Durkheim, Emile (1858-1917)

French sociologist, one of the founders of modern sociology, who also influenced social anthropology. He worked to establish sociology as a respectable and scientific discipline, capable of diagnosing social ills and recommending possible cures.

Durkheim was the first lecturer in social science at Bordeaux University 1887-1902, professor of education at the Sorbonne from 1902 and the first professor of sociology there from 1913. He examined the bases of social order and the effects of industrialization on traditional social and moral order.

His four key works are De la division du travail social/The Division of Labour in Society (1893), comparing social order in small-scale societies with that in industrial ones; Les Régles de la méthode/The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), outlining his own brand of functionalism and proclaiming positivism as the way forward for sociology as a science; Suicide (1897), showing social causes of this apparently individual act; and Les Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse/The Elementary Forms of Religion (1912), a study of the beliefs of Australian Aborigines, showing the place of religion in social solidarity.