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Durkheim’s Sociological Niche:
An analysis of Durkheimian theory, method and substance as distinct from that of
Marx and Weber.
Stephen Sills 240-29-2692
Development of Sociology Dr. Bolin
October 5, 1999
Durkheim’s Sociological Niche
Émile Durkheim attempted early in his career to establish an academic niche for
his embryonic social science that would be distinct from its roots in moral philosophy
and separate from its related, and already established, discipline psychology (Ritzer
184). “Almost single-handed [Durkheim] forced the academic community to accept
sociology as a rigorous and scientific discipline” (Swingewood 97). Both by refuting
the veracity of the other social scientist in his polemical writings and lectures
(Giddens, Capitalism 72) and by narrowly defining or constraining his own work in
scope and method, he created the ‘boundaries’ of a sociological theory that were
distinct from those of other emerging social sciences such as economics, political
science, and anthropology (Nisbet, Sociology 42-43). In the process of establishing
sociology as an autonomous empirical science, he also distanced himself from those
who would become the other founders of the field: Marx and Weber.
“Durkheimian (like Weberian) sociology soon established itself a secure, and
prominent, position in academic social science, where as Marxism, because of its
revolutionary character, was for a long time either excluded altogether from the
universities or allowed a very restricted place there” (Bottomore 105). This
‘revolutionary character’ was one of the main reasons that Durkheim dismissed
Marxism as a viable means for improving the moral or social condition in modern
society. He felt that “profound change is always the result of long-term social
evolution” (Giddens, Émile 21) not a sudden revolution from the working class.
Moreover, he did not only differ with Marx in how social improvements should be
made or in the perspective of the legitimate academic science toward a misguided
social movement (together what Bottomore refers to as his political orientation), but
also in terms of the theoretical, methodological, and substantive approaches that
sociology should take in its empirical observation of the social world.
Weber, who was never shunned by the academy and did not believe in a class
revolution, none-the-less was of little importance to Durkheim though they were
contemporaries. According to Giddens, it is not surprising that they did not have
much impact on each other as they were influenced primarily by the separate
academic disciplines from which each emerges: Durkheim from French post-
Enlightenment philosophy and Weber from the German historical school (Capitalism
119-120). These differences in perspective are most evident in the approaches that
were employed in their sociologies as we will see in the analysis of Durkheimian
theory, method, and substance that follows.
Durkheim's Objective
To reduce Durkheimian theory to several key concepts is to look for the common
elements throughout his writings and published lectures. Concepts that he uses
liberally in early writings do no appear, or appear in altered forms (collective
conscience altered to collective representation), in later writing, and therefore, from
our historical perspective, cannot be said to be key to a comprehensive Durkheimian
theory (Nisbet, Émile 29-30). Examples of such concepts would include mechanical
solidarity and organic solidarity, terms which he eventually abandoned and were too
closely related to the ideas presented by the other social theorists from which he was
trying to distance himself e.g. Töniess - Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft and Spencer -
The Principals of Sociology (Lukes 141- 147).
Though some of his theories may be distinct from text to text as he rewrote his
science, there are several core conceptual themes that are apparent in both his
methodology and the substance of his sociology. Namely that sociology is a distinct
empirical science that focuses on the moral constraint imposed by external social facts
on individuals as its substance, for the express purpose of reestablishing and
maintaining a moral order within modern society.
Durkheimian Moral Science
Primarily in his earlier writings ‘Positive Moral Science,’ ‘Division of Labour’
and ‘The Rules of Sociological Method,’ he established as essential the tenet that
sociology is an empirical science and not a philosophical art. Durkheim, as quoted in
Nisbet, said that social philosophers, from Plato forward, try to “correct or transform
[reality] completely, rather than to know it. They take virtually no interest in the past
and the present, but look to the future. And a discipline that looks to the future lacks a
determinate subject matter and should therefore be called not a science but an art”
(Nisbet 45-46).
Durkheim did, however, build upon notions that began within the bounds of
post-Enlightenment philosophy. Though critical of Montesquieu (Ritzer 184), he
utilized Montesquieu’s aim to be “as objective and dispassionate, as free of political
or moral preconceptions as possible.” He also incorporated into his approach and
political orientation, Saint-Simon’s “intellectual, moral, and social conservatism.”
And, he further developed Comte’s ideas of a “true science of society…that would be
as determinedly positivist in its way as any of the other sciences”(Nisbet, Sociology
24-27).
Social Facts
To be a ‘true’ science, sociology must have a context or a definite subject matter.
