Canadian Journal of Sociology Online March-April 2006
This book is a collection of essays on Emile Durkheim edited by Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith and is one of the few anthologies to appear on Durkheim in many years. Its main aim is to examine the impact of Durkheim's writings by reconsidering the historical context of his work in the light of the recent resurgence of interest in Durkheim world wide. This book will be of interest to an interdisciplinary audience and to scholars in anthropology, cultural studies, sociology, moral philosophy and the human sciences more generally.
The editors have drawn the contributions mainly from American universities, together with two from universities in the U.K., one from Canada, and one from a French university. The essays in the volume have been organized under three broad headings: life, context and ideas; symbols, rituals and bodies; and solidarity, difference and morality. Beginning with the question of what Durkheim means to the social sciences today, the editors trace the influence of his work in Europe and North America, noting that since his death he has become a central figure in the social sciences and the founder of a perspective that first introduced sociology into the field of knowledge. Looking at the 'New Durkheim' from an interdisciplinary perspective, the editors examine the impact of his work on structural anthropology and European social theory, tracing its development to American sociology and religious studies in North America, and eventually to social theory, cultural studies and symbolic anthropology in France.
The papers in the volume take their orientation from two general perspectives: first is from the perspective of Durkheim's early biography and biographical history, and second is from the perspective of the history of concepts appearing in his major works. While the first approach looks at his work from the perspective of general biography and the overall influence of his writing, the second focuses on conceptual histories, touching on key concepts related to Durkheim's theory of religion in The Elementary Forms and concepts related to The Division of Labor. Absent from this treatment are concepts from Suicide and from The Rules of Sociological Method.
The lead paper by Marcel Fournier entitled "Durkheim's Life and Context: Something New about Durkheim", examines Durkheim's history from the perspective of a general biography and pursues a sketch of Durkheim's career beginning with the Bordeaux period of 1887 to the Paris years at the Sorbonne beginning in 1902. Fournier's account of Durkheim's family background and the period after the cole Normale when he taught philosophy in the French LycČe system is more detailed than Steven Lukes' 1973 biography of Durkheim. Also interesting is Fournier's discussion of the Republican period when Durkheim was appointed to the chair of education at the Sorbonne, and the period up to the Dreyfus years when Durkheim became politically involved in the crisis (pp. 49-51).
Following Fournier's essay is the paper by Robert Alun Jones entitled "Practices and Presuppositions: Some Questions about Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life". Taking his approach from the perspective of a conceptual history, Jones focuses on the period when Durkheim first formed an interest in religion and the influences that existed at the time Durkheim was writing The Elementary Forms. The question asked by Jones is "what did Durkheim himself consider to be the most distinctive aspect of his classic work, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" (p. 80)? Taking his methodological initiative from Quentin Skinner, Jones adopts a straightforward historicist approach by attempting to reconstruct the influences that existed during the period when Durkheim first became interested in religion and religious practices. In this context, Jones traces Durkheim's initial interest in religious life to 1894-5 when he offered a lecture course on the topic at Bordeaux and when, according to Jones, Durkheim had embraced the writings of Robertson Smith and James Frazer on tribal religion. Jones's central argument is that "the most important aspect of Durkheim's classic work" is the "study of religious beliefs and religious experience" (p. 94).
There are, however, several problems with Jones's assertions. First, by confining Durkheim's interest in religion to Smith and Frazer, Jones neglects to clarify the influence of Marcel Mauss's essay on religious ritual among the Eskimo and the role it played in drawing Durkheim's attention to the link between the theme of religious enactment and a theory of social assembly. Second, Jones overlooks the fact that Durkheim was actively pursuing ethnographic studies of religious practices by Howitt and others in preparation for the classification argument demonstrating the link between the totem religions and the system of social classification. Third, Jones neglects to mention Durkheim's own stated purpose in The Elementary Forms which was to show that a theory of religion must take into account how "religion is an eminently social thing", and that it must therefore identify how religious enactments consecrate people, spaces and things by making them sacred and by demonstrating that religion is "society in its consecrated form" (Durkheim, 1964: 9-10). What Jones therefore neglects to point out is that The Elementary Forms is as much a theory of social assembly and social classification as it is a theory of religion.
