LIFE AND WORKS OF EMILE DURKHEIM
After August Comte, Emile Durkheim is perhaps the most significant French social thinker whose contribution to sociological thought can hardly be under-estimated. The core of Durkheim’s approach is sometimes described as sociological realism, in the sense that he ascribed ultimate social reality to the group, not to the individual. In this respect, Durkheim’s views were similar to those of Gumplowitz (although he was the latter’s works). His theory individualism and nominalise. For Durkheim maintains that social facts are irreducible to individual facts.
Emile Durkheim, one of the important pioneers in the field of sociology, was born in 1858 at Epical in France. He is recognised alone of the greatest social thinkers and academic sociologists of France who has developed sociological concepts, methodology, theories, and so on. He graduated at the Ecole Normale, taught sociology at the University of Bordeaux and then lectured on education and sociology in the Sorbonne from 1902 up till his death in 1917. During his stay at Bordeaux, Durkheim completed several are major sociological works, including The Division of Labour in Society, The Rules of Sociological Method and Suicide. In 1893, he published his French doctoral thesis, The Division of Labour in Society, as his Latin thesis on Montesquieu. His methodological work, The Rules of Sociological Method, was empirical application of those methods in the study, Suicide, in 1897. The other of his most famous works, The Elementary Forms of Religions Life, the age of 59, he had produced a large body of scholarly work and founded one of the most nineteenth century. He is best known for founding sociology scientific discipline and for defining the boundaries of its subject matter.
Durkheim had a profound influence not only in the development of sociology but anthropology, history, linguistic and psychology also. In fact, much of his impact on other fields came through the journal L’anee Sociology, which he founded in 1898. An intellectual circle arose around the journal with Durkheim at its centre. The central theme of Durkheim was based on the view that individual autonomy grows only at the expense of the collective forces of society.
The core of Durkheim’s approach is termed as sociological realism. Durkheim has given more emphasis on the ultimate sociological realty to the group rather than to the individual here ,he states that society is sui genes,I e ,a realty in itself .In keeping with the tradition of nineteenth century thinkers ,such as saint simon , August Comte ,Spencer etc, Durkheim also believed that this new science of society (sociology).must be studied and interpreted on the basis of natural sciences method and approach
Important sociological works
– The Division of labour in society (1893).
– The Rules of sociological Method ,(1895)
– Suicide: A study in sociology, 1897
– The elementary Forms of the areligious life (1912)
– on Institution Analysis ,(1978)
– Primitive classification (with Mauss)’ (1903)
Social Fact
Durkheim has defined sociology as science of social fact .Social facts are fundamental bases of his sociological thought Durkheim explained social fact in “Rule of Sociological Method’. Durkheim’s interpretation of social facts is an important constituent of its methodology. According to him, a ‘social fact is a phase of behaviour (thinking, feeling, or acting) which can objectively be observed and has a coercive or compelling nature. It is coercive in the sense that collective consciousness specifically differs from individual consciousness; that social facts belong to the category of collective consciousness; and that this collective consciousness in its ‘collective’ capacity is endowed with a power to impose its authority upon the individual members regardless of their individual desires. But, in this connection, Durkheim is pointedly precise that a social fact is not purely a psychological fact. Thus Durkheim draws to lines of demarcation-one between collective consciousness and individual consciousness, and the other between a social fact and a purely psychological phenomenon. For this purpose, he introduces two objective criteria : exteriority and constraint, Durkheim places great importance on his definition of social fact in terms of exteriority and constraint.
Although, it is very unfortunate that the precise meaning of criteria has never been clear, yet, from his fundamental methodological postulate, social facts must be treated as things; and Durkheim infers that social facts must possess two important characteristics of a thing: it must be exterior to and not identical with the idea in the mind of the individual, and it must impose a certain constraint on him. In other words, ‘exteriority’ refers to the fact that social facts exist outside of, or exterior to, individual consciousness, while constraint refers to the compelling nature of the social facts or collective consciousness. In short, “social facts have a constraining influence over the individual mind, while remaining exterior to it.”
The substantive doctrine of the exteriority of social fact is identical with “angelic realism” which asserts that society is a reality suigeneris, above and apart from the individuals. The evidence adduced by Durkheim in defence of this doctrine is of four main types :
(1) The first is alleged heterogeneity of individual and collective states of mind. Thus, it is asserted that in a time of national danger the intensity of the collective feeling of patriotism is most greater than that of any individual feeling.
(2) The second type of argument stresses the difference in individual attitudes and behaviour which results from the group situation. Ina crowd the individual thinks, feels, and acts in a different fashion. And then thinks Durkheim, that a new to react upon the sentiments and behaviour of the individuals.
(3) The third type of evidence is supplied by the uniformities of social Statistics. For instance, many types of social facts, like crimes, marriages, and suicides, show a surprising degree of numerical consistency sometimes maintaining uniformity in rate of change.
(4) A fourth line of argument is based optical theory of emergence. In this context Durkheim interprets that we must assume that society is not reducible to the proportion of individual minds but that it constitutes a reality suigenris which emerges out of the collection and interaction of individual minds.
The other characteristics of the social fact, the constraint, which exercises over the individual, may be viewed as a simple corollary of its externality. The social fact being real and external from that of the individual’s environment and expense upon him a certain constraint; the hallmark of an independent reality is the resistance it opposes to our volitions and the counter-pressure it exerts ton our behaviour. Moreover, the aspect of social constraint enters into the direct experience of the individual.”
On the basis of above, Durkheim defines the social fact as follows :
“A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint.” He further asserts that social fact “consists of ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him.”
Furthermore, in the following quotation Durkheim’s definition of social fact has been more: “These are ways of acting, thinking and feeling that present the noteworthy property of existing outside the individual consciousness.”
Durkheim again interpreted social facts in another way as:
“These ways of thinking could not be confused with biological phenomena, since they consist of representations and actions; nor with psychological phenomena, which exist only in the individual consciousness and through it. They constitute thus a new variety of phenomena; and it is for them exclusively that the term ‘social’ ought to be applied.”