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Emile Durkheim (1858–1917)

Although August Comte is popularly held as the founding father of sociology, Emile Durkheim has to be credited with making sociology a standardized academic discipline. In fact, Durkheim is the pioneer in developing sociology into a social scientific discipline and thereby, establishing its legitimacy in the French academic world. He carried forward Comte's spirit of searching for a positivist method for studying society. In the world history of sociology, Durkheim remains as a leading figure in developing not only a distinctive conception of the subject matter of sociology but also as one who developed sociological theory in particular.

A BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH

David Emile was the fourth child born to Melanie and Moise Durkheim on 15 April 1858. His birth place was the small town of Epinal, situated in the French Eastern-border province. Durkheim's father was a chief rabbi of that region and the last member of an unbroken line of eight generations of father–son rabbis.

As a descendant from a long line of rabbis, Emile Durkheim studied to be a rabbi and was destined to be the next one in the family. Interestingly, along with training in religions he attended secular schools too. However, ultimately he rejected the religious heritage. He was more in a mood for training in scientific methods as well in the moral principles needed to shape and govern social life.

Durkheim's childhood was spent in a family which was content and close-knit although not very wealthy. Coming from a healthy family, he was drawn in his youth towards a mystical form of Catholicism. Very soon he turned towards a more secular vocation, retaining his interests on moral order for social life. He even dropped his first name of David because of its Hebrew connotation. He left after his graduation from Epinal for higher studies in Paris. With rigorous preparation for admission to the elite Ecole Normale Superieure, he secured admission after three years. He studied in Ecole philosophy and history. Simultaneously, he was attracted to the sociological texts of August Comte and Herbert Spencer.

Durkheim obtained his doctorate degree from the University of Paris for the work which was published in 1893, entitled De la division du travail social in French. In English it translates as The Division of Labor in Society, which is considered as one of the fundamental classical texts in sociology. During the period 1882–87, he had to teach philosophy in some schools since sociology, as a discipline, was yet to develop in the academia. Only in 1887 he could secure a faculty position at the University of Bordeaux, France. This was actually facilitated by some substantial publications by him after his exposure to Germany. In Germany, Durkheim was introduced to the scientific psychology of Wilhelm Wundt.

It was to Durkheim's effort that for the first time in a French University a course on sociology could be introduced at Bordeaux. He was the chair of Social Science in the University from 1896 to 1902. Initially he was teaching courses in education to school teachers. His focus was essentially on imparting a moral education to young teachers so that it could be transmitted to students around. His concern was to arrest the perceived moral degradation around him at that time.

Finally, Durkheim was taken as a faculty member at the elite Sorbonne University, Paris. Due to sustained academic efforts he could secure the recognition of sociology at Sorbonne in 1913. Meanwhile Durkheim could entrench himself as a thorough professional of the discipline of sociology through consistent publication of some of the major texts in the history of the discipline. In 1893, as noted before, he published The Division of Labor in Society. Subsequent to this, in 1895 he brought out almost a manual for an appropriate sociological method in The Rules of Sociological Method. Immediately after that he applied this method to come out with the fundamental sociological treatise on Suicide, in 1897. Durkheim's study of aboriginal Australian society appeared in 1912 as The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

Durkheim was instrumental in establishing sociology as an academic discipline and institutionalizing it in university departments subsequently. In 1896, he founded the journal L’anee sociologique. The impact of the setting up of a professional journal on the discipline was widespread. An intellectual circle could grow around the journal which impacted upon other humanities disciplines like linguistics, anthropology, psychology and history.

In sociology, Durkheim is seen as a bearer of a conservative traditionp — an inheritor of the Comtean tradition. However, during his time he was more in alignment with Liberal politics. His ideas attracted the then French government and it is being held that his liberal pro-republican views helped him to gain the confidence of the public as well as the government. But Durkheim refrained from taking any active role in political activities; this was with an exception. In 1894, Durkheim played an active public role in the defense of Captain Alfred Dreyfus, a French army official. Dreyfus was a Jew and was falsely convicted of treason through a court-martial by a conservative anti-semitic French military. Against the night-wing reactionary forces Durkheim defended Dreyfus with zeal and aided the liberal and socialist movement against it. From a deep sense of morality he struck to the grand task of contesting moral crisis and degeneration of the emergent modern society.

The influence of Durkheim's sociological concern among his students was so much that it permeated to other social science disciplines. During World War II, he actively wrote and campaigned for the French government. The killings of many of his favourite students during the War, including his son Andre’ Durkheim, had a profound effect on Durkheim's mind. Grief-stricken he died at the age of fifty nine only, on 15 November 1917. Durkheim's contribution to sociology remains unsurpassed, with proposed writings on sociological methodology, sociology of modernity, education, religion and morality.

SOCIAL AND INTELLECTUAL INFLUENCES

Like all other classical thinkers on society, Emile Durkheim was greatly shaped by the rumblings of the emergent modern society of the nineteenth-century Europe. Despite his whole-hearted appreciation and application of the principle of science, rationality and strivings for social reformism, he is considered as a conservative intellectual. Paradoxically, he was politically liberal. The social milieu of his lifetime holds a clue to this.

The French society of Durkheim's time was marked by major socio-political events like Franco-Prussian War and its resultant recurrent political crises. Such a scenario was aggravated by persistent economic and political disturbances. The German occupation of his hometown Epinal and the wounds inflicted upon his Jewish community impaled upon Durkheim's young mind. The subsequent anti-semitic sentiments in France took him unaware as the indictment of Jewish citizens of France as responsible for the French defeat, was puzzling for him. More than anti-semiticism he understood the events as that of a lack of moral order of the day.

Rapid industrialization in France also resulted in repeated conflicts between the employers and the employees. The aggressive profiteering by the enterprises and the conflict with the working class marked the French society, which experienced a very short establishment of the Paris commune — an egalitarian republic in 1878. The ruthless action of the French government in crushing the Commune moved Durkheim, who opted for a need of a just moral order for France. He abhorred any violent actions from any side, and instead understood that since the French Revolution of 1789, the socio-political order gradually got enmeshed in divisions and disorder. What became of paramount interest for Durkheim when he was still a young student was to re-establish a moral fabric of the society in order to overcome the crisis. Thereafter, he dedicated himself to a study of society which could be reformative in its goal. He attempted to make sociology a discipline which could moralize the society. As he wrote:

Although we set out primarily to study reality, it does not follow that we do not wish to improve it; we should judge our researches to have no worth at all if they were to have only a speculative interest. If we separate carefully the theoretical from the practical problems; it is not to the neglect of the latter; but on the contrary, to be in better position to solve them. (Durkheim 1964: 33)

As far as his intellectual shaping is concerned, Durkheim rejected his religions heritage in his teens and was also quite disinterested in his earlier years of education. The emphasis on the literary and the aesthetic was not to Durkheim's likings. On the whole, he was looking for a discipline guided by scientific methods to examine the moral crisis of the society. He was essentially into an intellectual frame of mind to reorganize the society on a firm moral ground.

