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This paper re‐examines a key feature of Emile Durkheim's sociology of knowledge from a critical realist perspective. It is argued that Durkheim's attempt to establish a social basis for the categories in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life should be understood along ontological rather than epistemological lines. This brings to light new problems with the argument which, however, can be brought fruitfully into contact with the more recent social psychological literature on collective intentionality. This yields insights into future lines of inquiry into social cognition and theories of human conceptualizing capacities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on the essay "Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society," published in the March 1, 1994 issue of the journal "Sociological Forum." The author of the article feels that it has several dimensions. It begins by touching several dimensions like the quality of the translations, meta-theoretical aspects and contexts of the pioneering book and its meta-theoretical assumptions and one major research technique, empirical indicators. The paper opens with a rebuke to the translator. It takes no notice of the basic theoretical contributions of the work. It had a dismal quality of the translation. The graduate student evidently resonated to writer Emile Durkheim's early recognition of the importance of identifying indicators and devices indices of conceptualized social realities as a basic procedure in theory-based empirical enquiry. Two kinds of reductionist theories were rejected as both were categorized as undermined by facts.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the present U.S. use of the concept of 'corporate culture' using the sociology of Emile Durkheim as a conceptual framework. Durkheim was concerned with understanding where potential sources of morality might reside in a rapidly changing, increasingly differentiated society. Proponents of corporate culture do not rely specifically on Durkheim's work but essentially answer his question by suggesting that the corporation is the appropriate site for moral order. In this paper it is argued that the attempted manipulation of a corporation's culture is simply an addition to other forms of control which companies have tried to implement. More than other forms of control, however, corporate culture elicits sentiment and emotion, and contains possibilities to ensnare workers in a hegemonic system. On the other hand, strengthening corporate cultures in the U.S.A may also lead to increased worker homogenization and activism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the educational sociology of sociologist Émile Durkheim. It is the purpose of this paper to outline some ideas of Durkheim on education and to show how they are closely linked with his sociological thought. It can be no more than an introduction to a subject upon which the writer is preparing a more substantial work. None of the educational writings of Durkheim has yet been published in England. In fact most of them were only published posthumously in France. Some notes on the most important of them are given at the end of this paper. The majority of them were prepared in the form of lectures and are listed in order of the dates on which the course was first given and not according to the date of publication which is separately recorded. There are many lectures still existing in manuscript form. It was thought best to give quotations in the following pages in English and the translations are those of the writer except where otherwise noted as coming from existing translations. Moreover, this paper will conclude with a brief outline of four major functions of educational sociology which are based on practical principles in line with Durkheim's methodology. These functions are the determination of the present social facts of education and their sociological function, determination of the relation of education to social and cultural change, comparative sociology of education and the study of the school itself as a social group and in relation to other social groups.

Copyright of Canadian Review of Sociology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Public health researchers have used a number of concepts derived from the work of Durkheim, such as anomie and social capital. One concept that has not been deployed in public health discourses is that of the cult of humanity-Durkheim's religion in a society organised around organic solidarity. This paper discusses Durkheim's views on religion and science, and the cult of humanity. The cult of humanity is characterised as having humanity at the centre of worship and combining elements of religion and science. Medicine and complementary therapies are identified as possible candidates to fulfil the role of the cult of humanity, but the institution of public health seems to be a particularly apt candidate. The paper concludes by discussing the way in which this analysis provides insight into the dual advocacy and academic functions of public health, the tension between individual choice and constraint and the buffering role of public health in relation to other social institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The present paper concentrates on Paul Huvelin's work as a response to, and adaptation of, Emile Durkheim's sociology. The author used a study of Huvelin to illustrate certain problems which Durkheim's ideas posed for sympathetic jurists. The paper considers how one particular legal scholar tried to overcome these, using elements of Durkheim's thinking to develop general sociological insights about law and its history.

