ESO13
Sociological thought:
Block 3- EMILE DURKHEIM
Block Introduction
David Emile Durkheim was the first French academic sociologist. Emile Durkheim was born
on April 15, 1858 in Epinal, capital town of the department of Vosges, in Lorraine. France.
He formally established the academic discipline and, with Karl Marx and Max Weber, is
commonly cited as the principal architect of modern social science and father of sociology.
Durkheim was a brilliant student at the College d'Epinal and was awarded a variety of
honours and prizes.
In 1898, Durkheim founded the Année sociologique, the first social science journal in France.
Durkheim was devastated by his son's death, withdrawing into a "ferocious silence" and
forbidding friends to even mention his son's name in his presence. On November 15, 1917,
he died at the age of 59.
Durkheim authored some of the most programmatic statements on what sociology is and
how it should be practiced. His concern was to establish sociology as a science. Arguing for a
place for sociology among other sciences he wrote:
Sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and
autonomous science. —Emile Durkheim
Major works of Durkheim are:
The Division of Labour in Society [1893]: The author argued that the class conflict is not
inherent in capitalist society, as Marx contended.
The Rules of Sociological Method, [1895]: The Rules of Sociological Method remains not
only a landmark in the history of the social sciences, but also is a dependable guide for the
student and the professional sociologist.
Suicide: A Study in Sociology [1897]: Emile Durkheim's Suicide addresses the phenomenon
of suicide and its social causes.
The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life [1912]: examines religion in society in terms of
animism, naturism, totemism, myth, and ritual. Thus he takes up again the question of the
origin of religion.
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UNIT 10- SOCIOLOGY AS SCIENCE
Sociology was an emerging distinctive discipline in Durkheim’s lifetime. In 1887 the first
chair in social science was created by Durkheim by the French Government at the University
of Bordeaux.
Clearly, Durkheim considered social sciences distinct from natural sciences because social
sciences dealt with human relationships. However the study methods used in Natural
sciences could be used in social sciences as well was his belief.
The figure below demonstrates as to what Durkheim thought
about Philosophy
Philosophy
Natural Sciences
Social Sciences
Physics
Sociology
This figure suggests that Philosophy is the source of all sciences.
anomie
A state of "normlessness." Typically, the condition exists in times of rapid
social change, when existing rules, habits, and beliefs no longer hold and
alternatives have yet to arise.Durkheim coined the term to describe a type
of suicide that he associated with the loss of a particular way of life.
In his book Montesquieu & Rosseau (1892) he pointed out these aspects:
I) Science does not deal with total knowledge, but with a specified area or a subject matter.
(E.g.: not every type of question the mind formulates could be tested by thought.)
II) Science must have a definite field to explore.
(E.g.: must look things as they appear in the world.)
III) Science does not describe individuals.
(E.g.: Various Human societies could be classified)
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IV) Social sciences classify the various human societies and the normal form of social life in
these societies.
V) The principle that all the phenomena of the universe are closely interrelated has been
found to be true, thus this is valid for human societies too; because humans are part of
nature too.
VI) Though similar the social and the natural worlds, do contain a sphere of subject matter
as the physical sciences.
(He argues not to blunder with psychology and the study of society)
VII) Used methods in the natural sciences could become the valid method to understand the
laws of society too.
Sociology as a study of “Social Facts”:
The Rules of Sociological Method (French: Les Règles de la Méthode Sociologique) is a book
by Émile Durkheim, first published in 1895.
It is recognized as being the direct result of Durkheim's own project of establishing sociology
as a positivist social science.
Durkheim distinguishes sociology from other sciences and justifies his rationale.
Sociology is the science of social facts.
Social Facts= When I fulfil my obligations as sister, brother, husband, wife or
citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform duties which are defined,
externally to myself and my acts, in law and in custom. Even if they conform to
my own sentiments and I feel their reality subjectively, such reality is still
objective, for I did not create them; I merely inherited them through my
education.
While obligations, values, attitudes, and beliefs may appear to be individual, Durkheim
argues that these social facts exist at the level of society as a whole, arising from social
relationships and human association.
Durkheim suggests two central theses, without which sociology would not be
a science:
1. It must have a specific object of study. Unlike philosophy or psychology, sociology's
proper object of study are social facts.
2. It must respect and apply a recognized objective scientific method, bringing it as
close as possible to the other exact sciences. This method must at all cost
avoid prejudice and subjective judgment.
