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    Durkheim Por Steven Lukes

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    Jerre Luna

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    © All Rights Reserved
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    4A. LUKES HAS WRITTEN THE BEST EXPOSITION OF DURKHEIMIN ANY LANGUAGE’ f DONALD MACRAE INTHE MAN OK ID TO BECOME THE DEFINITIVE COMMENT ON DURKHEIM’ FREY HAWTHORNE IN NEW S coo Peon Anthropology ray ce Trent) ae reer gun Bola Harmancwot tl, aged egua Bnk d fansNw e, Newae ce, USAe Panel Soe Aun Li Ringed, View, anal ean al Cana so ah Sey Maka Ost Coed 9 86 "Roi ost O02) bet Was Rnd cand tS Zand Fin alien Ge ena by Ala ase 973 "Bipinde United Stee ei Stuer & ow, tien ney 178 ted ie Regie Boos a he Unled Sat ef ee by anges n finper Row, Peli ne ‘eine 97 * capi Sere aks 7p “aes mee POR J, WHOSE Made to pi in Get Bei ‘Hoswanan Vie id Ny nde pnb Ud Ste of Ane, AA tea caf jen ean sti al aby wy oft oer, ety seve uo tee ced ‘honey pr omen ny om of ‘ina er oe te han at aw bled nd wiboute dren ‘aden sno tig ion cae equ pon Preface List of Abbreviations Introduction Concepts Dicbotomies Arguments Daskheim’s Style PART ONE: YOUTH! 1858-87 1, Childhood 2, The Ecole Normale Supérieure Renowvier and Boutroux Fustel de Coulanges 3. The New Science of Sociology ‘Comte, Taine and Renan Dusthelim’s Scientife Rationalism ‘Theory and Practice Durkheim’ ‘Social Realism” 4. Visit to Getmany PART TWO: BORDEAUX: 1887-1902 5. Durkheim at Bordeaux 6. The Theory and Practice of Education ‘Motal Education Intellectual Education Educational Peychology: The History of Educational ‘Theories ‘Roureouu's Baile and Duskheim's View of Human Nanure, ‘Duskhela’s Sociology of Education S. CMerl (695) Back duatherm : orpatin Sear, Chapter x0 ‘The Method and Subject-Matter of Sociology : Ar Durkheim saw Swicide as the best kind ‘of proof of sociology’s distinctive, even exclusive, power to explain, he still felt the ‘eed to provide arguments to defenid this claim and to support ‘his own view of what the explanations should look like. He felt this need for a number of reasons. First, there was the fationalist, and indeed philosophical, tendency in his own intellectual temperament: if something was t0°be-proved, it could and should be argued for; and the argument should systematically explore the presuppositions and implications of the position adopted - that is, it should be philosophical, Secondly, he had a strong desite to persuade the hostile and the sceptical (whose reactions we wili consider below!); he was ‘not content to pursue his own path independent of the views of others, since he was ready to see such views, where they were tesistant to the claims of social science, as irresponsible and sometimes dangerous. He always had the sense of living through a period of social crisis, and he saw the enemies of social science as real obstacles to its alleviation. ‘Thirdly, he wished_to found a school: a body of scholars engaged in | co-operative research, who would engage in specialist studies ,} ina way that would ultimately transform all the specialized "social sciences into the systematically organized branches of 2 unified social science. For this purpose, one needed a program- matic set of principles providing guidelines for future research. Accordingly, The Rules of Sociological Method was at once a treatise in the_philosophy of social science, a polemic and a manifesto,* at 1 1.1m Chapter 16, below. 2. 18943, repr. a8 1895a; and eda agote: te, z938b, Among the numerous discussions of this book, and of Durkheim's methodology generlly, see Mauss and Fauconnet, 1901, Bayet, 1907, Davy, 29218, Deploige, 1911, Gehlke, 1925, Buresw, 1923, Bouglé, 1924, Lacombe, whe keg aude ‘The Method and Subject-Matter of Sociolgy 227 ‘The arguments advanced in Thr Rules partly concern the method and, partly the subject-matter of sociology, and Durkheim obviously thought of the method he proposed as ‘adapted to the particular nature of social phenomena” Yet, though he saw all his rales of method as dependent on ‘our fondamental principle: the objective reality of social facts? (for “in the ead, it is on this principle that all else is Based, and everything comes back to it”), it was precisely in its treatment ofthe nature of social phenomena that The Rules was least probing and ye. The teason for this is