This book proposes a new representation of Emile Durkheim, as the philosopher and moralist who wanted to renovate rationalism, challenge positivism, reform sociology, and extend Schopenhauer's philosophy to the new domain of sociology. Above all, it highlights Durkheim's vision of sociology as the 'science of morality' that would eventually replace moralities based on religion.
The Social Lens: An Invitation to Social and Sociological Theory, Second Edition is an upper division undergraduate social theory textbook that introduces the student to the major classical and contemporary theorists. The theorists were chosen for the diversity of their perspectives as well as their ability to introduce the student to contemporary theory. Dr. Allan uses a lively informative writing style to engage the students in the eras of social change that spawned the major sociological theories and then applies them to the current era, which also is experiencing major social change.
The present work is an elaboration of the author's previous efforts in Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988) and The Coming Fin de SiÃcle (1991) to demonstrate Durkheim's neglected relevance to the postmodern discourse. The aims include finding affinities between our fin de siÃcle and Durkheim's fin de siÃcle, and connecting the contemporary themes of rebellion against Enlightenment narratives found in postmodern culture with similar concerns found in Durkheim's sociology as well as in his fin de siÃcle culture, contributing to Durkheimian scholarship as well as to the postmodern discourse. The distinctive aspects of the present study flow from the focus on culture, communication, and the feminine voice in culture. Durkheim is approached as a fin de siÃcle student of culture, and his insights applied to our fin de siÃcle culture. Furthermore, because Durkheim claimed that culture is comprised primarily of collective representations, he was a forerunner of the current, postmodern concerns with communication. Because Durkheim shall be read in the context of his fin de siÃcle, this book shall lead to the conclusion that Durkheim was a kind of psychoanalyst such that society is the patient, culture comprises the symptoms, and the sociologist must decipher, decode, and even deconstruct collective representations. Yet, the Durkheimian deconstruction proposed here is unlike the postmodern deconstructions, which criticize and tear apart a text without substituting a better meaning or interpretation. Postmodern discourse has made respectable again the synthesis of multidisciplinary insights that was fashionable in Durkheim's fin de siÃcle. In following this postmodern strategy, this book is more than a book about Durkheim. It is also a book about his contemporaries, among them, Carl Justav Jung, Thorstein Veblen, Henry Adams, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber. The author does not follow the postmodern strategy completely, because he finds common strands that bind these and other thinkers and their theories. Stjepan G. MeÃtrovic was born in Zagreb, Croatia, and is professor of sociology at Texas A & M University. Widely published in scholarly journals, he is the author of Emile Durkheim and the Reformation of Sociology (1988), The Coming Fin de SiÃcle, and Genocide After Emotion: The Postemotional Balkan War.
A five volume collection of scholarly journal articles and chapters from books covering the subject of Emile Durkheim's work. The five volumes are thematically organized in the following sections: Volume I: 1. Durkheim: The man himself, 2. General sociology. Volume II: 3. Religion, 4. Epistemology and the philosophy of science. Volume III: 5. Morality and ethics, 6. Political sociology. Volume IV: 7. Suicide and anomie, 8. Division of labour and economics, 9. EducationP
International scholarship over the last twenty years has produced a new understanding of Emile Durkheim as a thinker. It has contributed to reassembling what, for Durkheim, was always a whole: a sociological selection on morals and moral activism. This volume presents an overview of Durkheim's thought and is representative of the best of contemporary Durkheim scholarship.
A new appreciation of Durkheim, now into its fourth decade, has extended our grasp of his intellectual ambitions beyond standard academic boundaries. Contributions to this revival of interest in Durkheim, many secreted away in obscure periodicals, are well worth being recognized for their unqualified excellence in helping us to uncover the original Durkheimian intellectual project in all its interdisciplinary complexity. Besides classic Durkheimian subjects such as religion, social solidarity and suicide, these studies bring to light Durkheim's intellectual inquiry into political theory, comparative ethnology, social reconstruction, questions of civil society, and his articulation of an updated individualism in conversation with Marx, Hegel, Spencer and others. Authors who have helped us attain this more rounded conception of the Durkheimian project include such well-known figures as Robert N. Bellah, Robert Alun Jones, Anthony Giddens, W. S. F. Pickering and Edward Tiryakian. More than matching these contributions are the surprising writings by authors from across the disciplines, including such contemporaries of Durkheim as historian Henri Berr and theologian Alfred Loisy, as well as modern-day writers who deserve to be much better known, such as philosopher, John Brooks III or historian John Bossy. Although this collection is overwhelmingly drawn from sources in English, two classic critical pieces by French contemporaries of Durkheim enhance the value of this anthology.
This volume focuses on three closely-connected aspects of Émile Durkheim's work: his sociology of justice, his sociology of morality and his political sociology. These areas of his thought are the most relevant and practical today in considering fundamental problems of contemporary societies and they provide many of the richest and most important insights of his social theory. Yet they are also relatively neglected and this volume collects together the most incisive recent periodical commentary on them. Within the justice-morality-politics triangle, Durkheim examines moral pluralism and the possibility of identifying a unifying value system for complex societies; the nature and conditions of democracy; the relations of the citizen, the state and corporate groups; criteria of justice and of effective economic regulation; and modern individualism with its associated ideas of human dignity and human rights. This tightly-integrated volume presents Durkheim's thought in an unusual and revealing light, showing him as a key social and political thinker for the twenty-first century.
The famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim is universally recognised as one of the founding fathers of sociology as an academic discipline. He wrote on the division of labour, methodology, suicide and education, but his most prolific and influential works were his writings on religion, which culminated in his controversial book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Although his influence continued long after his death in 1917, this is the first book to provide a detailed look at the whole of his work in the field of religion. Durkheim on Religion is a selection of readings from Durkheim's writings on religion, presented in order of original publication, ranging from early reviews to articles and extracts from his books. Also included are detailed bibliographies and abstracts together with contributions by such writers as Van Gennep, Goldenweiser and Stanner. This book will be invaluable to those studying sociology and anthropology, but will also be of interest to those studying the history or philosophy of religion, as well as to anyone with an interest in Durkheim.
in civilised society the rising "crime rate" is a thing of terror. Clever governments manipulate it, the public messianically fear it, and the social scientists misunderstand it. In the face of such confusion Emile Durkheim reminds us that without a crime rate society is utterly impossible; it cannot constitute itself, maintain its solidarity, or develop morally. In short, we cannot live with or without a crime rate. This dissertation is an exegetical work, and attempts to unpack the Criminology of Emile Durkheim. It is divided into six chapters, five of which are expository, the sixth critical. It begins with a look - in overview - at Durkheim`s philosophy and how it underpins his theories of crime and punishment (chap.1). By their nature theories of crime and punishment (chap.2) presuppose the more primary theoretical formulations both of evolution and society (chap.3), the one answering the theoretical time requirement, the other the spatial requirement, and each symbiotically related to the other in an integral theory of social evolution. Durkheim`s treatment of the modern State (and the Conscience Collective) as an organ of social control (chap.4), is of primary importance, not least because it underpins his treatment of the broader issues, such as the connection between civil and criminal law, morality, and authority (chap. 5). Since there is hardly a serious Durkheimian proposition that is reducible to a provable or an uncontentious fact (chap. 6), it can hardly surprise us that, on the one hand, he attracted such copious criticism and, on the other, has remained, perhaps the most popular sociologist of the twentieth and twenty first centuries.
