements he is referring to the establishment of a bureaucracy, perhaps made up of the intellectual class, which oversees the implementation of these agreements. Among its subtle implications, this entails relocating influence, power, and the ability to have access to those subjected to these agreements to those in a position to do so. After all, contractual agreements at times imply distribution of power unequally. The one who holds power over who is held accountable for this is not the agreement, but an individual or set of individuals.

Durkheim’s The Division of Labor is complex and cannot be digested in a short amount of time or explained with such limited space. I conclude by acknowledging that for every attempt at reexamining this theory, it does become a new discovery for both apprentice and social scientist alike.

MSTU5606-2006 Discussion

Lead off: Andrew Shiotani

Background

Along with Max Weber, Durkheim is typically referred to as one of the principal founders of modern academic sociology. But even this description of his achievement would be to understate his influence and the impact of his work upon the development of the modern social sciences. His primary writings - which include the Division of Labor, the Rules of Sociological Method, Suicide, and the Elementary Forms of the Religious Life - remain staples in courses in not only sociology but also anthropology and other social sciences, and his ideas contributed directly to the development of both functionalist and structuralist forms of thought across a variety of disciplines. While Durkheim was certainly not the first sociologist of significance, he was perhaps its foremost champion and defender among the members of his generation. He offered an unhesitating and uncompromising defense of the idea of sociology as an objective science rooted in the empirical and comparative observation of social reality; he worked to lay out in systematic fashion the methodological bases and proper object domain of sociological research; and he connected the conduct of social research to the diagnosis of the social and political problems confronting modern society.

Society: Externality and Constraint

Society as the Object Domain of Sociological Investigation Central to Durkheim's efforts to establish sociology as a legitimate member of the social sciences was his identification of 'society' and 'social facts' as the proper objects of sociological research. These concepts were outlined and defended in the programmatic Rules of Sociological Method, but also on display in the more substantive Division of Labor. If modern sociology was to establish itself on an independent basis and not merely draw parasitically upon surrounding disciplines (history, psychology, economics), then it needed to have its own object domain and its own set of methodological precepts or 'rules' for investigating this domain.

In the Rules, Durkheim tied sociological research to the investigation of 'society,' or more specifically, to the generation of particular types of claims and statements about social reality which he called 'social facts.' On one level, social facts can be understood as a simple outcome of semantic predication: for instance, a sociologist might claim as a matter of empirically observable and verifiable fact that the members of a particular society believe in "X"; which is of course quite different than saying ithat "X" is correct and true or false and pernicious, and so on. For Durkheim, however, social facts are uniquely social insofar as they take into account two characteristics of social reality, which he identified as 'externality' and 'constraint.'

These have proven to be unfortunate terms, given the amount of confusion they have generated. For Durkheim, 'externality' should not be taken to mean that society is independent or outside of individual human existence (which would be an impossibility); but that the character and quality of social relations are not dependent upon uniquely individual properties. This is true insofar as the individual is born into a web of already-constructed social relations which temporally precede and spatially exceed the individual. Partly for this reason, society also exerts a 'constraining' force on the individual, in that the web of social relations expands far beyond the range of action of any one individual and thereby limits the ability of the individual to create his or her world anew. Constraints for Durkheim were in the first order material and demographic - every society has a particular institutional and demographic organization at any given stage in its evolution, and these elements constitute the material facts with which every individual must work with and through in the course and conduct of everyday life. But Durkheim was fascinated by constraints of a primarily normative nature: for social life, he felt, is characteristically about the maintenance and stability of meaningful social relationships. This in turn requires the mutual employment by actors of sanctions of both a positive and negative kinds, to ensure compliance to certain standard or expected forms of behavior.

