Durkheim was a French sociologist who is regarded as the founder of modern sociology. Some of his most important works focused on how social forces influence human behavior and thought. He studied how the division of labor in modern societies led to both mechanical and organic solidarity. Durkheim also explored concepts like anomie, social facts, and human dualism. In his book Suicide, he analyzed suicide statistics to show how social integration and regulation impact suicide rates, treating suicide as a social fact influenced by social forces rather than just individual factors. Durkheim made major contributions to establishing sociology as a scientific discipline and understanding how social systems and social relationships shape human actions and societies.

1. April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917

2. Biographical Background
 Born April 15, 1858 in Epinal, Alsace,
France. From Jewish tradition,( rabbis.)
 he was secular in his religious views.
 Entered the École Normale Supérieure in
Paris in 1879.
 Read and studied with classicists with a
social scientific outlook while in school.
 The French academic system had no social
science curriculum at the time, and he
took his degree in philosophy in the class
in 1882.

3.  1887 – started his teaching career in Bordeaux to
teach pedagogy and social science to new teachers.
 In 1885-86 he spent a year studying psychology with
Wilhelm Wundt in Berlin.
 1893 - published The Division of Labor in Society.
 1895 - published Rules of the Sociological Method,
and founded the European Department of
Sociologique at the University of Bordeaux.
 1896 - founded the journal L'Année Sociologique, the
first journal of sociology in France.
Biographical Background

4. Biographical Background
• 1897 - published Suicide
• 1902 - awarded a prominent position in Paris as the chair of education
at the Sorbonne.
• 1912 - published Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. His position
became permanent and he renamed it the chair of education and
sociology.
• His son died in World War I, and he never recovered emotionally.
• Suffered a stroke in Paris in 1917,
briefly recovered and resumed work but later that year, on November
15, he died at age 59 from exhaustion.

5. Contributions and Theories
• He sought to construct one of the first scientific approaches to social
phenomena.
• Saw that traditional societies were held together by the fact that
everyone was more or less the same.
• Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the first to conceptualize
the idea of social functionalism:
– Functionalism views society as a system of interdependent parts whose
functions contribute to the stability and survival of the system as a whole.
• Thought that society was more than the sum of its parts, and coined
the term Social Facts:
– Social Facts have an existence all their own, and are not bound to the action
of individuals.

6. collective conscience collective
representations
 By collective conscience, Durkheim means the “totality
of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens
of the same society” that “forms a determinate system
which has it own life” (Durkheim 1893/1984:38–39)
 Durkheim’s main concern is not with the conscious or
psychological state of specific individuals, but rather
with the collective beliefs and sentiments that exist

9. The Division of Labor in Society
 Durkheim’s first major work, The Division of Labor in
Society (1893), which was based on his doctoral
dissertation, Durkheim explains how the division of labor
(or economic specialization) characteristic of modern
society
 Durkheim argued that economic specialization was not
necessarily “bad” for either the individual or the society as a
whole. Instead, he argued that an extensive division of
labor could exist without necessarily jeopardizing the
moral cohesion of a society or the opportunity for
individuals to realize their interests affects individuals as
well as society as a whole

10. two basic types of solidarity:
 Mechanical solidarity is typified by feelings of
likeness.
 Mechanical solidarity is rooted in everyone
doing/feeling the same thing. Durkheim maintained
that this type of solidarity is characteristic of small,
traditional societies. In these “simple” societies,
circumstances compel individuals to be generalists
involved in the production and distribution of a variety
of goods.

11.  For instance, men, women, and children are often all
needed to pick crops at harvest time, and all partake in
the harvest-time celebrations as well.Durkheim argued
that a significant social consequence of the shared
work experience characteristic of traditional societies
is a shared collective conscience.

12.  For Durkheim, organic solidarity refers to a type of
 solidarity in which each person is interdependent with
others, forming a complex web of cooperative associations.
In such situations, solidarity (or a feeling of “oneness”)
comes not from each person believing/doing the same
thing, but from each person cultivating individual
differences and knowing that each is doing her part for the
good of the whole.
 The growth in a society’s density (the number of people
living in a community) and consequent increasingly
specialized division of labor can result in simply a different
type of social cohesion.