that, written / between The Divisien of Labour and the first lecturs-course on \ seligion, it mitked a transitional point in Durkheim's intel- Jeceual development. He had formulated the basi¢ prol his sociology: ‘He the corresponding changes “in_ institutions, He had developed a method: asking within a broadly evolutionary framework. ‘The step yet to be taken was one that was implicit in what had gone before, and indeed in The Rules itself, but was only to become fally explicit in 1898: namely, the analytical separation of socially given ideas, concepts, values and beliefs - or “collective représentations? ~ as 2 crucial and relatively inde- pendent set of explanatory variables. In The Rules Durkheim formulated procedures to be fol- lowed in the collection and interpretation of evidence, in the construction of explanatory hypotheses and in their validation, ‘These procedures ~ for the elimination of bias, the construc- tion. ial definitions ack the choice OF indicators; for the specibc normality relative to social type, the construc tion OF a typology Of Societies aad the ideatification of social 1925 and 1926 (hich contains an especially rewesding discussion), Essestier, 1927, Parsons, 1937 ch. 1x) and 1960, Gurvitch, 1938, Alpert, 19392, band c, Benott-Smullyan, 1948, Gisbert, 1939, and Amand, 196, See alto the Introduction to the present work. te, . 32 te. 1938b, p. Ix S.L.). ibid, p. xxiii: te. p. led SL). 228 Bordeaux: 1887-1902 : fanctions; and for the use of the comparative ttt in pata at of oncom aio mee ‘with @ siagle society, within diferent sorictes of single Fe en Obr ofthe soca’ cement in socal eeeas Iniecl and ere the polemical nature of the is fnfuenced its content ~ Dusheim took & te spec fcity of the soil to coal the exclusiveness of sociology, end contemporary and posthumous, ha of psychology as his major theoretical ioc a ely al 100 en upon unesaiined peychologial assumptions. Yet it could equally well be’ argued that ang from 2 sound instinct, sce it enabled b i Gate on. level of explanation hitherto vierally anexploted The position of The Raks concetning the antare of soca) phenomene was indecisive in at least two respects. Jr supposedly identifying characteristics of ‘ex- Reet aod esa ree we bare ssn, py ambiguous,” In the second’ place, the argument of The Hale i inconclusive concerning explanatory priori vocal piesa rng! tom be ‘most Gee renome! ‘ial structure end thence to reusents of opinion’ (ore 7 tenen its of social life which have not yet oan definite form's), where were sociological explanat 7 in general to stop? At first sight, Duscoe come jive a clear answer: ‘the facts ‘of social morph« logy «Bi f onderant role in collective life and, in conseq Insocologieal explanations . . . ‘The first origin of every socal process of any importance must be sought in the const SETS Soa Zeman Forme eprdog he ibe urn ware EL, 6 om meet Se et connie peceiy changes, #2 198 Fs agree 1038, po. 1m 12 GL. The Metbod and Subject-Matter of Sociology 229 of teal socal caviomment’» In particular, Durkheim alluded't0 his own explanation, in’ de Division of Labour, in tetins of ‘the number of social units or, as we have also called it, the volume of society, and the degtee of concentration of the ISS, OF What-we"have called dy; ity’. While disclaiming ‘having found all the features of the social environ. ‘ment which are able to play a zole ia the explanition of social facts’, he remarked that ‘these are the only ones we have (discerned and we have not been led to seek others" He hastened to add that this explanatory ptiotity did not imply that one should see the social environment as “a sort of tltimate and absolute fact beyond which one cannot go": Fe chould ssther be seen as primary simply because itis general enough to explain a great number of other facts... the changes which occur withia i, whatever thei cause, have seper cussions in all directions throughout the social organism ‘end ‘cannot fail to affect in some degree all its Functions! ‘Yet, even on this qualified interpretation, it is not at all clear ‘that Durkhcim could justifiably claim to have identified a set of social facts with explanatory priority. For, ectlier in the sane book, he had argued that morphological pheaomena were ‘of the same nature” as other social facts, that the politcal divisions of a society were essentially ‘moral’, thet a society’s ‘organization