Émile Durkheim

From Geography

Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) is a French sociologist and criminologist. Durkheim is one of the most important social scientist together with Weber, Giddens, Marx and Bourdieu. He can be seen as a founding father of social science and is known for his notion of social facts and methods in modern social sciences (Zierhofer, 2002).

Life

Emile Drukheim was born in Lorraine in the east of France and came from a Jewish family. At secondary school Drukheim was already an outstanding student. He followed his further education at a prestigious school in Paris. During his further live he thaught in different cities throughout Europe and wrote several important works in social science (Jones, 1986). He became a very influential sociologist in Paris and the rest of France. Emile Durkeim died at the age of 59 in 1917, just after the first world war.

Work and Theories

Durkheim wrote four major works, namely: “The division of labor in society”, "The rules of sociological method", “Suicide”, “The elementary forms of the religious Life” (Jones, 2011). The division of labor is based on the work of Adam Smith, in which method plays an important role as well. Durkheim questions in this work for example whether laws described in the work of Adam Smith can be seen as natural laws as well as moral laws. In his second work, the rules of sociological method, Durkheim discusses social facts. His major influence was on this writing on social facts and methodology. Durkheim defines a social fact as following: "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". He also describes them as: states of collective minds (Jones, 1986). In the two other important works of Durkheim he also focusses on methodology and the behavior of human in the case of suicide, religious life.

Durkheim is also well-known for his study of crime and deviance. In these works, Durkheim had some statements which with many people would strongly disagree. For example, Durkheim's view on crimes was that it was necessary in society. He substantiated his view with argueing that crime is a social fact that is functionally usefull in helping to maintain a "healthy society" (Tierney, 2006, p. 86). According to Durkheim, this is done with his view that crimes have an adaptive function and crimes will reaffirm boundaries. Too much conformity coupled with too little crime is bad, because the adaptive function of crime is to introduce fresh ideas and concepts in society to prevent it from stagnating. Within society, crimes will reaffirm boundaries between what is seen as "good" and "bad" behaviour. This is done by things like gossiping and prenunciation (Tierney, 2006, p. 87). Émile Durkheim, iconoclastic as he was, had some sensational views in his study of crime and deviance, with which he created a different look to this subject.

References

Appelrouth, S. Desfor Edles, L. (2007). Classical and Contemporary Sociological Theory: Text and Readings. Pine Forge Press.

Jones, A. (1986). Emile Durkheim, an introduction to four major works. Beverly Hills: Sage Publications

Tierney, J. (2006). Criminology: Theory and Context. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.

Zierhofer, W. (2001). Speech act and Space(s): Language pragmatics and the discursive constitution of the social. Environment and planning 34

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