13.  a rigid division of labor can lead to “the institution of
classes and castes . . . [which] is often a source of
dissension” (ibid.:374). Durkheim used the term
anomie (a lack of moral regulation) to describe
the “pathological” consequences of an overly
specialized division of labor.

14. Contributions and Theories
Along with sociology he was trained
in pedagogy, and concluded that
the institution of public education
was a necessary replacement for
religion in a secular society.
Durkheim on Education:
Believed that education served many functions:
 To reinforce social solidarity
Pledging allegiance: makes individuals feel part of a group and therefore
less likely to break rules.
 To maintain social roles
School is a society in miniature: it has a similar hierarchy, rules,
expectations to the “outside world,” and trains people to fulfill roles.
 To maintain division of labor
School sorts students into skill groups, encouraging students to take up
employment in fields best suited to their abilities.

15. Contributions and Theories• Durkheim on Anomie:
• Anomie is the breakdown of social norms regulating behavior.
• Durkheim and other sociological theorists coined the term anomie as
“a reaction against, or retreat from, the social controls of society.”
• All deviant behavior stems from a state of anomie, including suicide.
• Durkheim on Crime:
• Crime serves a social function, meaning that it has a purpose in society.
• He saw crime as being able to release certain social tensions and so have
a cleansing or purging effect in society.
• His views on crime were unconventional at the time.

16. Social Facts
According to Durkheim, social facts are the subject matter
of sociology. Social facts are “sui generis” (meaning of its
own kind; unique) and must be studied as distinct from
biological and psychological phenomenon.
Social facts can be defined as patterns of behavior that are
capable of exercising some coercive power upon
individuals.
They are guides and controls of conduct and are external
to the individual in the form of norms, mores, and
folkways.

18. Social Facts
“A social fact is identifiable through the power of external
coercion which it exerts or is capable of exerting upon
individuals”
- Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
Through socialization and education these rules become
internalized in the consciousness of the individual. These
constraints and guides become moral obligations to obey
social rules.

19. Human Dualism
“There are in each of us…two consciences:
one which is common to our group in its entirety…the
other, on the contrary, represents that in us which is
personal and distinct, that which makes us an individual”
- Division of Labor in Society (1893)
“Because society surpasses us, it obliges us to surpass
ourselves, and to surpass itself, a being must, to some
degree, depart from its nature—a departure that does not
take place without causing more or less painful tensions.”
- Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1914).

20. Human Dualism
“It is not without reason, therefore, that man feels himself
to be double: he actually is double….In brief, this duality
corresponds to the double existence that we lead
concurrently; the one purely individual and rooted in our
organisms, the other social and nothing but an extension
of society.” - Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1914)
Our purely individual side seeks satisfaction of all wants
and desires. It knows no boundaries. Without being
constrained by the collective conscience, this side of
human beings may lead to the condition that Durkheim
labels as “anomie.”

21. I N D I V I D U A L
I N S A T I A B L E
A P P E T I T E S
THE
IN-GROUP
OUT
SID E THE
LAW
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
THE ARENA OF
MORAL CONFORMITY

22. Suicide (1897)
 Durkheim’s goal was to show that an individual act
is actually the result of social factors, thus the
relevance of the sociological perspective.
 defined Suicide as the act of severing social
relationships.
 Observed that abnormally high or low levels or
social integration may result in increased suicide
rates.

23.  Results he found include:
 Suicide rates are higher for widowed, single or divorced
people rather than those who are married.
 Rates are higher for those who have no children rather
than those who do .
 Rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics.
 Coroners in a Catholic country are less likely to record a
suicide as the reason of death because in Catholism it is
a sin.

24. Key Concepts related to Suicide
Suicide was a Social Fact
Suicide was to be explained by another Social Fact
Anomic Division of Labor (leftover from “Division of Labor”)
Integration
Regulation
Defined Four Types of Suicide:
Altruistic
Egoistic
Anomic
Fatalistic

25. Durkheim’s Argument in Suicide
 Unlike animals, human desire is “unlimited,” – there is no internal
check on needs and desires.
 The “passions… must be limited,” but this must be done by some force
exterior to the individual.
 This exterior force must be the community (collective conscience)
because it is the “only moral power superior to the individual, the
authority of which he accepts.”
 Regulation through collective conscience is required to ensure that
people will accept their position in life, because true social equality is
impossible.
 Anomie occurs when societies break down or “pass through some
abnormal crisis,” people are “not adjusted to the conditions forced on
them,” and social bonds/collective conscience fail to do work of
regulating.