Following Jones's essay is the paper by Jeffery Alexander entitled "The Inner Development of Durkheim's Sociological Theory". This paper examines Durkheim's theoretical development by looking at his early writings from 1885 to 1893. Beginning with a paper written by Durkheim in 1888, Alexander takes the view that Durkheim's early work was centered on the theme of "sympathetic instincts inherent in human beings", in contrast to the themes of the later writings which focused on social realities outside the individual (p. 137). Alexander's thesis is that while many interpretations of Durkheim's work claim that it was centered on founding a reality external to the individual, he takes the view that the writings from 1885 to 1892 reveal a Durkheim "whose theoretical evolution veers off the path of his ambition of creating social structures" to something quite different (p. 137). He goes on to claim that the early writings reflect a Durkheim who oscillates between two incompatible points of view: one which states that "the moral order is social and individual at the same time"; the other stating that "morality is external to the individual and could therefore control him" (p. 137-8). Alexander goes on to claim that while elaborating these positions "Durkheim was worried about the status of the individual" to such a degree that he eventually resolved the problem by arguing that it was possible for the "moral order to grow out of individual action itself" and that social "order could be both internal and external at the same time" (p. 138). Given the emphasis on the individual in the early writings, Alexander believes that the aim of The Division of Labor was to arrive at a theoretical position that would "reconcile free choice with the collective ordering of individual interest" (p. 138).
Two things stand out about Alexander's account of Durkheim's early work: first, why would he select writings by Durkheim which are minor commentaries with little programmatic substance while at the same time overlooking the more important writings of the 1880s, including the inaugural lecture of 1887-8 and the 1888 essay on 'Suicide and the Birth Rate' where Durkheim puts forward the program for studying social realities outside the individual? Second, Alexander's claim that The Division of Labor is a work that "reconciles individual freedom and social order" is so clearly an error of interpretation that it goes back as far as Gabriel Tarde's criticism of Durkheim's realist view which had stated that "society cannot exist without the individual" and that "social reality is nothing other than individuals and individual acts" (Tarde, 1962: 69). While Tarde's views were readily accepted at Chicago in 1897 and then later at Harvard by Sorokin, the American resistance to Durkheim since then has led to two distinct directions in American sociological theory. First, to the neglect of the theoretical capital in Durkheim's work and to a "style of theorizing in America which erected barriers against the theoretical lessons" of his writings (Kalberg, 1996: 64). Second, it has led to a point of cleavage within sociology proper by creating two conflicting theoretical directions: one claiming that the structure of society is the central subject matter of sociology; the other claiming that the individual alone is the only acceptable reference point for social assertions.
Following Alexander's paper are the essays by Edward Tiryakian and Mark Cladis entitled "Durkheim and Solidarity" and "Durkheim, Solidarity and Democracy". Both of these papers look at Durkheim's concept of social solidarity from the perspective of Benedict Anderson's book Imagined Communities where he conceives of society as detached individuals whose links to the community are exercised through their private choices. The objective of the papers by Tiryakian and Cladis is to compare Durkheim's concept of solidarity with 'global' expressions of social cohesion that followed the 9/11 terrorist attack and the spontaneous expressions of solidarity that occurred in a global context.
