\n\n<\/span>Emile Durkheim<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n<\/span>Emile Durkheim \u2013 Division of labour, social fact, suicide, religion and society<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\n![\"Emile](\"https:\/\/triumphias.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/05\/Fotos-Emile-Durkheim-150x150.webp\") Durkheim was born in Epinal, France. He came from a long line of devout French Jews; his father, grandfather, and great-grandfather had all been rabbis. He began his education in a rabbinical school, but at an early age, decided not to follow in his family\u2019s footsteps and switched schools, realizing that he preferred to study religion from an agnostic standpoint as opposed to being indoctrinated. Durkheim entered the \u00c9cole Normale Sup\u00e9rieure (ENS) in 1879.<\/span><\/p>\nDurkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career, which meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and eventually, sociology. He graduated with a degree in philosophy in 1882. Durkheim\u2019s views could not get him a major academic appointment in Paris, so from 1882 to 1887 he taught philosophy at several provincial schools. In 1885 he left for Germany, where he studied sociology for two years. Durkheim\u2019s period in Germany resulted in the publication of numerous articles on German social science and philosophy, which gained recognition in France, earning him a teaching appointment at the University of Bordeaux in 1887. This was an important sign of the change of times, and the growing importance and recognition of the social sciences. From this position, Durkheim helped reform the French school system and introduced the study of social science in its curriculum. Also in 1887, Durkheim married Louise Dreyfus, with whom he later had two children.<\/span><\/p>\nIn 1893, Durkheim published his first major work, The Division of Labor in Society, in which he introduced the concept of \u201canomie\u201d,\u00a0<\/strong>or the breakdown of the influence of social norms on individuals within a society. In 1895, he published The Rules of Sociological Method, his second major work, which was a manifesto stating what sociology is and how it ought to be done.\u00a0In 1897, he published his third major work, Suicide:\u00a0<\/strong>A Study in Sociology, a case study exploring the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics and arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates.<\/span><\/p>\nBy 1902, Durkheim had finally achieved his goal of attaining a prominent position in Paris when he became the chair of education at the Sorbonne.\u00a0<\/strong>Durkheim also served as an advisor to the Ministry of Education. In 1912, he published his last major work, The Elementary Forms of The Religious Life, a book that analyzes religion as a social phenomenon.<\/span><\/p>\nInfluence of predecessors on Emile Durkheim:<\/strong><\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n\n- The father of sociology Auguste Comte,<\/strong>\u00a0wanted to develop sociology as positive sciences so that social faith could be directly observe and proper solution could be given to related problems. Durkheim was highly influenced by his view point the corroboration of which we find in his statement \u201cconsider \u2018social facts as things\u201d.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Utilitarian positivists:<\/strong><\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>They are basically economist and for them the social system or society is made up of human beings and everyone has a special quality in oneself and those qualities are useful for the system that is with the help of their utility, social system as properly governed. In this way the focal point of study for utilitarian positivist is an individual.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Durkheim while rejecting this aspect accepted the positive aspect and in this way propounded his self structured positivism. In which he turned down their thinking that individual is important for society. According to Durkheim individual is nothing in himself and society is everything. Thus society is not made up of individuals but rather the existence of individual is very much attached into the existence of society. This is why Durkheim focal point of study is society or social fact with which the collective conscious is attached.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Nature And Scope Of Sociology According To Durkheim:<\/span><\/h3>\nDurkheim was explicitly concerned with outlining the nature and scope of Sociology. Durkheim considered social sciences to be distinct from natural sciences because social sciences deal with human relationship. However the method used in the natural sciences could be used in the social sciences as well.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nHe was concerned with examining the nature of Sociology as a social science distinct from Philosophy. Philosophy is concerned with ideas and conceptions whereas science is concerned with objective realities. Philosophy is the source from where all science has emerged. Durkheim advocated for positivist method to study social phenomena.