26. Suicide as a Social Fact
 Suicide rate is a social fact– social cause/social effect
 Rates are stable across time
 Durkheim found low rates of suicide:
 When religious integration is high (Catholics < Protestants)
 When domestic integration is high (Married < Unmarried)
 When political integration is high (Rural < Urban

27. Suicide
• Suicide may be caused by weak social bonds.
• Social bonds are made up of social integration and
social regulation.
• Durkheim’s 4 types of suicide:
 Egoistic Suicide: Individual is weakly integrated
into a society so ending their life will have little
impact on the rest of society.
 Altruistic suicide: Individual is extremely attached
to the society and because of this has no real sense of
autonomy. But alternatively, a freely chosen act of
self-sacrifice.
 Anomic suicide: a weak social regulation between
society’s norms and the individual, most often
brought on by dramatic economic or social changes.
 Fatalistic suicide: Social regulation is completely
imposed upon the individual. With no hope of
countering the oppressive discipline of the society
the only way to escape is to take one’s own life.

29. SUICIDE TYPES, ala Durkheim & Allen (& Berger):
GROUP ATTACHMENT
(SOCIAL INTEGRATION)
Shared Social Sentiments
(“society in man”)
BEHAVIOR REGULATION
(MORAL REGULATION)
External Constraints
(“man in society”)
HIGH or
STRONG
ALTRUISTIC
(collectivistic)
FATALISTIC
(hopelessness)
LOW or
WEAK EGOISTIC
(individualistic)
ANOMIC
(meaninglessness)

30. Altruistic Suicide – Excessive Integration
Jonestown
Massacre, 1978
Kamakazi pilots, 1945
Suicide bombers, 2013

31. Egoistic Suicide – Low Integration

32. Anomic Suicide –
Low Regulation
Anomic Suicide
– Low Regulation

33. Fatalistic Suicide – Excessive Regulation
Unnamed slave woman, who on Dec.
19, 1815, jumped out of the garret
window of a three-story brick house
and survived.
1838 issue of American Anti-Slavery Almanac, which illustrated
a passage from Charles Ball’s “Slavery in the United States”
(New York, 1837) that describes Ball’s encounter with the slave
Paul. Paul had “suffered so much in slavery, that he chose to
encounter the hardships and perils of a runaway.”

34. COMPARATIVE RATES OF ANOMIC SUICIDE
HIGHER LOWER
compared across cells
Men Women
Protestants Catholics
Catholics Jews
Urban Rural
Single Married
Married w/o
Children
Married c
Children
Officers Enlisted Personnel
Military in Peace Military in War
Adolescents Adults
Native-Americans Euro-Americans
Middle Aged Elderly
Durkheim
Modern Day

35. Anomic or Fatalistic Suicide?
We are broke. Last April I was worth
$100,000. Today I am $24,000 in the
red.

36. Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• Thought religion was a form of social cohesion,
which holds complex societies together.
• Saw totemism as the original form of religion,
because it was the emblem for the social group,
the clan.
• Believed that the function of religion was to
make people willing to put the interests of others
ahead of themselves.
• The model for relationships between people and
the supernatural was the relationship between
individuals and the community.
– “God is society, writ large.”
• Saw religion as a mechanism that protected a
threatened social order.

37. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Key Concepts
 Definition of Religion
 Totemism
 Sacred V. Profane
 Collective Effervescence V. Collective Conscience
 Collective Representations
 Use of the evolutionary metaphor –
and functionalist view of religion

38. • RELIGION: “A unified system of beliefs and practices relating to sacred
things … which unite into one single moral community called a church
all those who adhere to them.”
• Durkheim studies religion as the fundamental institution of social life,
upon which the collective identity is structured.
• Religion unites members through the creation of a collective
conscience. All religious expression is founded on the identification of
members to a group.
• Shared religious beliefs and values also reinforce the strength of the
collective conscience.