This paper is a comparison of the views of Max Weber and Émile Durkheim on socialism; these two have yet to be compared on this topic. They offered shared critiques of socialism, but differed in assessment of its overall worth, with Durkheim being more welcoming. After considering possible explanations for this divergence I argue it reflects the contrasting methodologies adopted by both. Whilst Weber places questions of the 'value' of socialism solely in the conscious of the individual, and therefore beyond sociology, Durkheim sees this as a social question and therefore part of the practical concerns of sociologists. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given the importance that generalized social trust plays in various theories of American society, recent evidence of its low levels among younger people portends ominous changes in American civic life. Using survey data collected from high school seniors over the last 20 years, this paper examines the origins of social trust among young people and the causes of change in beliefs about trust over time. Such changes could not be accounted for by the explanations for declining trust offered in other accounts of social capital. An alternative explanation, based on the theoretical accounts of Alexis de Tocqueville and Emile Durkheim, is that materialistic values may be undermining young people`s views about the trustworthiness of others. Both aggregate time series correlations and an individual-level model show that the rapid rise of materialistic value orientations that occurred among American youth in the 1970s and 1980s severely eroded levels of social trust. The paper concludes with some observations about the likely trajectory of American democracy, given the kinds of trends observed in the youth data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article discusses the theory on suicide advanced by sociologist Emile Durkheim. Durkheim attempted to derive a sociological explanation of variations in social suicide rates. He postulated identical relations between each of two independent variables -- integration and regulation -- and suicide. When either is high or low, the suicide rate is high; when either is moderate, the rate is low. Changes in rates are proportional to changes in the strength of these two variables. The low and high points of each are named -- egoism and altruism (integration), anomie and fatalism (regulation) -- and identified as the cases of suicide. The author of this article argues that Durkheim's attampt to establish a viable sociological distinction between integration and regulation are unsuccessful; indeed his book "Suicide" contains numerous indications that no such distinction exists. The paper then analyzes the theory of regulation as it fits into his book's explanatory structure and concludes by stating a theory of suicide devoid of any integration-regulation direction. Durkheim's initial attempts to distinguish between integration and regulation do little more than refer to societal attachment and attraction as integration, and societal control as regulation.

In line with the growing concern with the unexamined reliance upon the concept of “experience” in anthropology, this article explores in some detail the various usages and definitions of the concept in the work of three of early French anthropology's most influential theorists: Émile Durkheim (1858–1918), Lucien Lévy-Bruhl (1857–1939), and Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–). With its important influence on both British and American anthropology, the early French anthropological tradition, as epitomized in the writings of these three thinkers, has indeed played a pivotal role in shaping many current taken-for-granted understandings of the concept of experience in the discipline of anthropology as a whole. In the process of exploring how experience is viewed by these three scholars, this paper will thus take some initial steps toward the historical contextualization of many of the unquestioned assumptions underpinning current understandings of experience in the discipline of anthropology and the social sciences more generally. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By leveraging the case of Hindu sati, this paper elucidates the ways in which structure and culture condition suicidal behavior by way of social psychological and emotional dynamics. Conventionally, sati falls under Durkheim's discussion of altruistic suicides, or the self-sacrifice of underindividuated or excessively integrated peoples like widows in traditional societies. In light of the fact that Durkheim's interpretation was based on uneven data, nineteenth century Eurocentric beliefs, and a theoretical framework that can no longer resist modification and elaboration, by reconsidering sati it is possible to sketch a new model that strengthens Durkheim's theory by making it more robust and generalizable. The following model is built on five principles. First, integration and regulation are not distinct causal forces, but overlapping contextual conditions. Second, to better explain the variation in suicidality across time and space, we must also pay attention to culture as it provides the underlying meanings of suicide that can increase the odds a person or class of persons become suicidal or are protected against suicidality. Third, structure still matters, but in many cases, the role power and power-differentials play must be considered. Fourth, understanding why and how people choose suicide depends on incorporating identity and status processes. Fifth, because the expression of social emotions like shame are patterned by structural and cultural conditions, to understand how suicidality is socioculturally patterned we must further explore the link between identity/status, social emotions, and structure and culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper directs critical attention to Emile Durkheim's considerations about the crucial role of non-transferable, human talent resources within any coherent theory of social justice. It is argued that Durkheim's appreciation of this question anticipated all modern formulations of the issue, and has been insufficiently acknowledged in the contemporary literature. It is contended that Durkheim developed a theory of 'equal treatment' through a rigorous repudiation of Mill's theory of self-ownership, but tempered the sociological force of this idea by developing a parallel 'equal opportunity' theory, which established the basis of a coherent defence of the idea of equality of opportunity through the principle of proportionality. It is concluded that the ethical and sociological compromise for which Durkheim argued between these two egalitarian theories of social justice remains philosophically coherent and sociologically plausible. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emile Durkheim has long been viewed as one of the founders of the so-called variables-oriented approach to sociological investigation. This view ignores his considerable achievements using the methodology of "case-based" historical analysis, most prominent among them, his lectures on the history of French education (The Evolution of Educational Thought). In this paper I first outline the intimate relationship that Durkheim envisioned between historical and sociological investigation. I then turn to his work on French education for substantive illustrations of his approach. Finally, I explore certain points of intersection between Durkheim's approach to history and present-day concerns, especially in regard to the role of culture in history and the opposition between prospective and retrospective ("teleological") strategies of historical analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues for the "classicity" of Durkheim `s first book: the innovative way viewing the compatibility of social order and individual autonomy; his sensitive perception of uneasiness with regards to the crisis of anomie; the lucid sociological account, especially the tripartite explanation of the division of labor in terms of its functioning, emergence, and consequences; and the conceptualization of the problem of order--i.e., the relationship of differentiation and integration. In all of these respects, Durkheim's book is a classic. Yet "classical" neither means original nor flawless. This is shown with respect to the relationship of division of labor and organic solidarity by looking at the historical debate on the division of labor, by elucidating mechanical and organic solidarity, and by carving out some of the problems "inside organic solidarity." [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines sociologist Emile Durkheim's views on the sexual education of French teenagers, while focusing on his work `The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.' Analysis of Durkheim's comments on sex education; Controversy surrounding sex education; Durkheim's debate with Jacques-Amedee Doleris; Details on Doleris' paper on sex education.