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To Durkheim society is a reality Sui generis=
that which generates itself; exists by itself; which does not depend upon some other being
for its origin or existence. It is always present and has no point of origin.
This book was one of the defining books for the new science of sociology.
Durkheim's argument that social sciences should be approached with the same rigorous
scientific method as used in natural sciences was seen as revolutionary for the time.
The main crux:
Durkheim writes: ‘Since these facts consisted of actions, thoughts, and
feelings, they could not be confused with biological phenomena; but neither
were they the province of psychology, for they existed outside the
individual conscience’.
Durkheim's concern is to establish sociology as a science. Argue for a place for sociology
among other sciences he wrote:
“Sociology is, then, not an auxiliary of any other science; it is itself a distinct and
autonomous science”.
With regards to social facts, Durkheim defined them as follows:
“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the
individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general
throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right
independent of its individual manifestations”.
They not only represent behaviour but also the rules that govern behaviour and give it
meaning.
Social facts are external to individuals, they predate them and survive them (we can give
here the examples of the law, language, morality, etc.).
Social facts can be constraining: if individuals do not do act as they dictate, they may face
social penalties.
The binding nature of social facts is often implicit, because the rules of society are
internalized by individuals in the process of education and socialization.
Durkheim distinguished two types of social facts:
Normal social facts - which, within a society, occur regularly and most often –
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Pathological social facts - which are much less common.
Thus the main Characteristics of social facts are:
i.
Externality= social facts exist outside individual consciences. Thus their
existence is external to the individuals.
E.g.: Laws and customs that that have contractual or civic obligation are defined
externally to individuals.
ii.
Constraint= social fact is recognised because it forces itself in the individual.
iii.
E.g.: institutions of law, beliefs that are already commanding.
Independence= collective feelings, practices and beliefs done and felt in
society.
iv.
Generality= It represents a collective content of social group of society.
Therefore according to Durkheim social facts can be recognised because they
are external to the individuals on the one hand, and are capable of exercising
coercion over them on the other.
Since they are external they are also general and because they are collective,
they can be imposed on the individuals who form a given society.
The sociological Method:
Having defined the subject matter of sociology. Durkheim describes the way to study the
sociological method.
I. The rules for the observation of social facts
First rule given by Durkheim is; ‘consider social facts as things’; but as ‘things’ and they have
to be studied by the empirical method and not direct intuition; nor should they be modified
by a simple effort of the will.
Therefore, three additional rules for the observation of social facts necessarily follow.
i.
The first, implied in much of the discussion above, is that one must
systematically discard all preconceptions.
Arguing that the sociologist must deny himself the use of those concepts formed outside of
science and for extra-scientific needs:
"He must free himself from those fallacious notions which hold sway over the
mind of the ordinary person, shaking off, once and for all the yoke of those
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empirical categories that long habit often makes tyrannical." (Means to adopt
neutral attitude towards what they set to investigate)
ii.
Second, the subject matter of research must only include a group of phenomena
defined beforehand by certain common external characteristics, and all
phenomena which correspond to this definition must be so included.
E.g.: In division of Labour the type of solidarity in a society can be perceived by looking at
the type of law, which is dominant in society.
Every scientific investigation, Durkheim insisted, it must refer not to some ideal conception
of these phenomena, but to those properties which are both inherent in the phenomena
themselves and externally visible at the earliest stages of the investigation.
For example
When crime is defined by punishment, it is not that crime is derived
from punishment?
First, the function of the definition is neither to explain the phenomenon in question nor to
express its essence; rather, it is to establish contact with things, which can only be done
through externalities.
It is not punishment that causes crime, but it is through punishment that crime is
revealed to us,
thus punishment must be the starting point of our investigation.
Second, the constant conjunction of crime and punishment suggests that there is an
indissoluble link between the latter and the essential nature of the former, so that, however
"superficial," punishment is a good place to start the investigation.
iii.
Finally, when the sociologist undertakes to investigate any order of social facts,
he must strive to consider them from a viewpoint where they present
themselves in isolation from their individual manifestations.
(The objectivity of social facts depends on their being separated from individual facts.
Social facts provide a common standard for members of the society. Social facts exist in
the form of legal rules, moral regulations, proverbs, social conventions etc.)
Science must create its concepts anew on the basis of systematically observable data.
