EMILE DURKHEIM'S SOCIOLOGY BETWEEN UNIVERSALISM AND SOCIOLOGISM (original) (raw)
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The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method
Theory and Society, 1996
In summary, my three formulations of Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method as a manifesto have progressively found it to be epistemologically and pedagogically embedded in its object of scientific interest. In the first and most limited formulation, Durkheim's text was a violent and strategic preparation for his vision of sociology, that laid its grounds, but was ultimately inessential to sociological practice itself. It marked what he hoped was a historical rupture in western thought, after which true sociological reason could get underway. In my second formulation his text was the creation of a precise sociological object and moral reality. And while constituting sociology's first action, the manifesto could then be superseded as this morality began to sustain itself. Nevertheless, more than in the first formulation, it actively produced a new “social fact” in European culture. Finally, in the third formulation, Durkheim's manifesto is an ongoing moment of sociology itself (in the sense of a Hegelian “moment,” which is fully visible only in its first conflict-ridden appearance, but subsequently constitutes an essential part of the phenomenon's makeup). This manifesto is sociology's first clear attempt to understand representation as the fundamental element of social life. As such, sociological images and language are more than new “social facts,” they are also “collective representations” themselves, that reveal how the collective both imagines itself and interprets its own images. In this last formulation, sociology is deeply intertwined with the phenomena it seeks to explain, and becomes increasingly so as it proceeds historically. The implications of understanding sociology as a collective representation are manifold. But among the most important is that sociology develops by way of a dialectical relation to its object. Not surprisingly, a century after the appearance of Durkheim's manifesto, popular mass culture is permeated with reified sociological language, The most general of such utterances include: “society says,” “society wants,” and “society makes us.” The third of these contemporary common-sense observations picks up especially well on a central Durkheimian theme that we are both constituted (“made” human) by social forces, and necessarily constrained by them (“made” to act in particular ways). while cultural and mass-media studies have become a central interest of contemporary social theory. One could even speculate what Durkheim might say about late twentieth-century North American or European culture, and the place of sociological images therein. Would he, like one might imagine Freud, despair at the popular tropes and metaphors that he helped produce? Would he see only a monster of his own creation? Unlike Freud, who might be able to condemn popular psychoanalytic language as itself an indication of an immature culture looking for therapeutic fathers, Durkheim formulated the inevitability of the reification and deification of sociological language. For example, he explains that his own time was dominated by the language of the French Revolution: ...society also consecrates things, especially ideas. If a belief is unanimously shared by a people, then ... it is forbidden to touch it, that is to say, to deny it or to contest it. Now the prohibition of criticism is an interdiction like the others and proves the presence of something sacred. Even today, howsoever great may be the liberty which we accord to others, a man who should totally deny progress or ridicule the human ideal to which modern societies are attached, would produce the effect of a sacrilege. Durkheim, On Morality and Society, 176. He gives “Fatherland,” “Liberty,” and “Reason” as examples of the sacred language inherited from the Revolution. And although he understands that these ideas are historically contingent, he nevertheless defends their value, especially the value of “Reason.” Evidently, Durkheim is not troubled by the knowledge that thoughts are shaped by the sacred ideas of their time. Noting the popularity of his own texts in the undergraduate classroom, Durkheim might ask how they function now. He might ask how The Rules of Sociological Method is an academic collective representation. He might also ask more generally how the word “society” has come to be used as a moral reality, or a social fact. How do speakers gain a moral stronghold on conversation by invoking “society” as the overarching totem (signifying everything from tradition and order to constraint and oppression)? Durkheim would probably conclude that in its current usage “society” means many things, and perhaps is even reducible to a dada utterance. Society is the punishing god and the forgiving god; it is used to authorize the judge and justify the deviant. It is, most generally, the way our culture signals its attempt to formulate itself by way of its sacred images. And yet, to avoid concluding that sociology, as it proceeds, ultimately becomes another instance of the object it studies, one must see Durkheim as providing the opportunity within his images and tropes to make them more than religion or ideology. In other words, although social reality has traditionally been represented as the Judaeo-Christian god in western cultures, that does not mean that “Society” will in turn become the new god of the organically solidary collective. As