Search

This article argues that it is in fact relevant to illuminate Emile Durkheim as a political thinker, especially considering those issues on democracy. To do so, I read with great interest PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND CIVIC MORALS, where Durkheim analyzes various issues on democracy. After delineating Durkheimian individualism by examining his critiques of H. Spencer, I. Kant, and pramatists, I then pay attention to his unorthodox definition of democracy. Durkheim understands democracy as a unique political form in which the state extends government consciousness all over the society and opens hitherto covert processes of deliberation to people. Repudiating the illusory ideal of a direct rule of the people, Durkheim praises these indirectness and communicability as positive characteristics of modern representative democracy. In addition, I investigate Durkheim's unswerving emphasis on secondary groups and vivid social life. Durkheim reasons that continuous and active social life is necessary to maintain robust democratic politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article argues that it is in fact relevant to illuminate Emile Durkheim as a political thinker, especially considering those issues on democracy. To do so, I read with great interest PROFESSIONAL ETHICS AND CIVIC MORALS, where Durkheim analyzes various issues on democracy. After delineating Durkheimian individualism by examining his critiques of H. Spencer, I. Kant, and pramatists, I then pay attention to his unorthodox definition of democracy. Durkheim understands democracy as a unique political form in which the state extends government consciousness all over the society and opens hitherto covert processes of deliberation to people. Repudiating the illusory ideal of a direct rule of the people, Durkheim praises these indirectness and communicability as positive characteristics of modern representative democracy. In addition, I investigate Durkheim's unswerving emphasis on secondary groups and vivid social life. Durkheim reasons that continuous and active social life is necessary to maintain robust democratic politics. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article argues that a social movement's intended impact is contingent on its ability to establish a stable network of social and ideological relations with other groups, and society in general. It intends to contribute to Durkheimian scholarship by formulating a theoretical framework drawn from Durkheim's writings; and showing the congruence of Durkheim with contemporary developments on social movements. A number of purposes have been pursued. Firstly, it has indicated the presuppositions and consequences of a social state of consciousness, a condition contingent on multiplex relations between clusters of actors and expressed in ceremonial occasions. Other purposes have been to show Durkheim's congruence with frame and network theories, and formulate a set of conditions for successful social movements. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Nearly a century ago, Emile Durkheim proposed that any understanding of religion will remain incomplete until we uncover the origins of religion. To this end, Durkheim proposed that clan totemism was the primal religion and that the origin of religion itself rested on the sheer concentration of individuals, the product of a social environment. While Durkheim’s thesis has weathered a great deal of criticism by scholars who claim that his analysis was too focused on the social, his data and terminology were shaky, and his totemic principle was a flight into fantasy, Durkheim thesis has endured and still casts a spell over contemporary sociologists. Why did Durkheim become so obsessed with totemism that he could argue that "Everything that concerns totemism necessarily has repercussions extending into all domains of sociology"? As Durkheim had a deep understanding of the issues he confronted, what was the logic behind his thinking? And, is it possible that Durkheim’s original insights into the origin of religion may actually rest on solid ground after all? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question of why students think that there are two kinds of American history taughtâ?”one in the K-12 system, and one in the university systemâ?”can be thought about critically using Emile Durkheim's description of the sacred and the profane. The type of history taught in K-12 often focuses on the idealized accounts of the past which protect the status quo. K-12 history emphasizes the underlying values which Durkheim calls "the sacred," and which are reproduced through the development of a triumphal history. The sacred values K-12 History emphasize selfless acts of people who sacrificed on behalf of the larger society. On the other hand, the curriculum emphasized in college courses often focuses on the everyday temptations which are not in the interests of the larger society, and which Durkheim calls profane. The dissonance between these two types of historyâ?”the sacred and profaneâ?”is important for understanding not only why there are different types of history taught, but also why social change can be so difficult. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The modern sociology of law is intellectually rooted in the foundational works of Max Weber and Emile Durkheim. Institutionally, however, the sociological study of law has also grown out of developments within legal scholarship, specifically the perspective of sociological jurisprudence. I argue that the decisive turning point towards the development of a distinctly sociological approach to law, rooted in the sociological classics and based on the perspectives that have emanated since then, was offered by Talcott Parsons. Yet, Parsons's critical role as a founder of the sociology of law has not been sufficiently recognized. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emile Durkheim continues to occupy center-stage as a key sociologist of culture, even though the conception of culture he pioneered has found to be flawed, especially in its commitment to a methodologically collectivist or holist conception of culture. The extent of Durkheim's sacrifice to academic empire-building becomes clear when one reviews the sophistication and richness of the French intellectual tradition which he could have inherited. It shows that Durkheim broke with a well-established and productive way of thinking about culture thus saddling sociology with two of its cardinal problems: lack of explanation by mechanism and methodological holism. He sacrificed veracity and clarity to his goal of intellectual empire building. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A mystery story involves a cast of characters, and a reconstruction of events to uncover just what happened, who did what, why and how. In Durkheim's case history, there is a long-standing mystery over why he became so obsessively interested in religion and the decisive event that opened his eyes to the all important role that religion played in social life. Durkheim never disclosed the details of this remarkable something, but he did leave beyond one compelling piece of evidence---the public disclosure in 1907 of a "revelation" he had in 1895 that, he said forced him to rethink all his earlier research so it would be in harmony with his new insights. And, in Durkheim's eyes, the scholar most responsible for this sea change in his thinking was William Robertson Smith? Did Robertson Smith play the pivotal role in Durkheim's fundamental shift to religion? And, if so, what did Durkheim find in Smith's work on religion that had such profound consequences? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Max Weber suggests four categories of social action: rational, normative, emotional, and habitual. Emile Durkheim also considers habit to be a primary cause of human action, claiming that it is not ideas, sentiments or consciousness that most influence our conduct, but habits ? the real forces that govern us. According to Weber, it makes sense to look at daily practices of individuals, their customs and habits, rather than to list written laws or collect explicit normative obligations, though the latter is also significant. Thus, understanding a new Russian security identity makes us look at practices on the both levels of decision making structures ? federal and regional. Since identity formation goes in both directions ? from above (which is traditional for Russia) and below (all soft security issues have very definite locations, e.g. big cities, military bases, trans-border regions, etc.), one has to pay a special attention to habitus that has getting started to form on the regional level, and in the end, leads to reshaping security thinking. Though the bulk of economic reforms putting Russia on the track of capitalism is over, and economic efficiency became the main feature of elite’s habitus in post-Soviet Russia, security identity is far from being formed yet. In this respect, Russia is still in the stage of transformation. Since soft security in a way how it is perceived in the West is totally new field for Russian elite, there use to be no bad habits. But the practice of the recent few years showed us mixed record. On the one hand, mere actualization of soft security thinking under influence from outside (first of all, from the EU and in some cases from Norway, Finland, and the US) and within, took place, and new institutions have been formed. Structure of interdepartmental Commissions within Security Council reflect in full new challenges to Russian security. Also, understanding of the need to coordinate cooperation on interregional level in security related issues was one of the motives for a federal reform. On the other hand, distribution of power and resources between federal center, Federal Districts and the regions is far from over. Federal Districts have power but have no money, regions have neither power nor money. Irony of a federal reform is that soft security problems have too many masters and each of them is incapable to tackle simplest of them. As for funding concerned, soft security program have been financed badly ? on average at the level of 40 % while traditional hard security programs have been financed according to budget. Thus, hard security still dominate the stage and will do so in the foreseeable future. As for tensions between Federal Districts and the regions, stale mate situation might be resolved through allocation of resources of special federal programs targeted at soft security threats to Federal Districts and enhancing responsibility of regions-donors to tackle soft security problems themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]