Social facts are seen in “currents of opinion”, which vary according to time and place, impel
certain groups either to more marriage, for example, or to more suicides, or to a higher or
lower birth rate etc. these currents are plainly social facts. At the first sight they seem
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inseparable fro the forms they take in individual cases. But statistics furnish us with the
means of isolating them. They are, in fact, represented with considerable exactness by the
rates of births, marriages and suicides…” (Durkheim 1950:7).
ii. Rules for distinguishing between the Normal and the Pathological
Durkheim makes a distinction between ‘normal’ and ‘pathological’ social facts.
Durkheim felt that social facts exhibit both normal and pathological forms; and he added
that it was an important part of sociological method to provide rules for distinguishing
between them.
As an illustration he cites the case of crime, which is considered pathological.
Though crime could be termed immoral from a scientific point of view it would be
incorrect to call it abnormal.
Crime is present not only in the majority of societies of one particular species but in all
societies of all types. It has everywhere increased.
In the first place crime is normal because a society exempt from it is utterly impossible.
Crime, we have shown elsewhere, consists of an act that offends certain very strong
collective sentiments
Thus, the fact that crime is a phenomenon of normal sociology, it does not follow that the
criminal is an individual normally constituted from the biological and psychological points of
view. The two questions are independent of each other.
He considered crime and punishment as normal. When the rate of crime exceeds what is
more or less constant for a give social type, then it becomes an abnormal or pathological
fact.
iii. Rules for the Classification of Social Types:
classification of societies into types is an important step towards explanation as problems
and their explanations will differ for each type.
Durkheim uses the term ‘social morphology’ for the classification of social types.
E.g.: Bachelors and married persons are two types and Durkheim was able to
show that suicide rates are found more among the ‘bachelors’.
Thus each particular society must be studied completely and the compared with the
similarities and differences.
iv.
Rules for the Explanation of social facts:
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There are two approaches, which may be used in the explanation of social facts- the
Casual and the Functional.
Social= is concerned with the explanation of ‘why’ the social phenomenon in question
exists.
Functional= involves establishing the ‘correspondence between the fact under
consideration and the general needs of the social organism, and what this
correspondence consists’.
And although cause and function have a separate character, this does not prevent a
reciprocal relation between the two and one can star either way.
(Example= ‘Punishment’>>> crime offends collective sentiments in a society, while the
function of punishment is to maintain these sentiments at the same degree of intensity.
We may formulate the three following rules:
1. A social fact is normal, in relation to a given social type at a given phase of its
development, when it is present in the average society of that species at the
corresponding phase of its evolution.
(In your book= Why)
2. One can verify the results of the preceding method by showing that the generality of
the phenomenon is bound up with the general conditions of collective life of the
social type considered.
(In your book= How)
3. This verification is necessary when the fact in question occurs in a social species
which has not yet reached the full course of its evolution.
(In your book= comparison)
The Comparative Method
Durkheim used comparative method to explain how one set of social facts explains the
others.
Comparisons in Daily lives
in our daily course of life we come across several situations where the need arises to choose
an alternative.
Example: B, C, D could be alternatives to A.
Thus comparisons help us to take appropriate decisions in daily life, where alternatives are
available.
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Example: T shirts
we do not compare cotton with silk or wool.
While comparing these need to be considered:
Firstly, alternatives need to be available for comparison.
Secondly, comparative things should belong to the same category or class of objects.
Thirdly, there should be some difference in the objects.
Lastly, there should be valid reason for comparison. (One should not compare a t shirt=Rs
250 with one that costs 7000 Rs).
Types of comparisons attempted by Durkheim
Durkheim wants you to understand that comparisons can be made of variations of a
phenomenon in different:
I)
II)
III)
Parts of society
Various societies at a time
Societies at different times in correspondence to their levels of development.
1. Comparison within Parts of Society:
In his study Suicide (1897), Durkheim used and demonstrated this comparison within
parts of the French society.
2. Comparisons among different societies at a point of Time:
Durkheim took the case of Germany as a Protestant country and of Spain as a Catholic
country. He found that suicide rates were higher in Germany than in Spain. Thus, came
to the conclusion that Protestants commit more Suicide than Catholics.
In this kind of comparison Durkheim studied two phenomena:
a. Suicide
b. Religious
Such that any variations and changes in the first are accompanied by changes in the
second.
This is called ‘concomitant variation’= variation or change occurring together.
Thus it is clear that comparative method ties to find:
a. The variations in a phenomenon
b. The occurrence of variations along with those under examination.
3. Comparisons over a period of time:
Durkheim’s view is that different societies may not be at the same level of development
at one point of time.