Recent years have seen a resurgence of interest in Durkheimian perspectives on management. P. Dahler-Larsen uses such a perspective to critique theories of corporate culture. He is particularly critical of corporate culture's claim that the locus of morality can exist in organizations. This, he argues, is inimical to Durkheim's view of morality as a societal phenomenon. This paper argues that this criticism of corporate culture is limited on two counts. First, it is limited in its failure to deal with those proponents of corporate culture who are themselves critical of culture as a form of ideological control. Secondly, it is based on only one of several possible readings of Durkheim. In his later work, Durkheim analyses the construction and destruction of social solidarities. A Durkheimian reading of organizational culture and the related phenomenon of the learning organization allows us to develop a view of management and organization in which culture is conceived as a heterogeneous rather than homogeneous phenomenon. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the Emile Durkheim, a theorist, views on kinship and relationship systems. It is the contention of this paper that some of what he wrote has been undeservedly neglected. Anthropologists have comparatively recently been given credit for ideas which he had already set out in columns of various sociological journals in France. The concept of consanguinity is a good example. Durkheim laid considerable stress on a point which is fundamental to the study of relationship systems, viz. that relationship systems are not the same thing as kinship systems, or even as systems of consanguinity and affinity. Admittedly he was by no means the first person to have perceived the distinction between the biological facts of consanguinity and the sociological facts of relationship. He noted that in certain societies a man's kinsmen were not necessarily consanguineally related to him and that clanship might similarly have little to do with actual consanguinity. Though, once Durkheim had clarified the concept of matriliny, he resorted to it as a sort of universal solution to all puzzles in the study of relationship systems. His explanations

This paper reports findings of a study dealing with some factors associated with religious and political affiliation in a college population. Specifically, relationships between religious affiliation, belief and participation, political orientation and socio-economic status are examined. The influence of religion on secular activity has long been of interest to sociologists. The classical works of sociologist Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Among college populations, the study provides the most comprehensive body of empirical data on students' religious values and their correlates. The article reports that religious belief is widespread but that commitment is rare. Substantial differences are found among major religious groups. Catholic students score highest on a scale of religiousness and Jewish students score lowest with Protestants falling in between. This article also deals with the relationship between parents' religious orientation and the students' religious beliefs.

