por Emile Durkheim He was a French sociologist and philosopher born in 1858, who is considered one of the fathers of sociology. Among other aspects, his work allowed social science to begin to be distinguished from psychology and political philosophy, as well as the promotion of epistemological realism and the hypothetical-deductive method.
His best-known works include his monograph suicidepublished in 1897, which pioneered social research as well as The rules of the sociological method (1895), in which he explained how to approach the social facts of a scientific and systematic signature.
This author dedicated a good part of his career to discovering, describing and explaining the structural social events that take place inside institutions. According to his postulates, sociology should study these social phenomena holistically, that is, from an integral point of view and taking into account what affects the whole of society.
In addition to his work as a sociological researcher, Durkheim distinguished himself by making sociology an academic discipline. He was the creator of the first sociology department at the University of Bordeaux and, in 1896, he founded the first journal dedicated to this subject, L’Année Sociologique.
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Biography
early years
Émile Durkheim was born on April 15, 1858 in Épinal, France. Despite the fact that his father was a rabbi, in his childhood he went through a secularization process that made him abandon Judaism.
The young Émile spent his youth in a very turbulent and changing historical context. During this period, his country experienced great industrial and economic expansion, but was defeated in the Franco-Prussian War. During that conflict, in 1870, Durkheim’s hometown was occupied by the Prussians.
His good academic results allowed him to enter the Ecole Normale Superieure in Paris in 1879, where he graduated in philosophy three years later. With his degree, Durkheim began teaching classes in various French cities.
In 1885, the sociologist moved to Germany, where he came into contact with the methods of experimental psychology developed by Wilhelm Wundt.
Career path
During his stay in Germany, Durkheim sent several articles on philosophy and positive sciences to French magazines. These publications were essential for him to receive an offer in 1887 to work as a professor of social sciences and pedagogy at the University of Bordeaux.
At that time, Durkheim had begun to be interested in the field of sociology, a then emerging discipline after the first positivist formulation made by Auguste Comte.
Durkheim’s first major contribution was his doctoral thesis: On the division of social labor (1893). Two years later, he published one of his most important works, The rules of the sociological method. In 1896, his courses in sociology gave him the first chair in that discipline in France.
His next professional destination was the University of Paris, where he worked as a professor of Educational Sciences from 1902 until his death.
Death
The death of his son in World War I caused Durkheim to sink into a state of depression. Disappointed and inconsolable, he died at Fontainebleau on November 15, 1917.
Durkheim’s main theories
Before Durkheim began to work on the subject, sociology theorists did not consider it an autonomous discipline, but approached it through organic or psychological approaches.
Durkheim changed this perspective and affirmed that there were specifically social phenomena and that sociology should be considered as the science that studies them.
For Durkheim, social facts were defined as «ways of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, and which possess a coercive power by virtue of which they are imposed on him».
These social facts, according to his theory, are present from before the birth of an individual in any society and, therefore, are external to his person. It is also a question of collective facts as they are part of the social culture and coercive because individuals are educated according to the norms and rules of said society.
The French sociologist also affirmed that society exists both outside and within the individual, since the latter internalizes and adopts its values and morals. For this reason, the primary unit of study in sociology should be society as a whole and not its individual components.
Division of labour
In several of his works, such as education and sociology and The Division of Labour in SocietyDurkheim affirmed that solidarity is the main element to maintain cohesion within modern societies.
For this author there are two types of solidarity: the organic, which appears in the family, among friends or in rural communities, and the mechanical, which develops in industrial societies due to the division of labor in companies. In the latter, the sense of belonging is less than in small groups.
For this reason, the author pointed out that the industrial society needed to implement a new educational system. On the one hand, children had to receive initial education within the family, while global norms and values had to be taught in schools.
The sociologist considered that solidarity is a moral fact, which cannot have an external existence. In order to implement it, therefore, the law and the law are necessary.