The Division of Labor and the Theory of Modern Society

For Durkheim, the structure and arrangement of normative sanctions in a society can be observed, providing sociologists with objective clues into the workings of the 'inner moral life' or 'collective conscience' or solidary basis of that society. (Note that for Durkheim the terms collective conscience or consciousness, solidarity, and so on have substantially equivalent meanings.) Thus sociology could avoid what Durkheim thought to be the characteristic error of his intellectual predecessors and competitors, which was to postulate from the beginning certain preferred or assumed ethical values and to assess the adequacy of different forms of society in relation to these values. This 'speculative' and 'a prioristic' way of proceeding, Durkheim felt, denies the possibility that different kinds of society, depending on their internal structure, might properly rely upon different kinds of normative mechanisms to secure their stability.

The Division of Labor, Durkheim's doctoral dissertation and first major work, develops these insights into a comprehensive theory of modern society. In the work, Durkheim offers a distinction between traditional or pre-modern societies on the one hand, and modern societies on the other. Employing some of the arguments which he later developed in the Rules, he used law as a readily-observable institution which could be used to correlate changes in (a) social structure with (b) forms of social solidarity. It was his belief that the integration and stability of modern societies required a different type of solidarity or normative mechanism than pre-modern societies.

In brief, modern societies display a highly advanced and complex 'division of labor' (a term, as he noted, that was introduced by Adam Smith), in which individuals assume an increasingly specialized and differentiated social roles organized according to social 'function.' This contrasts sharply with the structural arrangement of pre-modern societies in which individuals belong to units or 'segments' (such as tribes, families, and clans) that display characteristically similar features. Given that pre-modern societies are fundamentally similar, the social norms and values tend toward a unified or homogeneous collective consciousness in which individual differences and variations are minimized. Violations of the collective consciousness in pre-modern societies tend to evoke, in an almost 'mechanical' fashion, a harsh and repressive response, since to violate the norms and precepts embodied in the collective consciousness is, in a sense, to commit a crime against each and every member of society.

According to Durkheim, no such homogeneous collective identity is possible in modern times, and this is evidenced by the attenuation of punitive sanctions of repressive or criminal law. Rather, in modern society - with its complex working of interdependent social parts, akin to the 'organic' structure of a living body - individuals adopt different perspectives, have different interests, and work with different individualized values and concerns in mind. These will vary according to their particular (and especially occupational) positions and the particular web of relationships, characterized above all by the 'contract.' Where the contract becomes the primary expression of social expectations, contractual law becomes the chief means of ensuring or sanctioning behavior to ensure compliance. When an individual fails to meet the terms of a contract, that person may be forced to repair any damage done to injured parties by repaying or restoring the injured parties to their previous state, allowing them to continue their social role or function. For this reason, Durkheim felt sufficiently confident to claim, modern societies are characterized by an 'organic' solidarity that is evidenced by the rise of 'restitutive' or civil law, as contrasted with the 'mechanical' solidarity of pre-modern societies in which repressive or criminal law predominates.

Queries and Points of Criticism

Durkheim's writings, vastly influential as they may have been, invite disquiet and skepticism.

1. Durkheim's writings display over and over again some of the chief debilitating tendencies of 19th century thought - for instance, the constant tendency to discuss society using biological and anatomical metaphors ('organs,' 'morphology' and the like). More disturbing however is his very use of the term 'society' as a coherent concept or term. Despite the fact that he was well aware that society is not 'external' to individuals in that sense that two individual beings are external to one another, he nevertheless tended to discuss society as if it were a coherent actor in its own right. As a passing instance, in the Division of Labor (p 71, Halls translation) he writes of the nature of organic solidarity: since "the rules where sanctions are restitutory do not involve the common consciousness, the relationships that they determine are not of the sort that affect everyone indiscriminately. This means that they are instituted directly, not between the individual and society but between limited and particular elements in society... Yet...since society is not absent it must necessarily indeed be concerned to some extent, and feel some repercussions."

Thanks perhaps in no small part to Durkheim, it has become a reflex of everyday discussion to discuss 'society' (and its needs and workings) as a compact, identifiable entity with self-evident references. But is this genuinely the case? It's interesting to note that Max Weber, for one, did not develop his sociology around a concept of society; and in the contemporary age in which globalization and deterritorialization have become important factors in everyday and theoreetical discourse, what possibilities are there for a sociology whose observations are bounded by the concept of 'society'?