Contemporary definitions of anomie and alienation have confused, obscured, and changed the classical meanings of these concepts. Alienation for Karl Marx and anomie for Emile Durkheim were metaphors for a radical attack on the dominant institutions and values of industrial society. They attacked similar behavior, but from opposing perspectives. Marx assumed an immanent conception of the relationship between man and society and the value of freedom from constraint; Durkheim, a transcendental conception and the value of moral constraint. Marx was interested in problems of power and change, Durkheim in problems of the maintenance of order. Paradoxically, contemporary definitions accept what was most problematic for these classical theorists–the dominant institutions of society. The paper author speculates if contemporary definitions of alienation and anomie actually value-free, or are sociologists witnessing a transformation from radical to conformist definitions and values under the guise of value-free sociology.

This paper proposes an approach to the question of meaning and understanding based on the idea of constitutive rules and their relationship to the social objects they are used to create. This approach implicates mutual attention as an essential aspect of the social processes constitutive of social objects and mutual intelligibility. Social objects as such include the meaning, perception and coherence of things, identities and talk, etc. There is a relatively unexplored but important line of argument in sociology that has, from the beginning, explained the coherence and mutual intelligibility of social objects and associations in terms of constitutive practices and social facts. This line of argument begins with Emile Durkheim (1893) and carries through the work of Harold Garfinkel to current studies of work and interaction, human computer interaction and talk. The argument is that we use constitutive practices (Constitutive rules or constitutive background expectancies) to create social objects and make coherent and shared meanings. To act is in this sense for Garfinkel ([1948]2006) to 'mean'. Explaining the consistency of social objects and orders in terms of constitutive orders, rules, or practices is an approach that meets the challenges posed to social science and philosophy by ), ) and ). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In Emile (1762), Rousseau advocated a kind of ‘negative’ education, free from books, abstract concepts, and the tyranny of human wills, so that the child learned in accordance with his own nature and the ‘heavy yoke of necessity’ imposed by the dependence on real, concrete things. In Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (1895), Durkheim insisted that sociological method rests entirely on one principle—i.e., ‘que les faits sociaux doivent êrre étudiés comme des choses.’ This paper explores the historical relationship between the educational realism epitomized in the first book and the social realism epitomized in the second. Focusing on Durkheim's lecture notes on both the Contrat social (1918) and Émile (1919), as well as L'Éducation morale (1925) and L'Évolution pédagogique en France (1938). I lend empirical support to Sheldon Wolin's claim that Durheim has been the medium by which Rousseau has left his mark on modern social science. I also place Durkheim's realism—both social and educational—within the larger context of his political commitment to the Third French Republic. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses issues related to social support. Views of Emile Durkheim on the importance of clos social ties; Correlation between suicide rate and loss of social integration.

Classical social theory in the Western tradition concerned itself with the history of the human condition and sought answers to big questions such as the meaning of change and progress. They were interested in the nature, origins and consequences for human life of modern society, with its new means of organizing production as well as legal and political arrangements. Contrary to the optimism of the Enlightenment with its unbounded faith in the ability of reason and scientific inquiry to liberate humans from domination by both religion and nature, classical social theorists saw the negative side of modern civilization. This can be summarized in terms of the loss of freedom or the enslavement of humans, which each theorist understood as taking different forms. For Marx it was alienation, for Weber confinement in the iron-cage of rationality, and for Durkheim anomie. Although Ibn Khaldun lived centuries before the rise of classical social theory and was by no means a product of the modern world, it is possible to read his work as thematising the absence of freedom or enslavement as well. Bringing out this aspect of Ibn Khaldun shows, to some extent, the modern relevance of his thought. This article elaborates on Ibn Khaldun's theme of enslavement via his discussion on luxury and senility. It is the enslavement of sedentary people to luxury that explains the loss of group feeling or 'asabiyyah, setting in motion a chain of developments that results in the senility of the dynasty and its eventual demise. In the first section I discuss the Enlightenment promise of freedom. The section that follows discusses classical social theory's critique of modernity or what amounts to a loss of faith in the Enlightenment project. Here the thought of Marx, Weber and Durkheim are presented as examples of Western assessments of the problem of the human condition in modernity. I then turn in the next two sections to Ibn Khaldun, discussing his theory of the rise and decline of states in terms of the role played by luxury. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we address Emile Durkheim's theory that norms and values become more generalized and abstract in a society as it becomes more complex and differentiated. To test Durkheim's theory we examine etiquette manuals-the common texts that define normative manners and morals in American society. We perform a deductive content analysis on past and present etiquette manuals to understand what changes have occurred regarding shifting behavioral norms and values over time. Our findings suggest that a change has occurred in the presentation and language of contemporary etiquette manuals, reflecting a greater change in the normative order. We find-as Durkheim would expect-that three main shifts have occurred: a shift from specific to general expectations for behavior in social settings, a shift from demanding to more suggestive rules of behavior in social situations, and a weakening in the severity of sanctions for breaches of etiquette. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