Durkheim provided sociology with a basic manifesto orientation (in all three of my formulations of sociology as strategic, moral, and interpretive), he also provided the opportunity for sociology continually to change its object by studying it. While normally for scientists their influence on their object constitutes a disastrous error, because the data have been contaminated by the act of observation, Durkheim makes clear that sociology inevitably has this effect (indeed it has this moral obligation and responsibility). Sociology encourages a culture where the openness of human identities and practices is generally known, and where this openness does not lead to anomic despair. This was Durkheim's promise to his time - i.e., that looking at ourselves as agents of our collective condition provides an opportunity to produce sacred objects that are sacred by the very fact that they are patently produced collectively. One could, for example, make a case for “liberty, equality, fraternity” as self-consciously sacred objects which were understood by the revolutionaries as products of mass action, while still being elevated to the status of the sacred. But given the self-destructive nature of the revolution through its leaders' attempts to deify all of its aspects, their irony toward this sacredness seems lacking. A contemporary example is found perhaps in “identity politics” which in its strongest form takes democracy as the ironic and rhetorical opportunity for new gender, sexual, and racial identity constructions. See Judith P. Butler, Gender Trouble: Feminism and the Subversion of Identity (New York: Routledge, 1990). While all collectives produce representations of themselves, what is peculiar to the sociological culture is that it is supposed to be able to identify these as such - it is supposed to see its own totem building. This requires a certain ironic orientation grounded in an insight that the collective could be drastically otherwise, without provoking a crisis of meaning. In this way, sociology is a system of beliefs without being an ideology or religion. And, of course, within a sociological culture change does occur. Once these sociological tropes are established, they undergo interpretation and reinterpretation as they are disseminated, circulated, and used in popular discourse. As the dialogue between academic language and popular language continues through time, sociologists are required to imagine sociological interventions that keep these images dynamic rather than ideological. Hence, as sociology contributes to the sacred language used by opinion (or doxa), it is neither reducible to opinion, nor fully distinguishable from it. Sociology seeks to influence the way opinion recollects its basis (i.e., social life), and in so doing must change its own language to continue to induce para-doxa. It is possible therefore that the tropes and images introduced by Durkheim have served many rhetorical purposes and need to be reinterpreted by each new generation of sociologists as they consider the particular sociological “rules of method” of their own time. But what is inexhaustible about the Durkheimian legacy is his insight that sociology must look for its effects at a general discursive level, remaining cognizant that it is a part of modernity's particular collective representations. Thus formulated, the grounds of sociological thought are necessarily present even in the most specialized of contemporary research, as each topic covertly speaks about collective representational desire. Sociology also meets its own limits (even the possibility of its own death) at the very point where it becomes self-conscious as a cultural practice - i.e., its various inevitable “crises” as to its relevance point to its entanglement in the representational anxieties characteristic of modernity in general. It seems to me crucial that sociological practitioners acknowledge and orient to this condition so that sociology remains vital to itself and to the collective life it studies. Or in stronger, more polemical words: sociology is a significant cultural force to the extent that it understands itself already to be one.
Introduction: Durkheimian sociology in philosophical context
Journal of The History of The Behavioral Sciences, 1996
The history of philosophy is significant for the history of the social sciences in much the same way that it is for the history of the natural sciences. Even before Thomas Kuhn's landmark work, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1970), historians of science had come to realize that scientific theories are adjudicated against a background of metaphysical and methodological assumptions. To make sense of a scientific controversy, it is important to uncover the philosophical positions of the various parties to the debate. At the same time, the history of epistemology is more intelligible when it is placed in the context of the history of science. Philosophers no longer appear to have been engaged in abstract discussions of purely academic interest, but are understood to have been debating foundational issues in the sciences of their day. Historians have documented how sciences as diverse as astronomy, mechanics, thermodynamics, chemistry, geology, evolutionary biology, and electrodynamics have occupied the attention of philosophers at various times in history. With regard to the social sciences, history shows us that an even broader range of philosophical investigation, including ethics and political philosophy as well as metaphysics and epistemology, has been relevant to their development.