was determined by ‘public law’ and that if “the populatic is into our towns instead of dispersing into the Countryside it is because there is 2 current of opinion, acollee. tivepressurewhich imposes this concentration onindividwals” ts Thus The Rakes stood at 2 point of transition Previously to it, Durkheim had been tempted in the dizectiot of singling fut a subset of social facts, characteristic of the structure ee ‘milien’ of @ given society, as basic. Although, since his retum from Getmany, he had never explicitly eclided ideas 9. bid, pp. 157-8: pp. 12-13 (81.), wo. ibid, ps 1591 trp. 113 @L). ibid, ps r4i: te ps 135 (SL. B. 142: te, p. 116 (S.L,), Gr). 4 Ibid, pe 192 tsp. 13. 15. id, pp. 17-283 te p19 (SL), 230 Bordeaux: 1887-1902 and belicfs fcom that subset he nevertheless tended to consider them as, in 2 broad sense, derivative and without aay major independent explanatory significance. After The Rules he was to give them greater and greater significance — so that by 1914 he was writing of the ‘ideas and sentiments that are elaborated by a collectivity’ as having ‘an ascendancy and an authority that cause the particular individuals who think them and believe in them to represent them ia the form of ‘moral forces that dominate them and sustain them’, and of “states of consciousness” which ‘come to us from society, .. ‘transfer society into us and connect us with something that surpasses us??? Here was a rematkable development, the principal stages of which may briefly be noted. The Ruks already marked an advance froti The Division of Laban wih tespect 06 watérial’ and ‘mozal” density: The Division of Labour had represented the forme? a8 an exict expression of the latter, whereas The Rules made it clear that the latter was defined ‘ae.a function of the umber of individual’ who are elie selated not mere commercially but morally; that is, who aot only exch See ana ita a era Ta Again, in The Division of Laboor Durkheim had written, in criticism of Fustel de Coulanges, that ‘its [social arrangements] ‘that explain the power and’ nature of the seligious idea’, arguing that Fustel hid ‘mistaken the cause for the effect””?; 16, See Chapter 4, shove, 17, 19148: e. 1960e, BD. 335, 557 18. 19016, p. 199218 1938, p. 114 (SL). (See especially the footnote to ergo: te 1159) ‘e+ BM, Fastel de Coulanges has discovered that the primitive nization of societies was of a familial natore and that, on the other hand, the constitution of the primitive family had religion for its basis. However, he has mistaken the eause for the eect. Having postulated the religious idea, without deriving it from anything, he has deduced from ie the social arrangements he observed, while, on the contrary, iis these latter that explain the power and natace of the religious idea" (39005, . 1543 €. 1933b, p. 179 ~ SL). Puste’s La Cité anligueconciudes with the words: ‘We have writen the history of belle Ie was established and Ihaman society was constcuted. Ie was modied, and society underwent a series of revolutions, Ie disappeared and society changed ite character. Such was the law of ancient times" (The Ancien! City, p. $96). 4 people’s mental system is a system of definite mental ec forces... hy is feated to the way in which the socal elements are fener onde anes ftom of x is 4 certain way, there a ollectiv ideas and practices tay eres Acting; but these latter cannot be and it cannot be changed without satomical constitution beng modigadar °° teed Without its In the same year that Stivide was published, in a revi she same yes ® published, ina review of a Mani 2 egon historical materialism, Duskiacim expresed We segard as fruitful this idea that social lie, i § at must be a0 py the conception of i held by those who purtcipats it wok y Causes which escape consciousness; and we also think they causes must be sought chiefly in the way in which the aet science and sociology in consequence exist: For ia collective représetations should be intelligible, they rouse. eee He distinguished this position from ic matetialism a ‘economic matetialis (we teached it before kaowing Marx, by whom we have frac 2 97m p. 350: 19508, ps1 x til sen ay i) 22 197%. 