Till Durkheim could introduce a course on social science the prestigious Ecole Normale did not have any course in sociology. Subjects like history and philosophy fell short of quenching Durkheim's thirst for developing a discipline which could understand and proceed from the general laws of society. Neither history nor philosophy used positivistic scientific techniques of investigating social phenomena. Nevertheless, Durkheim drew essential points from such traditional disciplines but stuck to his belief that one needed a positivist method to develop a science of society. He was of the view that, one needed an empirical perspective to study society, if one wished to develop general laws of society.

Before we note the particular intellectual figures with whom Durkheim came in touch and how they influenced his thinking, we need to acknowledge that Durkheim's sociological thinking was a synthesis of two opposite traditions of social thought. At the same time he was a product of the spirit of French Enlightenment, and a bearer of the conservative reaction against the Enlightenment thoughts.

From the philosophies of Jean-Jacques Rousseau, Voltaire and Diderot, Durkheim imbibed the spirit of liberty, democracy and rationality. Whereas, his penchant was for morality and organic social life, his insistence was on social order. As far as specific through influence is concerned, he was mainly drawn towards the German thinkers like Immanuel Kant, Herbert Spencer, Wilhelm Wundt and among the French were Henri de Saint-Simon and Auguste Comte.

Quite evidently, sociological ideas of Comte and Spencer were adopted and adapted by Durkheim. Comte's argument for a positive science of society was carried forward by him, although he was sceptical about Comte's grand idea of sociology becoming a new ‘religion’ of humanity. Also, on moral and scientific insights Durkheim was averse to Spencer's focus on utilitarianism as the basis of social evolution. Instead, he appreciated Spencer's thought on complexity, differentiation and integration as the basis of social evolution.

From the world of philosophy, Durkheim even recognized idealist philosopher Kant's idea about moral social existence. But Durkheim was keen to work on the nature of modern society. Unlike Kant's observation on morality in general, he was interested to diagnose the possibility of building up a moral order in the emergent industrial world. The clue was taken from Saint-Simon to vigorously examine the nature of intricate relationships that mark a modern industrial society.

The experimental psychology of the German psychologist Wilhelm Wundt inspired Durkheim to apply scientific experimental techniques to investigate social life as well. Although Wundt applied it at the level of individual psyche, Durkheim believed that the same could be extended to study human collective life. Charles Renouvier's position that a collective reality is as real as individual reality even at the psychological level had a profound effect on Durkheim's conception of collective conscience. Finally, it needs to be admitted that although Durkheim himself rejected the legacy of being rabbi's son and turned toward rational scientific thinking, his early years of vigorous disciplined life of a Jewish family had its bearing on him. Not that he was interested in religion per se, but the universal function of religion as a binding force and a moralizing agent remained a running thread in Durkheim's sociology.

METHOD OF STUDY

Emile Durkheim's primary task was to put sociology as a scientific discipline. For the purpose he worked towards developing a distinct subject matter of sociology. The idea was to work out a distinct conception of the subject matter of sociology and subjecting it to empirical study. Towards developing almost a manual for conducting sociological study, in 1895 he published The Rules of Sociological Method. Here, he argued and established that the specific matter of sociology is what he called social facts. Subsequently in 1897 Durkheim in his seminal work entitled, Suicide demonstrated the application of what he thought to be the appropriate method for a discipline like sociology — if sociology had to be considered as a science of society.

Methodologically speaking, Durkheim carried forward the positivist legacy left by August Comte. Considered to be the founding father of sociology, Comte advocated positivism as the philosophical backbone for sociology. He proposed a shift from social philosophy to social science. Drawing knowledge away from metaphysical and theological underpinnings positivism placed greater stress on immediate sensory experience and the data observed.

Positivism essentially imbibed the British empiricist tradition led by Francis Bacon. Positivism rests on a conviction that experience is the only reliable source of human knowledge. Comte in his A General view of Positivism (1898) illustrated the development of human society through the three different stages of knowledge. Accordingly, human society has moved from a stage of theological state to the final positive stage, through the intermediate metaphysical stage. It was the positive stage where all abstract and unproven ideas of the natural world were discarded. Instead, all natural phenomena were to be explained in terms of their material basis of inter-connectivity. The cause and effect relationship was held to be constant with a real basis.

To build a case for a new discipline like sociology as a science of society, Durkheim realized the effectiveness of the positivist school of thought. He opined that sociology remains largely a philosophical exercise dealing in a heterogeneous assortment of all embracing generalization, which rests more upon logical derivation from a priori precepts than upon systematic empirical study. Instead, Durkheim maintained that not everything and anything could be studied by sociology, but only a select group of social phenomena qualify to be its subject matter. They were to be termed as social facts, and the task of sociology was to seek the determining cause of a social fact in the social facts preceding it. Thereby, the laws of the causal relations of social phenomena could be achieved.

We have seen that sociological explanation consists of exclusively in establishing relationships of causality, that a phenomenon must be joined to its cause, or, on the contrary, a cause to its useful effects. Moreover, since social phenomenon clearly rule out any control by the experimenter, the comparative method is the sole one suitable for sociology. (Durkheim 1982: 147)

Earlier Enlightenment thinkers conceived of society as a subjective and an artificial entity, so as to deny it as a part of nature. Arguing against such a conception of society, Durkheim proposed that society to could be studied like nature as an objective reality. Thereby, it could be studied scientifically. Like natural sciences the subject matter had to be open to empirical methods of investigation. What best could be studied empirically but social facts?

Durkheim asserted that the proper subject matter of sociology had to be only social facts.

Here, then, is a category of facts which present very special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him. Consequently, since they consist of representations and actions, they cannot be confused with organic phenomena, nor with psychical phenomena … they constitute a new species and to them must be exclusively assigned the term social. (Durkheim 1982: 52)

Social facts are defined by Durkheim as those emergent properties and realities of a connectivity that could not be understood in terms of the motives, inclinations, or actions of individuals. All are essentially shaped and governed by external social environments, and in twin are constrained by them. Social facts exist in their own right independently of individual manifestation. Thus, society is self generated (sui generis), which has its logic of existence irreducible to its components.