PERSPECTIVES OF EMILE DURKHEIM'S SOCIAL THEORY IN SOCIOLOGY OF EDUCATION
This research focuses on a theoretical analysis of Durkheim's theory of society in the context of the sociology of education. The purpose of this study is to demonstrate the perspective and structure of Durkheim's sociological understanding of education and its importance to the current social phenomenon of education. Through descriptive analysis and literature research, it is concluded that the dimensions of Durkheim's social theory with the paradigm of social facts can be seen in the elements that make up social cohesion or social solidarity, the division of labor in society, the new social effects, they. to generate symptoms of anomi, community development and suicide, self (scuidi), religion and morality and collective values. Durkheim recommended that social research, including educational research, be conducted according to empirical standards and focus mainly on social facts. Durkheim contributed to the development of the educational system with a sociological approach based on a functional structural approach and the theory of social facts, social solidarity and morality. Durkheim emphasizes building education based on strengthening the values of collective consciousness and equipping students with the knowledge and skills to survive.
Social Theory and Society perspective of Emile Durheim
Hasna Hanifah, 2022
This study is oriented towards Durkheim's theoretical analysis of social theories in the context of the sociology of education. This study aims to reveal the perspective and construction of Durkheim's sociological views of education and its relevance in the current social phenomena of education. With a descriptive analysis approach through literature studies, it is concluded that the dimensions of Durkheim's social theory, with the paradigm of social facts, appear in the elements forming social cohesion or social solidarity, division of labor in society, new social implications that give rise to anomie symptoms, community development and suicide (scuidi), religion and morality, and collective values. Durkheim recommends that social studies, including the study of education, be carried out according to empirical standards with a major focus on social facts. Durkheim has contributed to the construction of the education system with a sociological approach based on a functional structural approach and a theory of social facts, social solidarity, and morals. Durkheim emphasized educational buildings based on strengthening the values of collective awareness, plus providing knowledge and skills of students to survive in life.
2014
Theories of human nature underlie major positions not only in social science but also in the public sphere and its relationship to inequality. When it comes to Durkheim, his theory of human nature is often confused with his critiques of intellectual individualism and his historical argument concerning moral individualism. This paper proposes to analytically separate Durkheim’s apparently intertwined positions to show Durkheim’s concept of the ‘social individual’ as found within his theory of human nature. This is the difference between society as the object of analysis where the individual is slowly expressed historically in regard to the transition from mechanical to organic solidarity and the conception of the relation between a human being and the manner in which social solidarity is generally realized in a human being, considered philosophically. It is with this evidence, this paper will show Durkheim’s concept of the ‘social’ individual helps illuminate how social life itself i...
Rules of Sociological Method by Emile Durkheim
Free press, 1982
First published in 1895: Emile Durkheim's masterful work on the nature and scope of sociology--now with a new introduction and improved translation by leading scholar Steven Lukes.The Rules of the Sociological Method is among the most important contributions to the field of sociology, still debated among scholars today. Through letters, arguments, and commentaries on significant debates, Durkheim confronted critics, clarified his own position, and defended the objective scientific method he applied to his study of humans. This updated edition offers an introduction and extra notes as well as a new translation to improve the clarity and accessibility of this essential work. In the introduction, Steven Lukes, author of the definitive biography Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work, spells out Durkheim's intentions, shows the limits of Durkheim's view of sociology, and presents its political background and significance. Making use of the various texts in this volume and Durkheim's later work, Lukes discusses how Durkheim's methodology was modified or disregarded in practice--and how it is still relevant today. With substantial notes on context, this user-friendly edition will greatly ease the task of students and scholars working with Durkheim's method--a view that has been a focal point of sociology since its original publication. The Rules of the Sociological Method will engage a new generation of readers with Durkheim's rich contribution to the field."
Canadian Journal of Sociology, 2014
This paper critically examines and rejects arguments made by contemporary sociologists in France about the appropriateness of Durkheim's sociology in general, and his sociology of religion in particular. A century after the publication of The Elementary Forms, social scientists, especially in Europe, contend that "individualized" spiritualities are the definitive feature of contemporary forms of modern, globalised religion and infer from this empirical evidence that Durkheim's "sociologism" is outdated. However, contemporary evidence indicates that collective religious expressions are colonizing the public spaces from whence they ostensibly had been withdrawn. Individualization, per se, is not only a contested concept but also a normative discursive technique of rationalization by which the great religions and new religious movements adjust to the "individualistic" values of modernity in global settings. This paper addresses the question of whether Durkheim really was wrong about the collective, yet complex nature and future of religion.