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\nDurkheim laid down the general conditions for the establishment of a social science which also applies to Sociology:<\/span><\/h5>\n\n- Science deals with a specified area or a subject matter of its own, not with total knowledge<\/strong>. He pointed out Science is not concerned with total human knowledge or thought. Not every type of question the mind can formulate can be tested by science. It is possible for something to be the object of the philosopher or artist and not necessarily stuff of science at all.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Science must have a definite field to explore.<\/strong>\u00a0<\/strong>Science is concerned with things, objective realities. For social science to exist it must have a\u00a0definite subject matter.<\/strong>\u00a0Philosophers, Durkheim points out, have been aware of \u2018things\u2019 called laws, traditions, religion and so on, but the reality of these was in a large measure dissolved by their instance on dealing with these as manifestations of human will.\u00a0Inquiry was thus concentrated on the internal will rather than upon external bodies of data.<\/strong>\u00a0So\u00a0it is important to look to things as they appear in this world.<\/strong><\/span><\/li>\n
- Science does not describe individuals but \u2018types or classes of subject matter\u2019.<\/strong>\u00a0If human societies classified then they help us in arriving at general rules and discover regularities of behaviour. Social science which classifies the various human societies, describes the\u00a0normal form of social life in each type of society\u2019, for the simple reason that it describes the type itself;\u00a0<\/strong>whatever pertains to the type is normal and whatever is normal is healthy.<\/span><\/li>\n
- The subject matter of a science yields \u2018general principles\u2019 or \u2018laws\u2019.<\/strong>\u00a0If societies were not subject to regularities, no social science would be possible. Durkheim further points out that since the principle that all the phenomena of the universe are closely interrelated has been found to be true in the other domains of nature, it is also valid for human societies which are a part of nature. In putting forth the idea that there is a\u00a0\u2018continuity of the natural and social worlds\u2019,\u00a0<\/strong>Durkheim has been strongly influenced by Comte.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
<\/span>Durkheim and positivism:<\/span><\/span><\/h2>\nDurkheim argued for his own methods on the grounds that they were essential to the development of a \u2018positive science\u2019, i.e. an approach seeking to find law-like relations among phenomena and modelled on the physical sciences. In this respect, Durkheim was an inheritor of the legacy of his French predecessor Auguste Comte (1798\u20131857), a founder both of positivism and of sociology in the mid-nineteenth century.<\/span><\/p>\nIn Suicide, Durkheim subjected official figures on suicide to statistical analysis, indicating how sociology might be taken in a quantitative direction. For a time in the 1950s and early 1960s this approach had ensured Durkheim much attention from methodologically minded social scientists. The idea that sociology could and should be a science was very strong; so was the notion that science required the discipline to be quantitative. However, with the interpretative turn, which began in the mid-1960s, talk about sociology as a positive science and about quantification became hallmarks of the positivist outlook, by then anathema to many in sociology. Indeed, Durkheim came to emblematise all that was politically and epistemologically unacceptable in sociology.<\/span><\/p>\nAgainst individualism<\/span><\/h5>\nIn line with our earlier consideration of the theme of humanism in Marx,\u00a0we begin with Durkheim predominantly as a critic of individualism.<\/strong>\u00a0His critique has two main strands:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- It is a fundamental misconception to suppose that society is (only) an aggregate of individuals, i.e. he opposed the view that the properties of society are merely the properties of individuals writ large.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Individuals cannot pre-exist society, i.e. individualism as a doctrine is only conceivable in a certain kind of society; individuals, as represented by this idea of individualism, are only possible in this kind of society.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Durkheim\u2019s major target, then, is the idea, the doctrine, of \u2018individualism\u2019, which he seeks to expose as an ideology, to use a Marxist term.<\/span><\/p>\nIndividualism<\/span><\/h5>\n\n- In Durkheim\u2019s sense, individualism prizes unconditionally the distinctness and independence of individual human beings, who are to be treated as inviolable in their freedom and autonomy. The idea that individuals should be subordinate to any collective authority is to be borne, if at all, only in the most limited and necessary circumstances.<\/span><\/li>\n
- The doctrine of individualism is in many respects a political doctrine\u2014its classical statements remain the political theories of Thomas Hobbes and John Locke\u2014about the relationship of the individual to the rest of society and, in particular, to the putative representative of that society, the state. However, individualism also has a potentially scientific, methodological aspect to it in suggesting that the constituents of social reality are only and exclusively individual human beings.<\/span><\/li>\n