Just as physical and biological sciences have their own group of phenomena subject to their own methods of treatment, sociology too has its own exclusive subject matter, i.e., the social facts. However, not all facts are ‘social’. They have distinct characteristics. Durkheim, therefore, defined social facts as ways of thinking, acting and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion by reason of which they impose upon him/her. He gave the example of the belief and practices of religious life inherited by an individual, as a sui generis entity that an individual is born into. They exist as a social phenomenon a priori.

The overriding interest of Durkheim was to formulate determinant social laws, which was possible once the subject matter attained the characteristics of objective ‘social facts’. It is only then the social laws could study and explain the relationships between them. Hence, quite evidently Durkheim had to emphasize on the external, objective, measurable relationships among social facts. The three distinctive features of social facts according to him are that of externality, constraining and generality.

A thing like ‘external’ existence as a feature ensures that social facts do exist over and above the will or wishes of individual beings. As they exist a priori and independent of individual manifestation, they have an imposing character. In case of purely moral maxims, the public conscience exercises a check on every act of individuals, which is obtained by means of the surveillance it exercises over the conduct of individuals, aided by appropriate penalties at its disposal. Constraints are not always violent or explicit in day to day conduct, but only in moral maxims they are so. Durkheim also pointed out that social facts are not always backed by stable social organization; at times they may be backed by an element of social current in it. By social current he meant such temporary collective behaviour like crowd behaviour or spectator behaviour with which an individual gets swayed in only for a particular duration of time. Once the event gets over, the individual withdraws from the collective behaviour. Under conditions of such social currents, nobody instigates an individual to do so, yet one feels the urge to do certain things. Importantly, even if individuals spontaneously contribute to the production of the common emotion, the impression that is received would be markedly different from that if some individuals are left alone. However, Durkheim was clear that as for the forms that the collective state assume when refracted in the individuals, they become things of another sort.

The third important feature of social fact is that of generality. Durkheim held that sociological phenomena are not defined by their universality. Rather the connective aspects of beliefs and practices of a group characterize truly social phenomena. A social fact is a group condition repeated in individuals because it is imposed on them. It is found in each part because it exists in the whole. So, social phenomena are general because they collective, and not collective because they are general. Hence, society is supreme and individuals are all bound by the ascendancy of connectivity. This becomes evident if we consider the examples of the beliefs and practices that are transmitted to us ready made by previous generations. We receive and adopt them because they are being perpetuated as collective. In the same way, the very fact that they are treated as valid, indicate their authority and imposition. Thus, social facts being the special subject matter of sociology are distinguishable by characteristics of externality, constraining and generality.

RULES FOR SOCIOLOGICAL STUDY

In Chapter II of The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim put the first and most fundamental rule of sociological method as: Consider social facts as things. Social facts are not things, but Durkheim made a case for that. Social facts are to be considered as things. A thing is any object of knowledge which is not naturally penetrable by simple understanding. To treat facts of a certain order as things, we observe a certain attitude of mind towards them. We tend to treat them as exclusively knowable from outside.

Durkheim, in his attempt to assign sociology the stake of being a scientific discipline, stated the short comings of social theory:

Instead of observing, describing, and comparing things, we are content to focus our consciousness upon, to analyze, and to combine our ideas. Instead of a science concerned with realities, we produce no more than an ideological analysis. To be sure, this analysis does not necessarily exclude all observation. One may appeal to the facts in order to confirm one's hypotheses or the final conclusions to which they lead. But in this case, facts intervene only secondarily as examples or confirmatory proofs; they are not the central subject of science. Such a science therefore proceeds from ideas to things, not from things to ideas. (Durkheim 1982: 14–15)

Durkheim pointed out that earlier social theorists, be it Comte or Spencer, had by and large failed to come up with the appropriate method to be used in analysing social phenomena. While it is true that Comte by stressing the necessity of the positivistic approach, had dealt with method but it was in too general terms. Spencer too tried to address the possibilities of scientific discipline in his The Study of Sociology, but fell short of developing a proper method which could be used by social theorists. Hence, Durkheim set out to formulate rules to help single out social facts. His methodology essentially rested on such formulation of rules. Having considered social facts as things, Durkheim suggested that certain rules need to be followed in order to study them objectively. In fact, those rules follow from the preceding basic rule:

1. In observing social facts, preconceptions must be set aside. According to Durkheim, sentiment is a subject for scientific study but not the criterion of scientific truth. For a true scientific exercise, social scientific method needs to free itself from all kinds of prejudices and preconceptions while observing social facts
2. One must define social facts not as ideas, but in terms of their inherent properties. The subject matter of every sociological study should comprise a group of phenomena defined in advance by certain common external characteristics. All phenomena, thus defined, must then be included in the group which is a precondition for classifying such facts, and
3. Investigation of any order of social facts is to be conducted independent of their individual manifestation. This would ensure that all individual peculiarity could be ignored in favour of a general character.

EXPLANATION, CAUSALITY AND COMPARATIVE METHOD

According to Durkheim, when a social phenomena is to be explained, the primary task is to find out the efficient cause that produces it and, consequently the function if fulfils. As a social rationalist, Durkheim dismissed any notion that considers individual consciousness as the source of social evolution. Additionally, sociological laws do not follow from any general laws of psychology. In the nature of society itself lies the explanation of social life — society surpasses the individual in time and space, as a result of which it imposes upon individuals ways of acting and thinking.

Now once the individual is ruled out, only society remains. It is therefore in the nature of society itself that we must seek the explanation of social life. We can conceive that, since it transcends infinitely the individual both in time and space, it is capable of imposing upon him the ways of acting and thinking that it has consecrated by its authority. This pressure, which is the distinctive sign of social facts, is that which all exert upon each individual. (Durkheim 1982: 128)

In the Durkhemian scheme, a whole is not a simple sum of its parts. By this principle, a society is not a mere sum of its individual members. Therefore, one needs to search for the immediate and determining causes of a social fact in the very nature of some other similar social facts. The determining causes of a social fact should be sought among social facts preceding it and not among states of the individual consciousness. As a consequence one also admits that the function of a social fact lies in relation to some social end only.

For Durkheim, sociological explanation consists exclusively in establishing relation of causality, i.e., connecting a phenomenon to its cause or rather a cause to its effects. Although he asserted that social facts are to be treated like things, yet when it comes to observing them, these facts are different from physical things. Hence, sociology has to take help of indirect means of observing social facts. To establish causation between social facts one needs suitable indicators to make comparisons between a prior and a subsequent state of phenomena. The indirect method of experiment is the comparative method. Comparative method is not meant for merely descriptive purpose. In fact, for Durkheim comparative sociology is de facto sociology.