Durkheim believed that “society is a part of nature, and a science of society has to be
based upon the same logical principles as those which obtain in natural science”
(Giddens, Émile 39). Bottomore does not argue this point because, as he points out in
A Marxist Consideration of Durkheim, “the issues raised by this kind of critical
examination [of the basic conception of sociology as a science] do not so much relate
specifically to Durkheim as to the broad and widely debated question of the proper
philosophical [theoretical] foundations of any sociology” (106). Therefore, just as the
natural sciences look for physical forces that influence the world we perceive with our
senses, social science look at social facts as external forces which exerted moral
constraint on individuals (what Martineau called the social ‘THINGS’ that influence
morals and manners). “In modern terms, social facts are the social structures and
cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive of, actors” (Ritzer 183).
In this manner, Durkheim established the context of sociology as the study of
“moral phenomena” (Giddens, Émile 19), such as anomie, collective conscience, and
social currents (nonmaterial social facts), and looked for structural and
morphological manifestations (material social facts) that influence and, more
importantly, constrain individuals (Ritzer 187). “The science of moral phenomena
thus sets out to analyse how changing forms of society effect transformations in the
character of moral norms, and to ‘observe, describe and classify’ these” (Giddens,
Capitalism 73).
Moral Order
Thus, Durkheim employed his science of moral phenomena with the prospect of
reintroducing and upholding a moral order within modern society. Durkheim's
opinion was that "the characteristic problem facing the modern age is to reconcile the
individual freedoms which have sprung from the dissolution of traditional society
with the maintenance of the moral control upon which the very existence of society
depends" (Giddens, Capitalism 99). For this reason, his theories centered on the ideas
of social cohesion (solidarity), moral order (law/ anomie/ collective conscience), and
the role of ideas (religion) and most importantly their influence on the social life of
individuals (Bottomore 106). If moral order was to be regained following the
transition from a traditional community (mechanical) to the interdependent modern
society (organic), a temporary period in his opinion due entirely to a lack of moral
cohesion brought upon by the cult of individuality and the specialization of labor, it
would do so more easily if it were guided by a morally conscious democratic state
advised and counseled by an empirically founded moral science (Giddens, Capitalism
79-81, 98-100).
Comparison of Methodological Approaches
Defined and restricted, therefore, in the scientific pursuit of establishing a causal
relationship between the moral reality of ‘modern’ turn-of-the-century France and the
social forces that created that order (or disorder), Durkheim employed comparative
method (for example, comparing totemism to modern monotheistic religions) and the
construction of dichotomies (such as normal vs. pathological) to investigate the social
world. As Nisbet states, "the comparative method, properly understood, is the very
framework of the science of society…[it] is inseparable from a scientific sociology"
(71). As a result, Durkheim set the agenda for the substance of his sociology and
established the methods it would employ as the observation of social facts and the use
of comparisons to establish causality in the resulting modern condition.
This narrowly focused, empirically grounded view of sociology as the study of
“the ways in which social facts are saturated with moral elements” (Swingewood 99)
and, more importantly, the utilization of the comparative method to develop a
primary causal relationship between 'primitive' and 'modern' societies, differed
somewhat from the approaches employed by Weber and Marx.
Though he did use many comparisons, especially historical and cross-cultural
comparisons, Weber did not utilize the comparative approach in his methodology for
the purpose of proving a causal relationship between past (more primitive) and
present (modern) conditions, but rather to show that there are many results that are
possible as well as many general causes for the modern condition, and that each is
distinct within its own history.
Marx was concerned, like Durkheim, with a causal relationship between the
primitive (feudal) and modern (capitalist) conditions and focused on how this
relationship inevitably resulted in the conflict between the bourgeois and working
classes. In a very non-Durkheimian manner, however, Marx looked to the future for a
possible break with the past, while Durkheim was concerned with regaining the moral
stability that once was. Durkheim would have called this projection a philosophical
projection rather than a scientific method.
Although Weber believed that “history is composed of unique empirical events,”
he was wary of reducing sociology to the level of an empirical science (Ritzer 221).
As quoted in Ritzer, Weber said, “A systematic science of culture... would be
senseless in itself” (221). While Durkheim seemed to believe that by scientifically
studying individual’s internalization of moral constraints (nonmaterial causes) and
their subsequent social manifestations (material effects), sociologists would be able to
predict and influence moral order in a modern society, Weber felt that it was
“logically impossible for an empirical discipline to establish, scientifically, ideals
which define what ‘ought to be’”(Giddens, Capitalism 134-135). Due to the special
nature of our human understanding (verstehen) of the subject matter, Weber believed
that sociology could generalize and interpret social phenomena in a way that the
natural sciences could not (Giddens, Capitalism 145- 149). Yet, he did not abandon
empiricism for an intuitive approach: Weber maintained that sociologists could
employ general concepts (ideal types) in positivistic analyses of particular historical
events (Ritzer 221-222).