- According to this view, \u2018society\u2019 is merely a name for the other individuals in relationship with whom a given individual co-exists. The only way to understand society, then, is to understand the general nature of all those individuals as an aggregate. To take a simple example of the kind Marx railed against, the competitive nature of capitalist society is understood as a result of the natural competitiveness and acquisitiveness of human beings generally. Indeed, individualism often conceives of human nature as essentially anti-social, for the individual is conceived of as being motivated only by self- interest. In a picture explicitly painted in Hobbes\u2019s Leviathan, individuals lack all concern for others; they exist in society most reluctantly, conceding to the collective some of their freedoms and rights only for the sake of the benefits to be derived. Durkheim maintained that such conceptions were quite false: to attempt to apply them was entirely the wrong method for a genuine science of society. Nevertheless, Durkheim was unswervingly confident that society could be studied scientifically.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
How is a science of society possible?<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n\n- Durkheim assumed that for there to be a science it has to have a subject matter. On the face of it, the appropriate science of society is psychology, the science of the individual mind. After all, if we can understand the mind, we shall understand why individuals behave as they do, and will have no need of an additional science, sociology. Durkheim was eager to dismiss this assumption, but was aware, also, that it has a natural appeal; individual human creatures are tangible, we can encounter and observe them in the flesh, whereas society seems to be no more than an abstraction from their behaviour. We do not meet society in the street, exchange words with it, and watch it going about its activities. Surely individuals are real but society is not. However intuitively true this view may seem, Durkheim insists it is false. True, society is not directly observable, perhaps, but it is observable in its effects. It does exist; it may not be detected by the conscious awareness of those individuals, yet it causally affects their actions.<\/span><\/li>\n
- In this way Durkheim argues that sociology can be a science that treats of a genuine subject matter because society exists as an authentic natural reality. It is as much a reality as physical nature, though different in character. Early on, in the way he set out in The Rules of Sociological Method (1966), he tried to present the lineaments of his general strategy. There he argued that the way to establish, in principle, the reality of society was to reveal the criteria that define something as a reality. They are general criteria, which include physical reality as a special case.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Criteria for reality<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\nTo say something is a reality is to say two main things:<\/span><\/p>\n\n- It is external, i.e. exists outside our individual consciousness.<\/span><\/li>\n
- It is constraining, i.e. its existence sets limits to our actions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
For example, a brick wall is patently a reality because it exists in the world out there and it resists our<\/span>
\nactions if we try to walk through it. If these are the criteria of facts, i.e. of real things, then Durkheim says<\/span>
\nthat society satisfies them.<\/span><\/p>\nHow can this assertion be justified?<\/mark><\/strong><\/span><\/h6>\n\n- It cannot sensibly be disputed, of course, that the patterns of life in our society are not simply individual inventions. The law is not something that I or any other individual has invented. The law has been developed collectively, built up over a long time by many individuals. It now confronts me as a thing that exists in the world, whether I will it to do so or not. One test for reality is satisfied; such social facts are external.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Further, if I try to act in the world, the law may offer me resistance. I cannot simply do anything that I want to do. Yet the law is not necessarily constraining from a subjective point of view, even though objectively this is the case. For many of my actions, I take account of the law in a way which affects those actions, but I do not perhaps experience it as resistance to my individual will. I have simply become accustomed to doing things in ways which comply with the law. For example, when I decide to get some cash, I go into the bank, present a cheque and am given the cash in return.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Consequently, it may seem that I freely do what I want. However, I am doing it in conformity with the law, the way I have to do it if I want my actions to be unimpeded. Suppose I decide to do otherwise, by entering the bank armed with a pistol. In that case I will meet resistance, people will try to refuse to give me the money; they will try to capture me and, eventually, to incarcerate me in prison. The law exists, then, as something which, in designing my actions, I must take into account as a real consideration, just as much as I take into account the brick wall adjoining the door which I use to pass through to the next room. Consequently, the second test of a social fact is demonstrated, i.e. it constrains actions.<\/span><\/li>\n<\/ol>\n