Comparative method involves the use of social indicators which would serve for Durkheim as the means by which the abstract theoretical statements could be linked with operational definitions. This could only facilitate empirical studies. While it is true that The Rules of Sociological Method contains Durkheim's essential methodological statements, the application of the same is evident in all major sociological works. In his varied studies, Durkheim used three types of social indicators for making comparisons effective. He used them in combinations but one can see the predominance of statistical comparisons in his study of Suicide (1897). His first major work (thesis) The Division of Labour in Society (1893) is mainly based on historical comparisons using historical indicators. Whereas, the use of ethnographic comparisons dominates his study, Elementary Forms of Religions Life (1912). For Durkheim, the use of the comparative method is based on the assumption that ‘a given effect has always a single corresponding cause’. In his study of suicide, he showed that since there were different causes of suicide, therefore, they were different types of suicides. He posited his methodology in the true tradition of the positivist thinking, the basic tenet of which is that Man and Nature belong to the same Universe and, further, the behaviour of both is governed by the material world. The relationship can be discovered and explained in terms of casual relationship, i.e., in terms of cause and effect relationship.

For all practical purposes, Durkheim basically advocated the method of concomitant variation to engage in comparative sociology. This was helpful as social phenomena cannot be compared under controlled situations, i.e., a direct experimental method is not possible. As he said:

We have only one way of demonstrating that one phenomenon is the cause of another. This is to compare the cases where they are both simultaneously present or absent, so as to discover whether the variations they display in these different combinations of circumstances provide evidence that one depends upon the other. (Durkheim 1982: 147)

MECHANICAL AND ORGANIC SOLIDARITY

As a social theorist of the modern society, Durkheim was primarily interested in the changing nature of individual–societal ties as a society gets modernized. Given his social and intellectual bearings, Durkheim was interested to sociologically analyse the aspects of moral order of the society. He always thought morality as a binding force but at the same time he recognized the changing nature of that binding or regularity forces. His doctoral thesis published in 1893 was the result of such a concern. Essentially he was seeking an answer to a very basic question: how was that in the emergent modern society people were becoming more and more individualistic as well as independent but at the same time were becoming more solidaristic? Thus, a classic study on social solidarity one finds in The Division of Labour in Society. His famous concepts of mechanical and organic solidarity as markers of two different types of society — archaic and advanced respectively — are explained in his work. His doctoral thesis contended that growing individuation does not entail disintegration but under normal conditions promotes qualitatively better integration. Durkheim's comparative study of primitive and modern society in terms of what held society together is a central focus of his sociology.

The French title of Durkheim's doctoral thesis was De la Division Du Travail Social. Hence, it is not the economic growth of labour that he was interested in. By social division of labour he meant broadly social differentiation which entails interpersonal relationships, interdependence and complimentarity. As he classified,

… the division of labour is not peculiar to the economic world; we can observe its growing influence in the most varied fields of society. The political, administrative, and judicial functions are growing more and more specialized. It is the same with the aesthetie and scientific functions. (Durkheim 1982: 38)

From a functional perspective Durkheim tried to examine the following areas:

1. What social needs are best satisfied by the division of labour
2. The causes and conditions on which the division of labour rests, and
3. The deviation from the normal conditions and the pathologic forms of division of labour.

Premising his understanding on an organismic analogy, Durkheim used the term function in the sense of how the different parts and movements of an organism are related to each other and fulfill the needs of the organism. Thus, the division of labour was examined as performing the crucial functions of the body society. On a psychological note, he even contended that attraction towards each other is not caused only as a result of likeliness or resemblances. Differences can also be a cause of mutual attraction. Not all differences, ‘Only certain kinds of differences attract each other. They are those which, instead of opposing and excluding, complement each other’ (Durkheim 1964: 55). Thus, he was basically focused on the needs satisfied by greater social differentiation in the society. For that, relying on historical indicators Durkheim attempted a reconstruction and comparison between two types of integration or solidarity — mechanical and organic.

Primarily interested to diagnose modern advanced societies, Durkheim used the historical data to show the extent of one type of solidarity against the other as evident of one type of solidarity against the other as evident in legal codes. In a positivistic quantitative manner he proceeded to say:

But social solidarity is a completely moral phenomenon which, taken by itself, does not lead itself to exact observation not indeed to measurement. To proceed to this classification and this comparison, we must substitute for this internal fact which escapes us an external index which symbolizes it and study the former in the light of the latter.… This visible symbol is law. (Durkheim 1964: 64)

Making a comparative study of law/legal sanctions of two kinds of society, archaic and advanced, Durkheim arrived at two types of laws. The archaic societies are marked by repressive law, whereas the advanced societies are marked by more of restitutive laws.

Durkheim went on to argue that, the greater the degree of repressive laws in a society, the greater the indication of mechanical solidarity. On the other hand, the greater the extent of restitutive laws, the greater is the indication of organic solidarity. Generally understood, mechanical solidarity refers to solidarity out of similarities — a kind of communal collectivity. On the other hand, organic solidarity refers to solidarity out of differentiation. Here, differentiation emerges as a result of dissimilarities. The significant aspect of such differentiated, yet solidarity is that greater differentiation solicits greater reciprocal cooperation. Complementarity between differentiated parts is a hallmark of such solidarity, quite unlike that of mechanical solidarity where the totality leaves little scope for individuation or specialization.

By mechanical solidarity, Durkheim referred to in a general sense, solidarity which is premised on similarities. It is a collectivity marked by communal identities. On the other hand, by organic solidarity he meant such a solidarity which is arrived through differentiation. This differentiation is a result of dissimilarities. The dissimilar elements/aspects reciprocate with each other with a goal towards co-operation. Thereby, an organic solidarity is ultimately solidarity of complementary parts.

A society characterized by mechanical solidarity exhibits social integration which is based on a high level of shared beliefs, values, customs and ritual interactions. It is an integration of similarities. In such a society all individuals share the same conception of reality. This indicates a very weak development of individuality under mechanical solidarity.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the collective or common conscience. No doubt, it has not a specific organ as a substratum; it is, by definition, diffuse in every reach of society. Nevertheless, it has specific characteristics which make it a distinct reality. It is in effect, independent of the particular conditions in which individuals are placed; they pass on and it remains. (Durkheim 1964: 79–80)

In contrast to mechanical solidarity, organic solidarity characterizes a society with individuals and groups who are engaged in highly different activities. Individuals here are different from each other in their uniqueness. Integration as a result is a matter of interdependence. Mutual obligation and reciprocity are imperative condition for social existence. Every individual who performs such specialized tasks brings in a new kind of integration. Specialized functions of differentiated parts ensure a society's continued survival. It is organic because the solidarity is not a result of similarities and likeness but an outcome of differences and complementarity.