648. Foe u Uncaaion of tia me ‘1h Tica 6 Saal Scie (London, 1958), pp. 25 Be? Wises Po 232 Bordeancc: 1887-1902 ‘way been influenced”s), Historians and psychologists had long been aware that one had to look elsewhere for explanations than to ideas held by individuals, and it was natural to extend this to collective ideas, but he could not see ‘what patt the sad conflict of classes that we are currently witnessing can have had in the elaboration or development of this idea’ and he denied that the causes of social phenomena ‘come back, in the last analysis, to the state of industrial technique and that the ‘economic factor is the motive-force of progress’. Economic materialism pretended to be the key to history, but it had not begun to be systematically verified; quite the contrary: Sociologists and histotians tend more and fore to agree in the common view that religion is the most primitive of all social phenomena. Tt was the source, through successive transformations, of all other manifestations of collective activity: law, morality, act, science, political forms, ete. In the beginning, alls rligions.*8 Indeed, so far was anyone from showing how religion could be reduced to economic causes, that it seemed altogether more likely that the latter depended on religion. However, he added, this anti-Marxist case should not be pushed too far if the ‘different forms of collective activity’ desived in the last instance from their ‘substratum’, they then became ‘in their turn, original soutces of influence’, with ‘an efficacity of their own’, and they ‘react upon the very causes on which they depend’.* Thus the economic factor was far from an epiphe- nomenon: it had ‘an influence that is special to it; it can pattially modify the very substratum from which it results’, Nonetheless, everything led one to the view that it was “secondary and derivative? 27 35: ibid, p64. > 24. ibid, 25. ibid, p. 650. 26. id,» 633. 27. ibid. This review is the only place in which Duskheim explicit sts he theo postion windvd Marin (b sce ae spoo0) CL Engels letter to Bloch: “The economie situation is the basis, but the ‘aslo cements ofthe upertractce «alo excrete inden 1upon the course ofthe historical struggles and in many eases peponderate Peeing a fom ae 1 Ep Sed Wor Moscow, 1968, vol. i, p. 488). The Method and Subject-Matter of Sociology 233 ‘This new view of the preponderance of religicn, and of the partial autonomy of the ‘different forms of collective activity’ relative to their ‘substratum’ formed the basis for the subse- quent development of his thought - with an ever-growing explanatory role for religion and an ever-growing autonomy for the ‘collective représentations’. As we have seen, he claimed in Suicide that ‘essentially social life is made up of représenta- tions’, adding that ‘these collective représentations are of quite another character from those of the individoal’2* and illus- trating the point by reference to religion - ‘Religion is, in 2 word, the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; itis the way of thiaking charac- teristic of collective existence’#” The point was taken up and systematically argued for the following year in the article on “Individual and Collective Reprérentations’ 2° Here Durkheim sought to demonstrate the relative autonomy of the latter wis-d-vis theix socal substratum (relying on a parallel though shaky argument concerning the relative autonomy of mental phenomena visdvis the brain).* ‘Thus, thcugh initially dependent on ‘the number of social elements, the way in which they are grouped and distributed, etc’, collective représentations became “pastially autonomous realities which live their own life? They had ‘the power to attract and repel ‘each other and to form amongst themselves various syntheses, which are determined by their natural affinities, and not by the state of the environment in the midst of which they evolve’: représintations were cansed by others, and not by ‘this or that characteristic of the social structure’.» The evolution of 28, 1897 p. 3525 th 19538 pe 312. 29, ibid. SL). 30, 2098: repr raga: te 19536, 51.He also used (from about this period onwards) a number of arguments by analogy to support this postion, expecially the argument from the origin of life (existing in the cell, but not io its component clements ~ se, for example, 190te, p. x¥: te. 1938b, pp. alls 19258, . 305: tr 19612, p, 264) and the argument from chemical synthesis (for example tg0Ke, p xvi t. 1938, p. alvilly x900b, p. 64g). This all weat back to Boutrour's conception of diferent levels of suture, See the Introduction above. . 