2. The theory of society that Durkheim developed in the Division of Labor places primary emphasis upon the role of a society's legal framework as an 'external' (visible, observable) indicator of not simply the society's underlying structure, but the underlying structure regarded in its normative aspects. One has to struggle to find the grounds upon which this correlation is methodologically and empirically justified. One could contrast here Durkheim's work with the later work of Foucault, who in Discipline and Punish (itself a work influenced by Durkheim) identified and traced changes in penal practice to the rise of increasingly insidious forms of technology and surveillance.

3. Durkheim's theory of society likewise postulates the transformation of society's collective identity or collective consciousness from a pre-modern concentration upon preservation of homogeneity and substantive commonality to a modern promotion of satisfaction of divergent individual interests and needs. One might accept that there is a strong element of truth to this, and it is for this reason that Durkheim is commonly received as a mainstay of liberal or bourgeois as opposed to radical or Marxist social thought. Yet, the obvious criticism is that there is a large extent to which this is false: witness the rise of ethnic and nationalist identities in the twentieth century as a counterargument to this position.

Concluding Comment

What interest does Durkheim have for twenty-first century thinkers? One suggestion: Durkheim thought deeply and extensively about the consequences of using the observational powers of empirical science to understand human affairs. He was not dogmatic about techniques (having used large scale census-style information, legal texts, ethnographic accounts, depending on the question). Where and how his actual approach succeeds, or fails, remains instructive. It is most interesting, for example, that Harold Garfinkel, possibly the most original sociologist of the last half-century subtitles his latest book (Ethnomethodology's Program 2002) "Working Out Durkheim's Aphorism." Garfinkel writes about the immortal factuality of [temporary] social scenes--such as service lines, traffic flows on super-highways, university lectures and, one can extrapolate, schools and universities as single institutions and as networks of mutually linked institutions (to each other and to others in the financial, industrial, technical, medical, etc., worlds). He may revitalize the Durkheimian tradition by freeing of the Parsonian interpretations (see Richard Hilbert on The classical roots of ethnomethodology 1992)

Varenne -- 09:25, 6 March 2007 (EST)

Relating Durkheim to Ruth Benedict and Kiri Narayan

Reading Durkheim made me think of two women I studied last semester. The first is the anthropologist Ruth Benedict, who did her work in the 1930s and was one of the first female professors at Columbia (according to my former professor). Benedict thought that social norms were a form of "psychology writ large." In other words, society was a collective expression of individualism. Benedict seems to allow individuals far more agency than Durkheim does. Furthermore, instead of studying society from the outside, as Durkheim recommends, Benedict encouraged studying society from the inside, i.e., the standpoint of individuals. Her theory is especially interesting when applied to the study of deviancy: after all, if society had no expectations, individuals would not be criticized for ignoring or failing to meet those expectations. I wonder what Durkheim thinks of deviancy. Is an individual who rejects the collective opinion a victim of himself or a victim of society?

The other woman I thought of was Kiri Narayan, who wrote an excellent essay called "How Native is a 'Native' Anthropologist?" in Louise Lamphere's anthology Situated Lives. In it, she questions what it means to examine society from an "insider's" perspective. Narayan is half Indian but highly westernized. She studies Indian culture, and in the past, fellow anthropologists have criticized her for studying her "native" culture. In the essay, Narayan talks about the disorientation she felt when doing field work in India. Although she was raised in Indian culture, when it came down to it, she was quite unfamiliar with the culture she was studying. Yet, her connection to the culture made her view and study it differently than an anthropologist without blood ties to the country. What would Durkheim say about her essay? Is it possible to study anything from a completely external perspective, as he suggests? And does studying society from the inside automatically discredit one's academic merit?