If it is true that 'all of social theory is a breakdown product of a decaying theology' (Robbins on Milbank), then social theory might be said to be both discontinuous and continuous with the theology. In this article I reflect on how anthropology distances itself from religion, yet retains broadly theological concerns. Taking my cue from Christopher Herbert's observation in Culture and Anomie that anthropological ideas about culture have evident, if difficultly acknowledged, religious origins, I reflexively consider this issue in relation to my own writing and anthropological encounters I have experienced with Indigenous informants and students. I discuss two instances of my secular-rationalist embarrassment in the presence of divine revelation and relate these to my anthropological modelling of Aboriginal religion, suggesting reasons for the problematic disjunction between my ability to analyse this religion and my inability to properly experience it (or something like it). I also make a case for the legitimacy of Durkheim's search for 'the elementary forms of the religious life' in order to clarify what is essential ('sacred') about all morality, rejecting Milbank's characterisation of it as 'perverse theology'. There is, I suggest, nothing intrinsically 'perverse' about this search, so long as we follow Robbins' suggestion and relativise the Christian mythos in order to look to a more broadly-based anthropological conception of what it means to live gracefully in the presence of some 'holy spirit'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the discipline of sociology, Marx, Durkheim, and Weber represent 'classical' approaches to the study of stratification, from one or another of which most modern theory derives. In economics, Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class represents an under-utilized alternative to Marxian class analysis. The argument advanced in this article is that a close reading of the introductory chapter to Veblen's Theory of the Leisure Class provides a useful framework for productive integration of the diverse traditions of stratification theory and class analysis descending in sociological thought from Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines whether shared religious beliefs and religious social relationships (Durkheim) and belief in a personal, moral God (Stark) negatively affect attitudes toward the acceptability of white-collar crime. In addition, using a large cross-national sample and estimating multilevel models, we test whether effects are conditional on modernization and religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God. Shared religious beliefs and the importance of God in one's life are negatively related to the acceptability of white-collar crime. These effects, however, weaken in religious contexts characterized by belief in an impersonal or amoral God as do the effects of religious social relationships and belonging to a religious organization; modernization, on the other hand, does not have a moderating effect. In short, religious belief is associated with lower acceptance of white-collar crime and certain types of religious contexts condition this relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article provides an overview of the sociological theory of religion- that is, the sociological theory that is used to guide the empirical research in the sociology of religion. Mainstream sociological theory of religion went through four distinct phases: 1) classical (Emile Durkheim and Max Weber) 2) the old paradigm 3) the new paradigm 4) the neo-secularization paradigm. The article concludes by calling for a critical perspective, which while prevalent in religious studies and the other subfields of sociology is absent from the sociological study of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Analytical Psychology is the property of Wiley-Blackwell and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

This article explores what social policy contracts reveal about contemporary forms of social solidarity, and what they tell us about the nature of social cohesion in Western societies today. Taking the workfare contract as its point of departure, and drawing on Emile Durkheim's work, it is argued that social policy contracts disclose elements of mechanical and organic social solidarity. They function in both punitive and restitutive ways, their exclusionary and inclusive features acting as important sources of contemporary social solidarity. By reference to empirical evidence regarding workfare in various countries, the article highlights the importance of structural factors in determining the success of this policy. It is argued that the moralistic nature of the workfare contract, and the forms of social solidarity it expresses, obscures these deeper structural issues, leaving in place the conditions necessary for the persistence of social suffering characteristic of the post-Keynesian era. The contention is that contract has a de-politicizing effect in the field of social policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of solidarity among strangers in Turkey. Solidarity is a modern concept that connotes freedom and equality among the members of a political community. There was reportedly a decline in the interest of the public in the issue of solidarity after French sociologist Emile Durkheim provided definitions of mechanical solidarity and organic solidarity. It is noted that the assessment of cause and effect has a relation to the effect of the pluralization of solidarities on politics and the retention of economic redistribution.