Social unity<\/mark><\/strong>:<\/span><\/h6>\nIf a society is to be said to exist, then it must satisfy certain conditions for unity (otherwise, as a matter of simple tautology, it would not exist, and we could not say that it did).<\/span><\/p>\nDurkheim\u2019s functionalism originates in the notion that for a society to exist it must be ordered in such a way as to meet these conditions. If a society exists, and is bounded?<\/mark>,<\/mark><\/strong>\u00a0<\/mark>in what way is it bounded? It must have an inside and an outside, but what does the line between the two differentiate? A tempting idea might be geography, for, of course, societies are often identified with territories. In Durkheim\u2019s view this cannot be an answer, not least because of the methodological rule, which he has laid down, that a social fact cannot be explained by any other kind of fact, physical, biological, geographical, climatological or psychological, but only by other social facts. The boundary that demarcates a society must be social: it must relate to membership, which includes or excludes people. For example, French persons visiting England do not, thereby, become part of English society, although they are present on English territory, since they do not have the relevant membership. Further, the boundary is moral in nature. The line of demarcation runs between acceptable and unacceptable conduct; those who transgress basic rules\u2014criminals, the mentally ill\u2014are outside the society. That the very existence of society presupposes such a demarcation, Durkheim illustrates with an ingenious account of the nature of crime.
\n<\/span><\/p>\nThe foundations of society<\/mark><\/strong>:<\/span><\/h6>\n\n- Durkheim\u2019s rejection of individualism\u00a0<\/strong>takes the form of a thoroughgoing critique of the utilitarian school of thought. Some thinkers have argued that individuals make up the ways and practices of society on the basis of their practical usefulness to them. For example, Thomas Hobbes (1588\u20131679) offers the picture of individuals setting up a sovereign authority as a means of regulating their relationship between themselves and restricting the mutually destructive tendencies that unregulated competition would produce.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Herbert Spencer (1820\u20131903)<\/strong>\u00a0had the idea that society consists of individuals, who devise contractual relationships as a way of facilitating their transactions with one another. This explanation does not work. It is an illusion that a contract is created purely by the individuals who are party to it. Certainly, individual parties do make up any one specific contract, but these parties expect this particular contract to be like all contracts in general, i.e. to be created within a pre-established moral framework. After all, if contracts were merely a matter of individual-to individual agreement, then what would be the point of creating them? If individuals did not trust one another to do as they say, then there would be no point in attempting to improve one\u2019s position towards the other by getting him or her to make an explicit, formal agreement obliging the required actions. If one\u2019s word were not to be trusted, then why would a mere signature on an agreement be any more reliable? The value of a contract resides in its being made against the background of institutional arrangements. It does not simply bind the actual parties, but also involves obligations on others who are not party to the contractual agreement. The forces of law and order will support the claims of someone who has made a contract if that contract is validly made. Furthermore, society lays down what a contract can validly be; it is defined in terms of understandings in the society at large so that, for example, in our society one cannot make a contract to sell oneself into slavery.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Non-contractual elements in contract A framework of moral understandings and of social arrangements of enforcement is presupposed in the making of a contract. The parties to the contract do not establish this framework, but it is necessary if their action of making a contract is to have any sense.<\/span><\/li>\n
- Consequently, the idea of society being founded in some sort of contractual arrangement between individuals\u2014invoked by Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712\u201378) as well as Hobbes and Spencer\u2014is a non-starter. Hence Durkheim\u2019s argument about non-contractual elements in contract opposes the idea that the actions of individuals can antedate the existence of society, since the capacity to perform actions, and not just those of contract- making, extensively presupposes the existence of a social framework, i.e. shared rules and forms of social organisation.<\/span><\/li>\n
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