… [T]he collective conscience leave[s] open a part of the individual conscience in order that special functions may be established there, functions which it cannot regulate. The more this region is extended, the stronger is the cohesion which results from this solidarity. In effect, on the one hand, each one depends as much more strictly on society as labour is more divided; and, on the other, the activity of each is as much more personal as it is more specialized. (Durkheim 1964: 131)

As against community life, Durkheim anticipated the rise of associative life in modern societies. Associative instead of an encompassing community life stands as a marker of modern social living. However, Durkheim was not in favour of a total and absolute replacement of communal bonding by differentiated individuals engaging in organic linkages. He, rather indicates the possibility and desirability of a measure of both, mechanical as well as organic solidarity in any normal modern society. This becomes evident when Durkheim writes, ‘…it is no necessity for choosing between them once for all nor of condemning one in the name of the other. What is necessary to give each, at each moment in history, the place that is fitting to it’ (Durkheim 1964: 397–98).

Nevertheless, Durkheim had a consistent understanding of the features of division of social labour throughout his works. It was to understand the archaic societies primarily, not exclusively, in terms of similitude of their constituent elements. Similitude, here, signified homogeneity and communal identity to the exclusion of differentiation among roles in the groups or amongst groups in the layer social context. Although Durkheim conceptualized archaic primitive society as one of savage experience. Such an experience involves a total realization of the communal bond from which a modern society is free. The complex occupational specialization is typical of modern societies, accompanied by functionally specific norms. Unlike this complex yet organized structure the archaic societies were basically segmental societies.

CONSCIENCE COLLECTIVE: CRIME AND PUNISHMENT

Durkheim's concept of conscience collective stands as the axis of his explanation of social solidarity. Generally it is understood as an emergent characteristic of a society which is a result of a unified mental attitude to the events of the world. Interestingly it acts on the same (out of which it grows) and sustains it.

Every society is characterized by a particular set of collective representations — socially shared conceptions about reality. Such representations are shaped by collectively shared beliefs, values and norms of interacting individuals. Thus, such collective representations are generally shared by the members of society. According to Durkheim, collective conscience is formed by these collective representations. It then stands as a unified set of collective ways and rules of interpreting the world. Once it emerges out of the individuals’ collective ways of acting, believing and thinking it attains a life of its own. It possesses an independent level of social reality onto itself. While it is realized only in individuals, essentially it is the psychic type of society. Thereby, collective conscience has its own conditions of existence and mode of development.

Collective conscience as a concept was of central importance for Durkheim in his examination of the changing nature of social solidarity. He, in fact, related this concept with the penal sanctions/legal system of a society. According to him, studying the nature of legal sanctions could serve as an entry point in the understanding of the nature of collective conscience of any society. In fact, sanctions/legal system could provide the appropriate indicators so necessary for making historical comparisons.

A repressive penal sanction is correlated with a strong collective conscience. For Durkheim, repressive penal sanction serves as the most objective index of mechanical solidarity. Repressive penal sanction features in such a society where the hold of the collective is overwhelming, which leave little room for individual initiatives. Repressive sanctions impose expiatory punishments upon the person who offends the collective conscience. The invincibility of the collective conscience, the strong nature of it leads to a strong reaction on behalf of the society, in case its collective sentiment is offended. Repressive law employs violent sanctions and aims to punish or destroy the one who violates the rule.

There exists a social solidarity which comes from a certain number of states of conscience which are common to all the members of the same society. That is what repressive law materially represents, at least in so far as it is essential. The part that it plays in the general integration of society evidently depends upon the greater or lesser extent of the social life which the common conscience embraces and regulates. (Durkheim 1964: 109)

In contrast, restitutive sanction is seen by Durkheim as the feature of a different type of social solidarity — where the hold of the collective is less overwhelming. It is the organic solidarity which allows space for individuals to exercise discretion and choice. The hold of collective conscience is there still, but the nature undergoes a change. An improved division of labour allows individuality to grow and the hold of morality is less severe. Here, as Durkheim said, ‘Society becomes more capable of collective movement, at the same time that each of its elements has more freedom of movement’ (Durkheim 1964: 131). Thus, when the collective sentiment is hurt, the reaction is not expiatory but consists of a simple return to the state ante. Modern society marked by organic solidarity emphasizes on a legal system and not on punishment. ‘Damage–interests have to penal character; they are only a means of reviewing the past in order to reinstate it, as for as possible, to its normal form’ (111). This is so because an organic solidarity links individual conscience to the collective conscience not directly but through mediations — through the intermediary of special organs resulting from an advanced social division of labour. Contrasting the restitutive law with the repressive sanction Durkheim thus says, ‘While repressive law tends to remain diffuse within society, restitutive law creates organs which are more and more specialized …’ (113). The contractual nature of integration is seen as the principle reason behind such change in the nature of law.

Methodologically, it was important for Durkheim to study the nature of organized sanction in any society to comment on the nature of its solidarity. Crime is an act that disturbs the collective conscience of any society. Society acts as a reaction. Crime is a damage done to the moral order, so that the collective conscience reacts to restore the normal moral order. The sanctions are just the reactions against crime, and the sanctions are codified in the legal system of any society. The legal system or organized sanction serves as the relatively manifest component of any social structure. Substantively, it serves as an index of solidarity in the normal state of society. Thus, the study of crime and the nature of reaction against it, be it punishment or law was crucial for Durkheim to examine and analyse the nature of collective conscience and thereby, the social solidarity.

Durkheim theorized that when values are deeply rooted in the collective conscience, punishment might become an almost instinctive reaction. The emotion involved in the passionate response to crime is not pure affectivity. It is sentimental, structured by norms and symbols which interpose themselves between the stimulus (damage) and response (punishment). Here, punishment counters the unsettling threat of anxiety. In archaic societies the prevalence of passionate reactions against any damage to its collective moral order shows the lack of differentiation in social life. A common and essential foundation of all kinds of crime is that it violates the normalcy of the collective order. But interestingly, not all acts are considered to be criminal in all societies, which show that an act is a crime with respect to the nature of morality of a society. Durkheim also held that a certain rate of crime is inevitable and in fact, functionally crime provides the allocation for the dramatic display of social solidarity. The society comes into play the moment its collective conscience is threatened or being damaged. As a result, crime allows such occasions for a test and revival of the existing social institutions and relations. Again, the nature of reactions on such occasions indicates how far the society can absorb and show flexibility with respect to the acts of crime.