Durkheim's nineteenth-century analysis of national suicide rates dismissed prior concerns about mortality data fidelity. Over the intervening century however, evidence documenting various types of error in suicide data has only mounted, and surprising levels of such error continue to be routinely uncovered. Yet the annual suicide rate remains the most widely used population-level suicide metric today. After reviewing the unique sources of bias incurred during stages of suicide data collection and concatenation, we propose a model designed to uniformly estimate error in future studies. A standardized method of error estimation uniformly applied to mortality data could produce data capable of promoting high quality analyses of cross-national research questions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skinheads, a subgroup of the larger Neo-Nazi Movement, traditionally presented themselves in a blatant, intimidating fashion replete with tattoos, Nazi symbology, and startling group imagery. Recently, however, the Skins have adopted a new tactic for recruitment: normalization. Members now strive to appear and behave more in accordance with mainstream societal standards in order to achieve perceived similarity with potential members. Using General Strain Theory to attribute the historical-sociological emergence of the Skinhead Movement to affirmative action, this article explores the phenomenon of normalization with a focus on the Skins’ evolving self-presentation, and describes a recent behavioral case example of the tactical change. Normalization is functionally explained in terms of frame alignment and frame resonance, while its effectiveness is demonstrated through Durkheim's construct of mechanical solidarity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the historical perspective of the interrelation between social transition and substance abuse. Impact of the social change in Western Europe during the 19th century; Description made by scholar Emile Durkheim of the unfolding situation in which existing social and moral norms no longer seemed to apply; Behavior of self-destruction which involved substance abuse, mainly alcohol; Role of alcohol in the health crises in the former Soviet Union; Association of social upheaval with patterns of substance abuse can accentuate the adverse social and economic effects of the transition.

The article presents information on ways of studying comparative urban development and politics. Sociologist Emile Durkheim's dictum that science begins with comparison underscores the value of systematically, analyzing a large number of cities across different national cultures. As Durkheim (1982) suggests, only by comparing and measuring relationships can we achieve greater certainty. There are other reasons why comparison enables scholars to clarify and better explain phenomenon. Consistency of application improves clarity, enabling researchers to highlight similarities and differences. The study of urban politics needs to be systematic. By the term systematic it means that an explicit framework should govern the analysis, providing testable and deductible propositions for comparative examination; comparisons should be made through the use of common categories, concepts or variables that can be measured and comparisons should steadily run throughout the work.

This article focuses on the views of several social scientists on the scientific study of religion. For precisely a century, sociologists have been paying homage to The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism. In this, his most famous work, Max Weber proposed that capitalism originated only in Europe because, of all the world's religions, only Protestantism provided a moral vision that led people to restrain their material consumption while vigorously seeking wealth. Weber argued that prior to the reformation, restraint on consumption was invariably linked to asceticism and hence to condemnations of commerce. On the other hand, Emile Durkheim is greatly admired for his definition of religion and the thesis that religion functions to create social solidarity and thereby to sustain the moral order. Both these contributions are so badly flawed that they probably set the social scientific study of religion back by at least several generations. Meanwhile, the single most significant thing Karl Marx had to say about religion, a proposition that has been echoed through the generations by Marx's disciples, and that has gained such credibility in other areas that it cannot be rooted out of the textbooks or from popular expression. Marx gave poetic expression to the sociological axiom that faith is rooted in want and misery and that piety is most prevalent among the poor.

This empirical study commemorates Durkheim's contribution to suicidology by reviewing his own and his followers' formulation of the relationship between the business cycle and suicide. Three distinctive sociological theories of suicide, including Durkheim's, were identified to link the suicide rate to the socio-economic environment of the society. A real-income hypothesis of suicide was developed to capture (a) the positive impact of the economy on suicide, (b) the curvilinear impact of the economy on suicide implied by Durkheim's proposition, and (3) the interplay of both economic and sociological variables on suicide. Another implication from the reformulation is that there may exist a positive natural rate of suicide for any society. These two hypotheses were tested using the 1990 census data for the continental states of the United States. Some conclusions and suggestions were drawn for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses various reports published within the issue including one by Victor Lidz on the analysis of moral complex and the role of law and another by Dean Gerstein regarding the treatment of Emile Durkheim's sociology.