39. – Early development can be observed, and
change traced over time. (Evolutionary
model)
– Durkheim looked for “the elements which
constitute that which is permanent and
human in religion; they form all the
objective contents of the idea which is
expressed when one speaks of religion in
general” (182).
Why did Durkheim study “primitive”
society to understand religion?

40. Why did Durkheim study “primitive”
society to understand religion?
• Simplicity allows for analysis of “essential”
features.
• “Everything is common to all. Movements are
stereotyped; Everybody performs the same ones
in the same circumstances, and this conformity
of conduct only translates to the conformity of
thought” (from Elementary Forms).
• These societies are different enough from our
own experience that we are able to see important
features.
Totemism

41. Sacred V. Profane
• Religion is defined by the cultural
distinction between the sacred and
profane.
• Sacred – objects extraordinary and
set apart
• Profane – everyday, ordinary objects
• Notions of the sacred are given
external representation through
objects or symbols, called
collective representations.

42. Durkheim’s Model of
religious evolution
Temporary
gatherings
occur
Interaction
escalates
Crowd stimulation,
heightened
emotions, and
collective
contagion occur
Sense of
common
sentiments
that are
external
and
constraining
Powers are
attributed
to “mana”
“Mana” is
symbolized
by the totem
and by sacred
objects of the
totem
Totems
promote a
sense of
unity and
solidarity
among
members
Psychological need to
represent “mana” with a
material object
Structural need
for clan solidarity
Cultural need for
resulting permanent
groups

43. Collective
Effervescence
Effervescence is when we feel we are a part of
something bigger than ourselves:
“Vital energies are over-excited, passions more
active, sensations stronger… A man does not
recognize himself; he feels himself transformed,
and consequently he transforms the environment
that surrounds him.”
Is this --
The Collective Conscience?

44. Collective
Effervescence
Effervescence occurs when we collectively share
an ecstatic experience. In Greek ek-stasis literally
means stepping outside reality as commonly
defined.
We might say we are
“besides ourselves”
Is this --
The Collective Conscience?

45. Religion and Collective Conscience
 These social categories shape how we think and orient
ourselves to world: time, space, quality . . .
 Establish our basic categories of thought!
 “If men did not agree upon these essential ideas at every
moment… all contact between their minds would be
impossible, and with that, all life together. Thus
societies could not abandon the categories to the free
choice of the individual without abandoning itself.”
 Collective conscience guides human action!
 “We have the feeling that we cannot abandon them if
our whole thought is not to cease being fully human.”

46. Function of Religion?
Religion is a way of expressing and reaffirming shared social
beliefs, a functional element of society.
“There can be no society which does not feel the need of
upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective
sentiments and collective ideals… This moral remaking
cannot be achieved except by the means of reunions,
assemblies, and meetings where individuals reaffirm their
common sentiments.”

47. Elementary Forms of Religious Life
• In the past, religion had been the cement of society - the
means by which men had been led to turn from the everyday
concerns in which they were variously enmeshed to a common
devotion to sacred things.
– “A religion is a unified system of beliefs…relative to sacred
things…beliefs and practices which unite in one single moral
community called a Church, all those who adhere to them.”
• Condensed religion into 4 major functions:
– 1) Disciplinary: forcing or administrating discipline
– 2) Cohesive: bringing people together, a strong bond
– 3) Vitalizing: to make more lively or vigorous, vitalize, boost
spirit
– 4) Euphoric: a good feeling, happiness, confidence, well-being

48. Durkheim’s Legacy
• Durkheim helped make the study of sociology mainstream. Sociology
today has gained tremendous popularity in Europe, the US, and across
the world.
• Many of Durkheim’s students pursued his ideas in their own studies.
• Founded the academic journal, L'Annee Sociologique.
• In recent decades, Durkheim’s philosophies have been more influential
in the US and Britain than in France, his native country.
• Durkheim’s ideas influenced several major theoretical movements in
the twentieth century.
– His work was strongly present in the emergence of ‘structuralism’ through
the work of Jean Piaget and Claude Levi-Strauss.