--Mathu

Hi Mathu,

This is in response to your comment. I have to confess that I have read very little Benedict and I am not at all familiar with the other author you cite, but I think you're correct in any event to point out some difficulties - and really, something rather unsatisfactory - in Durkheim's approach. I would agree that Durkheim's theoretical framework does not really incorporate an adequate theory of human agency on the one hand, or of (cultural) meaning and value on the other. Still, I think - and I hope to raise in my presentation this Wednesday - that to an extent some of Durkheim's theoretical and methodological arguments, however flawed, gain a certain measure of intelligibility and plausibility when viewed in context.

One point for the present, which we can discuss on Wednesday: I think the question of 'externality' in particular is susceptible to considerable confusion, and that's partly because the term itself is not very fortunate. What I think Durkheim was trying to do was to differentiate sociology and to establish its legitimacy vis-a-vis a number of intellectual competitors and influences, including speculative philosophy, theology, utilitarian economics, and social psychology. The chief way that Durkheim sought to do this was to base sociology's claim to existence as (a) a 'science' of (b) a specifically unique domain of investigation, 'society.' I won't say anything about whether or not sociology is a science, but it's important I think that one of Durkheim's achievements, for better or worse, was to make the connection between sociology and the concept of society non-tautological, more than merely obvious (and therefore empty). That is, for him, 'society' is more than just a figure of speech or a semantic gesture to the somewhat obvious fact that we are born into, grow up, and live in a context and environment that precedes and is broader than our individual selves. Rather, it was essential that 'society' be seen as a real entity and a legitimate object of investigation; and this meant for him that its structures and dynamics are not reducible to individual psychology or action, and these structures and dynamics can be investigated and dissected and rendered available to empirical research and analysis.

The importance of this is profound. While I only have a partial understanding of Durkheim's theory of deviance (I guess we'd have to read Suicide and parts of the Division of Labor that weren't assigned) it's important to see that thanks in part to him (again, for better or worse) the issue of deviance can be thought of as a social problem with social causes and factors. This was, at least, an improvement on purely speculative theories of deviance which saw individual deviant behavior as evidence of demonic possession, moral failure, or what have you.

To return to the point: if society is 'real' how is it to be investigated. In brief, I think what Durkheim is arguing is not such much that we view society from an 'external' place - i.e., from a position 'outside' of society (whereever that may be). I don't think (although I'm not always certain about this) that Durkheim made the mistake, that perhaps August Comte did, of thinking of sociologists as somehow outside of the society they belonged to. Rather, his argument is that insofar as sociologists are interested in the internal coherence and structure of social life, they can only - if they are to avoid the pitfalls of philosophizing, ideologizing, and (perhaps?) moralizing about social reality - proceed by working with observable reality to generate factual claims (social facts). Thus, the question about society as 'external' is really, in my mind, about its systematic observability. it's not that we investigate society from the outside, but to the extent that we are sociologists we are responsible for investigating our social world only in relation to what can be observed (rather than speculate on what we think people believe, or what we think "ought" to be the case).

I won't argue that this position isn't without its real difficulties, but it incorporates an idea that is common sense today but wasn't necessarily widely accepted in the late 1800s / early 1900s. Anyway, food for discussion.

- Andrew

Follow-Up on Durkheim - Two Weeks Later

This is a much-delayed reaction to our discussion of Durhkeim; my thoughts have been provoked in part also by the intervening discussion of Toennies.

I think it fair to say that social science has moved significantly beyond Durkheimian premises in respect of both his methodology and the substance of his theory of modernity. We wouldn't think to rely upon biological metaphors to the extent that he did; argue that the historical evolution of societies could be described in terms of a simple binary opposition between 'traditional' and 'modern' society; accept, without qualification, the claim that societies depend primarily upon 'solidarity' for their cohesion and continuity; and finally, construe the difference between mechanical (traditional) and organic (modern) solidarity in terms of a distinction between 'similarities' and 'differences.'