Émile Durkheim's analysis of historical attitudes of societies toward suicide led him to claim that (1) the social disapproval of suicidal conduct increased constantly from ancient times to the present; (2) such increased disapproval was generated by the growing emphasis put on the dignity and sacredness of the individual; (3) the condemnation of suicidal conduct was therefore essentially moral, and it expressed the strong reaction of the collective conscience against offenses to the cult of the individual. In this study we show that Durkheim's interpretation of the historical evidence is erroneous: not increasing condemnation of suicide, but rather tolerance or mild aversion is the typical social response to suicide. Also, when confronted with the historical evidence, Durkheim's claim that increased disapproval of suicide accompanied increased consideration for the dignity of the individual is shown to be unfounded. Our argument develops in four steps. First, we survey the historical evidence on views of suicidal conduct from classical times to the nineteenth-century; second, we present the moral statistics literature on suicide which flourished during Durkheim's lifetime; third, we analyze Durkheim's own theory of anomic suicide. In the conclusion we propose an alternative interpretation of the historical evidence on attitudes on suicide, and a different framework in which to highlight their significance in contemporary society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The market is recapturing portions of its history, its culture and its social context. To be sure, this is not a sudden intellectual revolution nor are the current critics of the market absolute pioneers. Sociologists Emile Durkheim and Max Weber set the agenda at the turn of the century, by empirically disputing a dominant economic ideology that was largely indifferent to the importance of non-economic variables. In his "Protestant Ethic" Weber traced the independent impact of religious ideas, values and attitudes on economic activities. Durkheim's writings demonstrated that the market could not be conceptualized as simple self-interest, but involved the "institution" of the contract. This non-contractual element regulated types of socially approved contracts as well as the expected behavior of the contracting parties, aside from their self interest. Reacting against nineteenth century utilitarian models, Durkheim and Weber stressed the role of non-utilitarian, nonmaterial social forces. Theirs was a path-breaking attempt to integrate the economic and non-economic dimensions of social life.

The theoretical origins of the conflict, functionalist and organizational paradigms in sociology are usually seen as distinct. Common elements in the social theories of Marx, Durkheim and Weber are usually seen as common responses to the development of industrial, capitalist, democratic, bureaucratic structures. However, in all three milieus, Hegel's social theory, particularly his theory of the break-up of feudal society, was a looming point of reference. Thus, an inventory of the respective common elements and breaks from Hegel of founding sociological theorists represents one of the simplest ways of relating Marx, Durkheim and Weber to each other and to neighboring disciplines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Religion is a prevalent theme in the works of both Emile Durkheim and C. G. Jung. who participated in a common intellectual milieu. A comparison of Durkheim's "collective consciousness' and Jung's "collective unconscious" reveals strikingly similar concepts. The components of these structures, collective representations and archetypes, illustrate interdependent sociological and psychological processes in the theorized creation of religious phenomena. An analysis of the constitutive elements in these processes offers a basis for structuring a transpersonal sociology of religion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the concept of normlessness and its relation to sociologist Emile Durkheim's concept of anomie. It represents the confessions of a sociological methodologist. It is important for the contemporary sociologist to recognize that not every article which cites sociologist Emile Durkheim is, ipso facto, an article about Durkheim. The article in question reported a study of the determinants of personal formlessness. David D. McCloskey, it seems, searched our article in vain for an exposition either of Durkheim's doctrine of the "dualism of human nature or the significance of the modern crisis in terms of his explanation of historical development." But, alas, he finds only "that mess of pottage known as "normlessness"--whatever that means. It seems that we are therefore guilty of the noxious procedure of drawing upon Durkheim's "charisma-on-deposit." I think not. It is incumbent upon any author to credit his predecessors. But this does not mean that the totality of their ideas (or their "paradigms," if you prefer) must be faithfully reproduced as a condition of their citation. McCloskey is at full liberty to continue his search through the literature for an exposition of the "essence" of Durkheim.

