Durkheim

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was a French sociologist and one of the principal figures in the founding of sociology as a modern academic discipline. Trained at the École Normale Supérieure, he pursued a career devoted to establishing sociology as a rigorous, empirical science. He taught at the University of Bordeaux and later the University of Paris, and he helped found the scholarly journal L'Année Sociologique in 1898, which aimed to coordinate and promote sociological research.

Durkheim's work focused on social facts—patterns of behavior, beliefs, and institutions that exist outside individuals and exercise coercive power over them. He argued that societies are held together not by shared individual traits but by collective norms and values, a notion he called the collective conscience. He analyzed how social order emerges through the division of labor, contrasting mechanical solidarity in traditional societies with organic solidarity in modern ones, and he introduced the concept of anomie to describe normlessness during periods of rapid change.

His key books include The Division of Labor in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). In Suicide, he proposed that variations in suicide rates reflect social structures rather than individual psychology; in The Elementary Forms, he scrutinized religion as a social phenomenon, arguing that religious life expresses the power of the collective and reinforces social cohesion. He also emphasized positivist, empirical methods in sociology, advocating rigorous data collection and systematic analysis.

Durkheim's ideas helped establish sociology as a science of society and influenced later functionalist and structuralist approaches. His emphasis on social facts, institutions, and collective life shaped the study of religion, education, and social integration. Durkheim's work remains a central reference in sociological theory and the history of the discipline.