Why read Durkheim, then, if he was wrong (as I believe he was) in the essentials of his theory and method? There are two immediately obvious answers: (1) because it's important to trace his impact upon the subsequent development of sociology; or (2) because I'm wrong, and Durkheim's conceptual apparatus still retains its analytic power and can be used, with profit, to analyze current social institutions and situations (as suggested by our attempted application of the mechanical / organic solidarity distinction to the ongoing 'Guantanamo Bay' situation). I agree with (1) and I accept (2) as a very distinct possibility, although I'm just not convinced that his theory retains much explanatory power. In the end, I think it's important to read him because even though I believe him to be mistaken, I think the problems he raised are still worthy of consideration; more precisely, there's great value as an exercise to see how we can work our way out of the puzzles and conundrums that he set for himself. Durkheim thought, for instance, that an ethic of moral individualism became increasingly pervasive in modern times because (1) the advance of the division of labor creates increasing social differentiation and pervasive inequality; (2) thus creating a paradoxical need for us to see ourselves 'as equals,' each deserving of equal moral standing and worth. Some would say that this was Durkheim being a liberal apologist, and to some extent that's perhaps true. But I think the problem - the paradox - still lays claim on our intellectual imaginations, and it's still not clear how we might do better than Durkheim at unraveling it.

Ashiotani 22:13, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

Andrew's comment (please remember to sign with 4 tildas ) raises a question to me about whether we should expect complex ideas to be either right or wrong. Given a major work, are we perhaps confronted with three indeterminate realms — some things that are sound; some that may or may not be so, we can't really tell; and some that are unsound? Robbie McClintock 06:47, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

I'm sure this is the case, but this simply puts us in the position of having to adjudicate which aspects of a work warrant attention - and this question may not be the same as which aspects are sound. This doesn't mean that interpretive (and empiricist) sociologists should merely set-up Durkheim as a straw man - I think, in fact, that the search for social facts is probably a necessary consequence of the rise of the social. One shouldn't forget that the human population is estimated to have tripled in about a century's time. The technological changes that have accompanied this (exponential) demographic transformation make the search for social facts and the study of civilization as a whole an incredibly worthwhile project. And even if one finds flaws in Durkheim's particular method for so doing, one should situate one's ideas amid their background, so as to write with a sense of historical depth. Neil Eckardt 09:18, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

I agree with both Robbie's and Neil's comments, and I regret a certain predilection on my part to indulge in Durkheim-criticism. My only point is that it's important to find in each of the thinkers an animating problem or puzzle (or series of puzzles) that still excites the imagination (to repeat myself). The solution may be wrong, but what is the question? For me, and perhaps just for me, it's not Durkheim's writings on 'social facts' or 'sociological method' or even 'solidarity' that does the job, though there are other important reasons (e.g., the history of ideas, the history of education) why we should study his views on these. What I am still fascinated about is the fate and career of the 'individual' in modern society. Durkheim's contribution on this is distinctive and important - even if we need to abandon, I think, the apparatus in order to redeem the ethical and normative substance of his writings. Ashiotani 22:52, 25 September 2006 (EDT)

I'm returning to this comment for my own self-clarification, not to make any genuine follow-up points. When I use the term 'wrong' I suppose what I really mean is more or less 'sound' AND 'productive' not right or wrong in any strict sense in the manner that "2+2=5" is wrong or "murder is wrong." Even if we accept that all roads lead to Rome, there are still right or wrong ways of getting there depending on whether one wants the scenic route or fast route. For me, Durkheim feels 'wrong' today because he comes off as a one to two-year detour in my intellectual development, whereas I now feel I ignored, to my detriment, the pragmatists. This wasn't without its benefits, and there's still time to read more James, Dewey, et al., so in this case a 'wrong turn' is never really wrong, just different. However, after reading a fair measure of Andrew Abbott this semester and having fully re-entered graduate study (a world I've been absent from for ten years or so), I now think less innocently that the practice of the Academy and its intellectual and ideological divisions forces these kinds of 'routing considerations' onto the evaluation of ideas, and 'wrong turns' can have decided consequences for one's career and for institutional possibilities of developing one's work. In this regard, I suppose Durkheim is hardly the wrong rather the right person to read. Ashiotani 12:01, 14 December 2006 (EST)