3.15248 (0953, 481.993, D3 234 Bordeatot: 1887-1902 teligion, he observed, gave ‘the most striking examples of this phenomenon’: eis pechaps impossible to understand how the Greek or Roman sags reeset roe the city, the way in which the primitive clans slowly merged, the ‘organization of the patsiarchalfanily, etc. Nevertheless the lusuriant ‘growth of myths and legends, theogonic and cosmological systems, ftc., which grow out of zeligious thought, is not directly related to the particular features of the social structure. ‘The article ended by asserting the ‘hyper-spirituality’ of social life so that ‘collective psychology is the whole of sociology’.#* s&s ibid, (6.1L). Greek mythology posed a problem for Marx, and itis interesting to note that he treated it, in the Grandrits, in a way that is closer to Durthein’s (and Fustel de Coulanges’) account than to the tisicter, and cruder, vetions of historical materialism: ‘Te isa well-known, fact that Greck mythology was not only te arsenal of Greek art, but also the very ground fiom which it had sprung, Is the view of nature and of ‘social relations which shaped Greek imagination and Greek [at] possible in the age of automatic machinery, and sallways, and locomotives, and clectsic telegraphs? ... All mythology masters and dominates and shapes the forces of aature in and through the imagination; hence it disappears as\ Sooa as man galos mastery over the forces of nature ... Greck art Drenupposes the existence of Greek mythology, ie. that nature and even fhe form of socety ate wrought up in popular fancy in an unconsciously istic faehion’ (Mare, Inirodrtion £9 ile Critigee of Poltal Eaonomy 837) in. Contribution ota Critgn of Potcal Bronomg,t. Stone, NT, Chicago, 1913, pb 310-10), See the dreussion ofthis pssege in Kamen ey, By The Ebel Poandatins of Marxism (London, 1963), pp. 135 Kimenka sightly observes that Marc's view here ls thatthe ‘existence of (Greek social oxpanization «+. is] aero for Greek art and myulogy, but not sufficient? (p. 135) 39 ld ps 472 Pr 34 (SL). CE 1898 (yp 692 tt. x96305 Bs 254 62}: “Ope cannot cepext too often that everything which i social « Sonslts'ofreprevmttion, and therefore Is a produce of rpréetins? “At this same petiod Duskhiem was wring to Bough that he bad ‘never “eamt of saying ttt one could do vociology without any psychological background of tat sociology is anything othr than a form of peychology; _but merely tht collective paychology cannot be deduced directly from Individual psychology, beeause 2 new factor has intervened which, has the peyehle materi,» factor whichis dhe soure of ll tha is dierent and new, samely attocation, A. phenomenon of individual poychology hasan individual envi fs its substzetum, a phenomenon Df collective paychology a group of individual emsvewer” (eter undated), The Method and Subject-Matter of Sociohgy 23 And we may iote that, by 1899, his view of the relative explanatory position of social morphology had changed accordingly from a primary, determining cause to something mote like a precondition: ‘the constitution of, [the] sub- stratum affects, ditectly ot indirectly all social shenomena, just a8 all psychological phenomena ate, directly ar indirectly, connected to the state of the brain’2* ‘The test of Durlheim’s career consisted of pursuing the implications of this new position, notably in the study of primitive classification and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Lift. His methodological writings on the way echoed this preoccupation — in particular, the preface to the second edition Of The Rules (stressing the ‘representational? aspect of socio- logy’s subject-matter), the essay on “Value Judgements and Judgements of Reality’ (‘The principal social shenomene, religion, morality, law, economics and aesthetics, ate nothing more than systems of values and hence of ideals Sociology moves from the beginning in the field of ideals. The ideal is in factits peculiar field of study ...It... accepts them as given facts, as objects of study, and it tries to analyse and exphin them’ and the essay on “The Dualism of Human Nature’ (in which the individual is pictured as split between two conflicting “states of consciousness’: ‘the sensations and sensual appetites, on the one hand, and the intellectual and moral life, on. the other’ ~ the latter being ‘social and nothing but

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