Émile Durkheim

From Geography

Émile Durkheim (1858-1917) is a French sociologist. Durkheim is one of the most important social scientist together with Weber, Giddens, Marx and Bordieux. 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).

Work and Theories

Durkheim wrote four major works, namely: “The division of labor in society”, “Suicide”, “The elementary forms of the religious Life” and "The rules of sociological method” (Jones, 2011). His major influence was on his writings 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".

References

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

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Enhanced by Koen Molenaar