Tiryakian and Cladis argue that the terrorist attacks of 9/11 constitute a rallying point for social solidarity, and both define solidarity as "a network of social ties that are freely entered into by social actors" (p. 307). In this context, Tiryakian and Cladis speak of solidarity in its contemporary form as a "quest" that is undertaken by individuals, and as something that is "cultivated" by them for the ultimate good of the community (pp. 309, 405). On this view, Cladis asserts that to "achieve anything like solidarity in today's globalized environment, we need to embrace difference and otherness, and not aim for consensus or sameness" (p. 405). Tiryakian and Cladis thus define 'solidarity' in three distinct ways: as a voluntary expression of personal choice "exercised freely by individuals"; as a personal "quest" that is "entered into freely" by the individual and pursued as an end in itself; and as the "cultivation of shared practices and beliefs" exercised by "pluralistic choices" (p. 307, 309, 389, 406).
These definitions however do not agree with the discussion of social solidarity found in The Division of Labor. Always implicit in Durkheim's discussion of social cohesion are two theoretical objectives which cannot be separated: first, was to demonstrate that society is a structure that must first exist in the objective order; and second, is to show that society is itself an organizing principle for grouping individuals whose social attachments are outcomes of the form of the particular solidarity of the community, not their individual choices. In this respect, the argument in The Division of Labor was to show that the social form of solidarity was manifested through the particular structures and mechanisms of society and had nothing to do with individual choice or personal freedom (Durkheim, 1964:148-9). By reducing social solidarity to private choice and individual volition, Tiryakian and Cladis collapse all of the social categories that needed to exist for Durkheim to identify how the objective structures of society place individuals under the necessity of acting in relation to limits which 'override' their private choices and which, above all, are "withdrawn from individual discretion" (Durkheim, 1964: 4).
Following the essays by Tiryakian and Cladis is the paper by Karen Fields entitled "What Difference does Translation Make?" This is an interesting account of the problems she encountered in translating Durkheim's Elementary Forms into English, constituting the first new translation of Durkheim's classic work since 1912. Fields's paper is a solid well-argued discussion of the challenges related to translating a 19th century French theoretical text (pp. 157-8). Looking at what she calls "interpretive relationships", Fields highlights some of the major errors made by Parsons in his interpretation of Durkheim. Extremely interesting in this context is her discussion of what Parsons "made Durkheim say" in regard to The Elementary Forms in The Structure of Social Action. In this case, Fields points out interesting relationships between the translations of Swain, Parsons and Aron (pp. 161-4).
Also of note are Robert Bellah's paper on "Ritual" and Chris Shilling's essay on "Embodiment and Emotions". Both these papers make interesting use of neglected concepts used by Durkheim in The Elementary Forms as they relate to the themes of social ritual and effervescent assembly that are performed in the context of religious rites. Worthy of mention too, are the papers by Zygmunt Bauman entitled "Durkheim's Society Revisited" and by Randall Collins entitled "The Durkheimian Movement in France in World Sociology".
In summary, when we compare The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim with other collections on Durkheim by Allen, Pickering and Miller (1998), or by Pickering & Walford, (2000), the barriers erected in American sociology against the theoretical lessons which were to be drawn from Durkheim's work become apparent. This is the case for two reasons. First, the majority of papers in the volume show little consideration for the key themes in Durkheim's work which are now at the center of interest in Durkheim studies world wide. These include the epistemological problem recently discussed by Rawls (1996), Morrison (2001, 2006) and Schmaus (1994); the problem of effervescent assemblies discussed by Allen, Pickering and Miller (1998); and the problem of the American reception of Durkheim discussed by Besnard (2000) and Morrison (2001). Second, the papers in the volume play out an old outdated conflict between Durkheim's realist view of society and the American nominalist view which invariably reduces society to individuals. This is a conflict going back as far as the Chicago school reception of Durkheim when Gustavo Tosti (1897) and Park and Burgess (1921) rejected Durkheim theory of suicide because it did not take account of the individual factors of nervous degeneration or of Gabriel Tardes's theory of imitation in which suicide was thought to be transmitted by imitative acts. In part, it was this view of Durkheim in America that led to the neglect of his work for decades.
Ken Morrison
Department of Sociology
Wilfrid Laurier University
http://www.cjsonline.ca/reviews/durkheimcompanion.html
March 2006
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