Since an act is criminal, it damages the collective conscience — such an understanding is inappropriate for Durkheim. Instead, only when it damages the collective conscience it becomes criminal. Thus, the collective conscience decides whether any act is a crime or not. Evidently, the reaction against such acts also differs from time to time, given the changing nature of the collective conscience. Durkheim studied the steady decline in repressive punishment since the nineteenth-century. He could see that the nature of law had undergone a change and the very emergency of restitutive sanction indicated to him that qualitatively social solidarity had undergone a change. The advanced modern societies to which the restitutive sanction correspond are no longer bound by totalistic ties. Instead, the contractual nature of ties between individuals facilitated by growing division of labour conforms to the general law of society. As understood by Durkheim,

‘[W]hen’ men unite in a contract, it is because, through the divisions of labour, either simple or complex, they need each other. But in order for them to co-operate harmoniously, it is not enough that they enter into a relationship, nor even that they feel the state of mutual dependence in which they find themselves. It is still necessary that the conditions of this co–operation be fixed for the duration of their relations. (Durkheim 1964: 212)

ABNORMAL FORMS OF DIVISION OF LABOUR

Durkheim's foundational idea about the division of social labour is that it is a result of the struggle for existence. The struggle for existence is from within and acute as socialites become more voluminous and denser. The division of labour is a fall-out of the increase in the volume and density of societies, where the process is a continuous one. However, Durkheim was alert to the possibility of abnormal forms of the division of labour. He talked about three such forms:

1. Anomic division of labour
2. Forced division of labour, and
3. Inappropriate distribution of functions.

Drawing insights from the economic crises in France from 1845 to 1869, Durkheim indicated the case for the anomic division of labour. Industrial or commercial crises undermine organic solidarity and as a result social functions are ill-adjusted with one another. Even when industrial functions become more specialized, the conflict between capital and labour gives rise to normlessness. Finally, citing the seventeenth-century working class history, Durkheim pointed out that the birth of intensive large-scale industry had resulted in the absolute separation of workers from the employer signalling greater regimentation of workers. Resentment as a result of this also leads to anomie and the division of labour becomes a source of disintegration instead. However, these are historically exceptional and extraordinary situations.

Second, Durkheim talked about the forced division of labour which he thought was quite possible in society. It is so because unlike living organism where every anatomic part performs specific tasks automatically as a consequence of its nature and place in the organism, divisions in a society are quite subtle, delicate and liable to change. At times hereditary dispositions may deviate from actual aptitude for functions. For other reasons too, like institution of classes or castes, the distribution of social functions may deviate from distribution of natural talents. Such misfits cause forced division of labour which instead of strengthening solidarity ties create anxiety and antagonism. Forced division of labour does not mean the existence of pre-established rules on the basis of which different functions are assigned to different individuals. Regulations are not abnormal and thereby are not a cause of forced division of labour. It becomes forced when the division of labour lacks spontaneity. There should not be any obstacle, of whatever nature, to prevent an individual to choose a specialization and perform a function which is in tune with one's faculties, taste and aptitude. Thus, an idea of justice is mooted thereby by Durkheim at this point.

Finally, Durkheim talked about commercial industrial or other enterprise where the distribution of functions is inappropriate; inappropriate in the sense that, it does not offer adequate material for specialized individuals to perform effectively. As a result of this lack, integrated functional activity becomes less efficient. This insufficient work only makes solidarity imperfect. The incoherent integration is obvious as the different functions become discontinuous as the activity of each individual falls even lower than what it normally would be. It shows that normal division of labour does not only specifies the activity of an individual, but strengthens the substance of the specialization which makes such labour continuous. By adding more life, making individuals solidaristic, division of labour actually adds to the unity of the society.

SOCIOLOGY OF SUICIDE

Suicide (1897) is Durkheim's third major work but stands out as a monograph which bears the application of Durkheim's pronounced statements about appropriate sociological method. In this monograph he used government records containing suicide rate statistics for various segments of European population. For comparative purpose he studied suicide rate of ethnic groups, religious groups of different social strata, across time periods, and according to gender and marital status. His purpose was to establish suicide as a social fact and correlating it with nature and degree of social integration. With empirical evidence he showed that a sociological explanation could replace all prevalent notions of suicide as an individualistic act.

Precisely, Durkheim did not study suicide at the level of individual psychological dispositions. Instead, he was interested in the totality of suicides in a society; that is, for him the suicide rate is a phenomenon that qualifies as a social fact. Suicide rate, therefore, is a fact which is separate, distinct and amenable of study in its own terms. The data available to him allowed him to refute those theories which used to explain group variations in the amount of suicide on the basis of psychological, biological/racial genetic, climatic, or geographical factors. Instead, with social phenomenon such as the family, political and economic society and religious society he could establish a correlation. He contended by establishing the correlation that each society has a collective inclination towards suicide (a rate of self homicide) which is fairly constant for each society so long as the basic conditions of its existence continue to be the same.

Every social group has a distinct suicidal tendency which is a group phenomenon. Social cause of suicide can be located by analysing the conditions that each social group is exposed to. The root cause of suicide lies in the logic of existence of social groups. Durkheim found that there is no singular tendency to the act of self homicide. If there is a singular tendency, then we would have only one class of suicide. But if there are different tendencies, then, they are to be put into different classes. Durkheim methodologically left aside individual psychic condition to account for a group phenomenon like suicide rate. Suicide rate is irreversibly a group phenomenon because Durkheim's primary observation was that every society exhibits a particular suicide rate over a particular period of time. Additionally suicide rate varies amongst social groups exposed to varied conditions of social integration. It varies also across time. He held that, analytically it is not possible to observe individual manifestation for suicidal tendency. One cannot study the exact state of mind of any individual prior to the act of committing self-homicide. This absolute lack of data is more so because insanity-related suicide is far less in number than suicide committed by same people. However, no classification of suicide by same people can be made in terms of their morphological types. Hence, the process of classification is reversed by Durkheim. An indirect method of classification done by him rests on an etiological reasoning.

Only in so far as the effective causes differ can there be different types of suicide. For each to have its own nature, it must also have special conditions of existence. The same antecedent or group of antecedents cannot sometimes produce one result and sometimes another, for if so, the difference of the second from the first would itself be without cause which would contradict the principle of causality… we shall be able to determine the social types of suicide by classifying them not directly by their preliminarily described characteristics but by the causes which produce them. (Durkheim 1951: 146–47)

TYPOLOGY OF SUICIDE

Suicide is classified by Durkheim in terms of the causes. As an effect of group condition the suicidal tending is found to be as a result of either excessive individuation and lack of social integration or absolute integration with the collective and lack of individuation. Also, there is a third type which is caused by a general lack of order in the society or normlessness. Accordingly, the three types of suicide are:

1. Egoistic suicide
2. Altruistic suicide, and
3. Anomic suicide.

Again, while tabulating the three categories Durkheim noted a mixed category of suicide, that is, the ego-anomic type.