Marx's sociology, in contrast to Durkheim's empirically grounded methodology
concerned primarily with moral order, employed a dialectical approach based on
historical material facts, not wholly dissimilar to Weber's historical sociology. As a
result, he (like Weber) did not find "simple, one-way, cause-and-effect relationships
among the various parts of the social world," but saw how these parts influence each
other (Ritzer 152). By focusing on the ways in which these pieces of the social world
interrelate, through conflict and contradiction, Marx was able to broaden his
substantive approach and consider many topics which are omitted entirely from the
Durkheimian viewpoint such as economic structures, dramatic political or social
changes, war and legitimate uses of violence, the role of the state (other than that of a
moral role), etc.
Durkheim’s Substantive Approach
It is easy to see, from the theoretical and methodological standpoint that
Durkheim developed, why he chose the substantive problems presented in The
Divisions of Labor, Suicide, and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. In each
of these texts he has focused on providing examples of how sociologist may use
quantifiable, material social fact (distribution of population, suicide rates, laws) to
establish a relationship with nonmaterial fact (anomie, the growth of the cult of the
individual and the diminution of the collective conscience, beliefs, social currents)
and, in turn, the moral restraint imposed by these nonmaterial facts on the individual
(Lukes 9-11).
In Divisions of Labor, one of the causal agents attributed to the “disintegration of
the segmental type of social structure” characteristic of a mechanical society is
dynamic density (Giddens, Capitalism 78). Ritzer defines dynamic density as “ the
number of people in a society and the amount of interaction that occurs among them”
(Ritzer 190). Durkheim demonstrates that specialization of labor relates to the
frequency of contact between “differing modes of life and belief”, and that there is
relationship between this frequency of contact and the density of a population
(Giddens, Capitalism 78). Bottomore points out that Durkheim neglects, however, to
consider economic factors that contribute to the “differentiation of social functions,”
and tends only to attribute this differentiation to “morphological factors” such as the
size and density of population (Bottomore 115).
Suicide is perhaps the best example of Durkheim’s substantive application of
theory and method. In this work, he details the manner in which suicide, a deviant act
perceived as personal and solitary, “must be regarded as an immoral act, one in
contravention of the social bond” (Nisbet 228). He looks at the of the rate of suicide
(dependent variable) as it relates to the religious denomination of the individual
(independent variable) and surmises that suicide has little to do with the religion
itself, but rather the degree of social integration (intervening variable) among the
participants of that religion and the degree of traditional authority inherent in the
religion (Giddens, Capitalism 83). Neither does Bottomore’s Marxist Consideration
nor do Weber’s writings (as far as I can tell), have anything to say in regards to the
specific subject of suicide, yet both see the influence of the collective on the
individual as only one aspect of sociology. Weber says, in fact, that he became a
sociologist to “put an end to collectivist notions” (Ritzer 231).
Finally, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life was based largely on
ethnographic work that studied Australian aboriginal totemism, and can be criticized
as flawed and contrived (Lukes 477-480), but none-the-less outlines Durkheim’s
belief, agnostic though he was, in the sacred and the profane. “Religion is, in fact, the
ultimate nonmaterial fact, and an examination of it allowed him to shed new light on
this entire aspect of his theoretical system” (Ritzer 200). That which is sacred, he
demonstrated, is separated from the ordinary and “surrounded by ritual prescriptions
and prohibitions which enforce this radical separation from the profane” (Giddens,
Capitalism 107).
This substantive work is viewed by some as a departure from his earlier works,
in that it is based almost entirely on nonmaterial facts and is more akin to idealism
than positivism (Giddens, Capitalism 105-106). Yet others, including Giddens, view
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life as the culmination of Durkheim’s life-long
attempt to establish as the study of moral order as the primary subject of sociology.
While the majority of Marx’s refernces to religion are antagonistic or dismissive
of religion (Giddens, Capitalism 206), Bottomore feels that “Marxist studies of
ideology have paid altogether too little attention to those beliefs and practices which
create and sustain the unity of society against the devisive forces of class
consciousnes and class conflict” (Bottomore 112). Weber, on the contrary, spends a
great deal of time analyzing and comparing world religions and their role in shaping
social phenomena, most notably in The Protestant Ethic where he established a link
between the rise of Protestantism and capitalism and his wrtings on world religions
where, among other things, he looks at the role of authority as it accelerate the move
toward rationality (Ritzer 249-251).
According to Bottomore, Durkheim has omitted, or given only secondary
importance, in his substantive approach to: the importance of conflict, economic
structures, dramatic political or social changes, war and legitimate uses of violence,
and, most importantly perhaps, conflict between nation states.
I cannot find in the whole body of Durkheim’s work any serious attmept to
analyze the nationalism, imperialism, and international conflict which has
shaped the world of the late twentieth century. From this aspect of Durkheim’s
sociology is, wthout question, vastly less useful for analyzing the condition of
modern society and aas a guide to political aaction than are the more realistic
studies, not only of Marxist sociologists, but also of Max Weber. (Bottomore
108)
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