Indirect Experiment: Durkheim calls the use of comparative method and indirect
experiment. Even a single case experiment is possible according to Durkheim and he did
study the Australian tribes to trace the essential characteristics of religion in their existing
practices.
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Thus, we must understand that Durkheim developed these ideas in his Book ‘The Rules of
Sociological Method (1895), practised them in the study of Suicide (1897) and these were
mentioned in another book ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1911).
Simply said, if significant results are found in any study and provides us with a scientific
method followed in obtaining such results; then such method/s could be later used for
other studies.
Collective Representations
Durkheim believed that scientific understanding of all social phenomena must emerge for
the collective nature of a social group, community or society.
 He believed that society has a nature, peculiar to itself and the compulsion of
collective existence is such that individuals must forget their particular interests.
 Durkheim explained that society exercises the moral authority over individuals.
 Thus everything that is good for the society is something that is
‘Sacred’.
(‘Sacred’= those elements of a social system which relate to religion or are set
apart for the worship of a deity.)
E.g.: Religious rituals, flags etc. (Ganga Jal)
 Apart those that are sacred there are things that are ‘Profane’.
(‘Profane’=which are not connected with religion or religious purposes.)
E.g.: Things that one needs to keep distance from sometimes. (Tap
Water).
Collective Conscience
Collective conscience is important in Durkheim’s view.
 He describes “the body of beliefs and sentiments common to the average of the
members of a society”= collective conscience.
 It is spread all over the whole of the territory of society and though
people come in and out of society the collective conscience remains.
Though collective conscience can only be realised by the individual, it has a form
far beyond a particular person and thus operates at a level higher than her/him.
 Collective conscience varies from one society to another.
 In primitive societies collective conscience is stronger and greater. (E.g.:
social controls and prohibitions are imposed upon individual members I the
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strongest fashion and the people abide to a large extent too.)
Thus in primitive societies collective conscience is strongest and
all embracing; where the society demonstrate more ‘Solidarity’.
Thus, Durkheim argues that more the beliefs and sanctions are
present in society, the less are the chances of freedom of an
individual.
Durkheim views that the strength of social bonds is the feature of mechanical
solidarity and primarily functions under three principles:
1. Relation between the volume of collective conscience and individuals conscience.
2. Average intensity of the stages of collective conscience.
3. The greater or lesser firmness of all those stages.
Thus, Durkheim’s belief is that mechanical solidarity is based on resemblances of individuals
and in the due course of evolution from primitive societies the ‘Clans’ did not shed the
solidarity but instead held the common ‘custom’ or ‘beliefs’.
Thus collective authority (Penal or repressive laws) becomes a common mode
of totality in society.
Collective Representations:
There is a difference in the way an object is perceived.
Example: A doctor would understand fever to be something above 99 degrees or a scientist
would understand that water is represented as H2O or a piece of stone may be represented
as ‘Shiva’.
 So, Durkheim believes that collective representations are states of the collective
conscience that are different from the perception of individual conscience.
 And collective representations are socially generated and usually refer to in a sense
to the society itself.
 Concepts are the work of community they spring for the association of a groups or
some collectivity. (E.g.: Language).
 Durkheim believed that the religious representations must be seen as
work of the nature of collective conscience and out of the commonest of
things, collective representations can make a most powerful sacred
object. (E.g.: Idols of worship).
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 In the religious collective representations like within a clan an attitude
and respect would develop in what Durkheim calls ‘Totemism’.
(‘Totemism’= the practice of symbolically identifying humans with non
human objects (usually animals or plants).
Organic Solidarity:
 Durkheim believed that division of labour is an essential condition of organic
solidarity. Thus he express that society is an arrangement of different and
specific functions which are linked mutually by social bonds.
 Hence, the differences among individuals are visible only if they do not confine
themselves within their specific field of activities or area only.
 Organises social structure is characterised by the system of different organs and
each has a specific role and these organs are formed by different components
which re coordinated and subordinated to one another around a single central
organ.
 As the numerical strength increases the process of fusion of the
segments leads to the fusion of markets, which crystallises a single
market (E.g.: city).
Thus, Durkheim has elaborated on the features of collective conscience in the
system of beliefs and in more advanced societies the supreme values not
only bring dignity to an individual but also equality of opportunity.
Thank you,
Notes Compiled by Suman Pudasaini
ESO- Counselor,
IGNOU- PI-9602- ICA, study center,
Gyaneshwor, Kathmandu
Nepal.
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