Analysing the religious, family and political society, Durkheim confirmed the first of the three causes of suicide. It is due to the lack of integration of an individual to the social life that an individual tends to fall back upon one's own resources to seek meaning in life. The ego asserts itself to the point that one is driven to the act of self-homicide. It is due to the lack of purpose as social ties become too loose to hold individuals together. The result is egoistic suicide.

The opposite of egoistic suicide is the altruistic suicide. Here the hold of the society is more than what is necessary. The social ties are in excess and individual life is vigorously governed by customs and habits as in the case of pre-modern archaic societies. Such a group condition is manifested in weak development of the ego. The stranglehold of the collective over the individual results in altruistic suicide. If egoistic suicide is a result of excessive individuation, altruistic suicide is caused by its opposite — the absolute lack of individuation.

The third type of suicide is anomic suicide. This is the most prevalent type of suicide in modern society caused by normlessness. It is not a case of lack or excess of societal ties; instead it is a case of lack of regulation of individual from the society. Since the nineteenth-century Durkheim observed a phenomenal rise of anomic suicide as a result of increasing irregularities of norms in the society.

EGOISTIC SUICIDE

In his sociological endeavour to seek casual explanation of suicide in the structure of society only, Durkheim first analysed how the different religious confessions affect suicide. His data showed that in purely catholic countries like Spain, Portugal and Italy the incidence of suicide was very less compared to the protestant countries like Prussia, Saxony and Denmark. Switzerland offered a more instructive observation as it was populated by both the French and the German. Durkheim could observe the variable influence of the confession on the two different races. The Catholics showed a suicide rate four or five times lower than that of the Protestants. This conclusively proved that irrespective of nationality, religious society has a direct bearing on suicidal tendency.

Additionally, the data showed that generally, the suicidal rate is the least with respect to the Jews, that is, even lower than the Protestants. Apparently, the Jews would have been more inclined to suicide given that their social living used to be more exclusive and intellectually driven. But their low rate of suicide then must be due to the religious society despite aggravating social circumstances.

It is not due to different religious maxims that govern the followers’ suicidal behaviour, as both Catholicism and Protestantism abhor acts of self destruction. But, it is more due to the way the different confessions bind the followers together. The Jews exercise extreme control over their social lives and subject themselves to severe discipline to withstand the harsh and hostile social environment that they face due to their numerical minority. The Protestants differ from the Catholics as their confession encourages free enquiry to a far greater degree than Catholicism. The essential function of all religions is to promote ties and act as a prophylactic agent against suicidal tendency. If the Protestants show a higher suicide rate, it is because the very nature of the confession allows greater concessions to individualistic spirit; it frees individuals from the strict hold of the church. Hence, lesser the ties with the collectivity, greater will be the suicide rate. Given the nature of the confessions, both Catholicism and Judaism provide greater preservation against suicide. The lack of such binding ties actually results in egoistic suicide.

The more intense religious life, the more men are needed to direct it. The greater the number of dogmas and precepts the interpretation of which is not left to individual conscience, the more authorities are required to tell their meanings; moreover, the more numerous these authorities, the more closely they surround and the better they restrain the individual. (Durkheim 1951: 151)

Studying the data from family society, Durkheim offered to quality the popular notion that the unmarried state is less stressful which accounts for the apparent less incidence of suicide amongst unmarried group compared to married people. The raw data of unmarried people needs to be corrected according to him as a large proportion of people below the marriageable age skew the data in favour of unmarried group. This does not explain the effect of family society or marriage upon suicidal tendency. Hence, only the populace above marriageable age is to be analysed. Durkheim realized that marriage has a coefficient of preservation against suicide as it has a salutary effect on individual lives irrespective of sex. But at the event of the death of the spouse, however, the widower faces a less favourable situation than a widow. Durkheim explained this by reasoning that a man enjoys more salutary effect in a married life compared to a woman, and as such the lack of which affects him more severely than a woman. Again, towards the later years of marriage the preservative effect of family society is more due to children than the effect of marriage.

Summarily, married people enjoy a better coefficient of preservation against suicide but it varies with the sexes, with men availing a better protection. The reason is not due to matrimonial selection but due to the influence of the domestic environment. The family society provides the necessary ties which neutralize the suicidal tendency. The immunity provided by family even increases with the density of the family, that is, with the increase in the number of its elements. Drawing conclusion from the statistical data of family society, Durkheim commented on egoistic suicide:

But for a group to be said to have less common life than another means that it is less powerfully integrated; for the state of integration of a social aggregate can only reflect the intensity of the collective life circulating in it. It is more unified and powerful the more active and constant is the intercourse among its members. (Durkheim 1951: 202)

Referring to the political societies too, Durkheim contended that societal ties have a direct bearing on suicidal tendency. He substantiated this with the help of suicide statistics, that ‘… suicide, generally rare in young societies in process of evolution and concentration, increases as they disintegrate’ (Durkheim 1951: 203). The statistical data refutes the popular contention that only during great political upheavals incidences of suicide rises. In fact, during such national political crises and wars it comes down heavily. Since, during such occasions of social disturbances collective sentiments are intensified, be it partisanship, patriotism or political faith. It results in stronger integration of the society. To confront the common danger people close ranks. Again it goes to show that the degree of integration is inversely related to suicidal tendency.

The egoistic type of suicide is then explained in term of the weakening of the collective force acting individuals. As Durkheim confirmed,

Egoism is not merely a contributing factor in it; it is its generating cause. In this case the bond attaching man in life relaxes because that attaching him to society is itself slack. The incidents of private life…. which seem the direct inspiration of suicide and are considered its determining causes are in reality only incidental causes. The individual yields to the slightest shock of circumstance because the state of society has made him a ready prey to suicide. (Durkheim 1951: 215)

ALTRUISTIC SUICIDE

While discussing the egoist type of society, if Durkheim held that collective ties protect individuals from acts of self destruction, he was also aware that such integration needs to be appropriate and adequate only, an excess of which may even have aggravating effects on an individual's life. Altruistic suicide is a type which is marked by an absolute submission of the individual to the collective life. Here, the hold of the society and its collective life is so strong that the ego fails to have a life of its own, and is rather subsumed in the collective.

The popular notion that suicide was unknown among lower (pre-modern) societies, was refuted by Durkheim. He drew upon historical data to show that in such lower societies the communal life used to be too encapsulating for individuals. An excess of integration leads one to surrender individual lives and take recourse to self-homicide in the service of the greater collectivity.