Scholars have approached Durkheim's thought primarily from the starting point that he was a positivist. Although Schopenhauer's philosophy is not generally invoked in Durkheim's work, it appears that Schopenhauer's philosophy supplanted Comte's positivism at the turn of the century and that Durkheim was enamored with Schopenhauer's philosophy. In this essay Schopenhauer's influence upon Durkheim is traced, and the implications of this influence are discussed in terms of their effect upon sociology. By applying this starting point to Durkheim's thought and the Parsonian-Merionian goals-means schema, it is demonstrated that Durkheim, like Schopenhauer, assumed the oppos~ of the Enlightenment belief that human reason could dominate passion. Implications for interpreting Durkheim's work are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this essay, socialization and personality development are put in the context of the central issue of voluntaristic action theory—namely, the conditions under which the integration of social order and individual autonomy is possible. The theory of the interpenetration of man's basic organic structure and his natural, social, and cultural environments constitutes the essence of the answer to this problem in voluntaristic action theory. This theoretical core of voluntaristic action theory has its roots in Kant's critical philosophy. Emile Durkheim provided this theory with its first specific formulation concerning the question of the relationship between socialization and personality development. This formulation shows a clear convergence with the writings of other classic authors on socialization theory. The first part of this study aims to elucidate Durkheim's contribution, with side-glances at other classic theorists to show points of agreement with him. In the second part, socialization and personality development will be dealt with systematically. Finally, in the third part, various forms of deviation from the ideal case of the integration of social order and individual autonomy will be treated: the types of malintegration between individual and society and the constellation of their causes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on social control functions of mass media depictions of crime. Emile Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society included a succinct theory of social control that stressed the connections between punitive social sanctions and the maintenance of social solidarity. Durkheim argued that while punishment may indeed have a deterrent effect on the violation of social norms, its major role lay in the expiatory functions that it fulfilled for the collective conscience. Durkheim thus insists that punishment is less a deterrent than a symbolic act devoted to the affirmation of shared moral sentiments. But the divergence between Durkheim's theory and the actual processes of social control in modern society is quite marked. Comparison of the accommodative practices of social control agencies with Durkheim's expectations concerning the role of visible punishments in social control is made. It then argues that the social functions ascribed to punishment by Durkheim have been transferred almost intact to the content of mass media entertainment.

Emile Durkheim's explanatory model of primitives and women is the theme of this investigation. A detailed examination of Durkheim's major work reveals an initial preoccupation with organic-psychic factors when analyzing primitive social life and the role of women in society. Only alter extensive study of primitive religion and its crucial implications in the evolution of knowledge, do organic and psychic factors drop out of Durkheim's social facts approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The analysis of Durkheim in The Structure of Social Action is integral to Parsons's discussion of the utilitarian-positivist tradition and the emergence of a voluntaristic theory of action from it. The four ‘stages’ of theoretical argument in Durkheim can be related directly to the four defining elements of the ‘utilitarian dilemma,’ namely empiricism, rationality, atomism, and the randomness of ends. The most questionable aspect of Parsons's argument is the alleged stubbornness of Durkheim's empiricism. On the other hand, much of the criticism of Parsons's argument, by Pope in particular, although also by Scott and Warner, is either misdirected or itself questionable. The development and conclusions of Durkheim's moral sociology are as Parsons claims, and form a viable basis for a non-positivist theory of action. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the May 1986 issue of Journal of Management Studies, Ray argued that Corporate Culture protagonists have stumbled upon the central ideas of the classical sociologist Durkheim, especially those concerning morality. However, this article demonstrates important differences between corporate culture discourse and the Durkheimian concept of morality. Durkheim's views on moral autonomy, his diagnosis of the problematic nature of modern utilitarian values and his insistence on society as the source and the goal of morality are applied as a frame of reference that allows an identification, analysis and discussion of problematic assumptions about man, organization and society in corporate culture discourses. On this basis, the article discusses the relatively limited fulfilment of the promises issued by corporate culture protagonists, which can be observed by reflecting on the past decade, as well as some alternative ideas for organizational culture practitioners and researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]