Another important concept in Durkheim’s work is that of anomie, a term that he defines as the absence of social solidarity due to the lack of regulation caused by permanent modernization. The sociologist includes the social contract, defended by some enlightened philosophers, within these anomie factors, since it does not guarantee order.
social science method
Durkheim proposed the use of the positivist method in his work The rules of the sociological method (1895). The author intended to study society as a «thing» and verify his hypotheses through reality.
Two of the tools proposed by Durkheim were statistics and logical reasoning. With them he intended to create a method based on direct observation of the facts and on their verification range.
By proposing to study social facts as «things», the sociologist equated them to those phenomena that can be observed and contrasted through the use of the scientific method. Durkheim established four steps to do so:
Appearance: they are previous conceptions or a priori judgments and are carried out with the bibliographic analysis.
Depth: it is discovered by the essence and nature of the social organization.
Nature of the event: it is analyzed whether the event falls within the normal range or if it is pathological in nature.
Analysis: with all the data collected, a detailed investigation is carried out and, later, the results are interpreted.
functionalism
The functionalist theory proposed by Durkheim focused its attention on the regularities, functioning and norms of society. In it, the sociologist made reference to the use of the function, defined as the external manifestation of an object within a determined system of relationships.
The function, as Durkheim presented it, is a concept that expresses the relationships between the elements of a set and demonstrates their interdependence.
With this sociological theory, Durkheim sought to explain social phenomena through the function performed by social institutions. Thus, he considered social changes that sought harmony functional, while if the balance was broken, those changes should be considered dysfunctional.
suicide
One of Durkheim’s most recognized works was Suicide: A Sociology Studypublished in 1897.
The author studied the annual suicide rate in various countries over a given period of time and found that it often remains little changed over long periods. Similarly, he found that this rate did vary depending on the country or community. As an example, he found that there were fewer suicides in Catholic societies than Protestant ones.
With these data, the author came to the conclusion that suicide also had social causes and not only individual and psychological ones. Durkheim recorded four different types of suicide:
Selfish suicide: occurs when the suicide does not have strong social ties. This lack of integration into society leaves the suicide bomber free to commit the act of taking his own life.
Altruistic suicide: the cause would be a very low importance of individuality. Durkheim related as an example the case of some primitive peoples who forced the oldest to commit suicide when they could no longer fend for themselves.
Anomic suicide: occurs when societies are in a situation of disintegration or anomie.
Fatalistic suicide: it is committed in societies with rules that are too strict and oppressive for individuals.
The state
Durkheim defined the State by the functions that it fulfills. These functions must have limits, since they have to be kept away from the control of social ties and the collective conscience.
The State itself, for this author, is a type of collective conscience, but not the only one. It is an organ of social thought that should be dedicated to developing certain social representations intended to direct collective behavior.
On the other hand, this author stated that conflicts were anomalies in the advance towards progress and order, two of the central ideas in the societies of his time.
Other Durkheim contributions
Despite not having left any purely anthropological work, Émile Durkheim made some very valuable contributions to this discipline. Furthermore, he introduced the scientific method into social analysis and created the concept of sociological fact.
religious phenomenon
The French sociologist also referred to the religious phenomenon, specifically in his work The elemental forms of the religious life (1912). This work was based on various anthropological observations on the aborigines of Australia and America.
Durkheim developed a theory based on the collected data. According to this, religion should be taken as a social phenomenon, although at the same time it is the product of collective thought.
The author interpreted religion as a symbol of society itself. Thus, in the fear that man feels towards the sacred, society’s dependence on him is symbolically expressed. The very concept of god, according to Durkheim, would be a form of worship to society.
As is the case with culture and society itself, religion is an element of control over the individual’s conscience and, therefore, a very valuable instrument for social cohesion.
pioneer of sociology
In addition to all his theoretical work, Durkheim’s consideration as one of the fathers of sociology is also due to his academic work. The Frenchman was the founder of the first sociology department at the…