The historical data showed that,

1. Men used to commit suicide at sick beds and on the threshold of old age
2. Women used to plunge into the funeral pyre on their husband's death, and
3. The followers used to take their own lives to save themselves from ignominy on the defeat and death of their chiefs.

Instances of all the above from pre-modern societies show that such acts were considered as a duty to the collective order. In contrast to the egoistic type, here, suicide is due to too rudimentary individuation. Society no longer holds its members in strict tutelage. Thus, in case of altruistic suicide ‘… ego is not its own property, where it is blended with something not itself, where the goal of conduct is exterior to itself, that is, in one of the groups in which it participates’ (Durkheim 1951: 221).

Durkheim further classified altruistic suicide into three sub-types. They are:

1. Obligatory altruistic suicide
2. Optional altruistic suicide, and
3. Acute altruistic suicide.

Obligatory altruistic suicide is the one where the incumbents do so as they participate with the social group with a purpose but the goal is located in the collective and the act is undertaken as a duty. Here, the element of sacrifice is underscored and it is imposed by society for social ends. The best examples are drawn from such traditional practices where the destiny of one is entwined with that of the others.

Optional altruistic suicide is not so imposed by the society. Such acts lack any immediate or apparent motives. It is a case of voluntary sacrifice. Examples of such are drawn from China, Japan, North American Indians, India, etc. For example, in Polynesian lower societies, where on the slightest of offence to the society prompts an individual to take one's own life. It also happens when an individual kills himself purely for the joy of sacrifice without attaching much value to it. The act itself becomes source or object of gratification.

While it is true that in all cases of altruistic suicide, individuals seek to strip himself of his personal being in order to be submerged with the collective which he considers as his true essence. He has no life of his own but such impersonality reaches its peak in case of the acute altruistic suicide.

Collectively, although altruistic suicides are mostly to be found in lower societies which Durkheim called ‘the theatre par excellence of altruistic suicide’, it is also to be found in modern societies. Military society is such a case where one finds the hold of discipline and morality strips a member of his own ego. The regimented composite military life accounts for high rates of altruistic suicides in military population.

ANOMIC SUICIDE

Having discussed the relationship between collective ties of integration in a society and suicidal tendency, Durkheim finally examined the regulatory role played by society on an individual's life. Anomic suicide is a result of normlessness in a society. In fact, modern society in Durkheim's scheme would be witnessing mostly this third type of suicide — suicide as a result of lack of order in society.

Durkheim showed with the help of statistical data that economic crises have an aggravating effect on suicidal tendency. Whatever disturbs the normal collective states (prosperity as well as depression) causes such suicidal acts. A stable order is realized only when means are proportional to goals and needs. Aspiring for an unattainable goal is to condemn oneself to perpetual unhappiness. Passions and desires might be ever growing and physiological mechanism may fail to control them. One needs therefore an external force, that is, in the form of society to execute the regulatory mechanism. Under normal circumstances the society, given its moral authority, performs this task. But during periods of crises such control is slackened.

Citing data from economic history of many European countries, Durkhiem showed that such crises could be caused by either a depression, or a boon or opulence:

Industrial or financial crises increase suicides, this is not because they cause poverty, since crises of prosperity have the same result; it is because they are crisis, that is disturbances of the collective order. Every disturbances of equilibrium, even though it achieves greater comfort and heightening of general vitality, is an impulse to voluntary death. (Durkheim 1951: 246)

According to Durkheim, anomic suicide is rampant in the sphere of trade and industry. Religion lacks a hold over economic life. Utilitarianism as well as anarchism holds sway over economic life and it gets de-regularized. A collective disorder claims its victims.

The manifold and changing relations between individual and collective actually provide the key for a sociological understanding of suicide. Durkheim explained it as a social fact by relating it to other sets of social fact. Apparently, the incidents of private life drive one to commit the act of self-homicide, but for Durkheim these are all incidental causes. Instead, it is the nature, degree and extent of the collective conscience of a society which orients an individual. Either one becomes a prey to the suicidal tendency or is being protected from such. Actually, individual causes of suicide are infinite and varied. Such individual causes cannot explain the social suicide rate. Individual causes would cancel each other out or such individual qualities may be of general nature. Individual proclivity can only be understood as a prolongation of a social or collective state. In Durkheimian sociology, the society is supreme and an individual is transcended by the collective way of thinking, acting and believing. At a collective level, then, suicide could be explained in terms of excess or lack of collective sentiments and norms and also, in terms of the regulatory function of the collective order.

SUMMARY

While it is true that Emile Durkheim is the pioneer in advancing a precise sociological method of study as well as defining the exact scope of the discipline, it was with a purpose. The growing de-regulation of social life and the decay of morality of modern society prompted him to search for such sociological laws not as an end in itself. The task was to predict and effect desirable change in the emergent society. The search for positive social laws was thought of as necessary instruments to produce a better social order. In a reformist mould Durkheim shaped his sociology while addressing the key areas of modern industrial sociology. He held society as supreme moral order while highlighting the collaborative exercise between individuals as well as with the society. As a sociomoral system, Dhurkheim looked at society. While the need for social order was highlighted, the notion of individual rights and the need for it was also noted in his theory.

Key Words

• Comparative Method
• Conscience Collective
• Division of Labour
• Positivist Method
• Scientific Method
• Social Fact
• Solidarity
• Types of Suicide

Glossary

Altruistic Suicide: Acts of self-homicide as a result of over-conformity with group or collective life.

Anomic Suicide: Acts of self-homicide as a result of lack of sufficient socio-moral rules that bind people together meaningfully.

Anomie: The lack of appropriate social organization as result of insufficient socio-moral rules that regulate inter-personal and group activity.

Conscience Collective: The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the average members of a society which forms a determinate system with a life of its own.

Egoistic Suicide: Acts of self-homicide as a result of a lack of collective sentiments and an over assertion of one's ego.

Empiricism: The method of claiming knowledge based on systematic observation of reality as amenable to senses.

Function: Contribution of an individual or a group towards the maintenance of group life or the social whole as such.

Mechanical Solidarity: The solidarity out of similarity or likeness, which marks the forms of simple societies.

Organic Solidarity: The solidarity based on the complementarity of differentiated parts which marks a complex society.

Positivism: The epistemological perspective which claims that authentic knowledge is that which is based on sense, experience and positive verification. That, the scientific method is equally applicable to the physical as well as social world.

Social Facts: The emergent properties and realities of a collectivity that cannot be understood in terms of the motives, inclinations, or actions of individual actors.

Discussion Points

• Durkheim's method of study.
• Study of modernity.
• Importance of studying crime and punishment.
• Suicide as a social fact.