The Realm of Sociology as a Science- Durkheim

8/2/2019 The Realm of Sociology as a Science- Durkheim

1/18

Social Forces, University of North Carolina Press

The Realm of Sociology as a ScienceAuthor(s): mile Durkheim and Everett K. WilsonReviewed work(s):Source: Social Forces, Vol. 59, No. 4, Special Issue (Jun., 1981), pp. 1054-1070

Published by: Oxford University PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2577980 .Accessed: 02/02/2012 14:49

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range of

content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new forms

of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

Oxford University Press and Social Forces, University of North Carolina Press are collaborating with JSTOR

to digitize, preserve and extend access to Social Forces.

http://www.jstor.org
http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=ouphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2577980?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/2577980?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=oup


2/18

The Realmof Sociology as a Science'iMILE DURKHEIM

EVERETT K. WILSON(translator)

IA sciencehardlyborn has not, nor could it have at the beginning, anythingbut a vague and uncertain sense of that sector of reality toward which itshould be oriented, or of its properextent and limits; nor can it achieve aclearerself-image if its inquiries are not guided by some general rules. Onthe other hand it is extremelyimportant that it should gain such a height-ened awareness of its goals;forthe scholar'sprogress is the more certainashe is better disciplined; and he becomes more systematic in his inquiry ashe becomes more familiarwith the characterand limits of the territoryhe isexploring.For sociology the time has come to bend every effort to make thisforwardstep. Certainlywhen some belated critics-unwittingly under theinfluence of the prejudicewhich has always obdurately resisted the emer-gence of a new science-reproach sociology for not knowing preciselywhat its field of concernis, one can reply that such uncertainty s inevitablein the firstphases of researchand thatour discipline was bornonly yester-day. We must not forget, especially in view of the favored position ofsociology today, that it would not even have been possible during the pastfifteen years to list ten names which were genuinely and accuratelynamesof sociologists. And let us add that it is too much to requirethat a sciencebound its subjectmatterwith meticulousprecision:for thatsectorof realitywhich it aims to study is never set apart from other sectors cleanly andprecisely.In realityeverything in nature is bound up with everything elsein such a way that there can be no breakbetween the differentsciences, noterriblyprecisefrontiers. Yetdespite all, it is importantto develop as clearanotion as possible of the domain of sociology, to determine where it standsand to establish the dimensions or characteristicsby which we recognizethe complex of phenomena with which we are concerned, while at thesame time not freezing frontierswhich must remain indeterminate. Thisproblemis all the moreurgent forourdiscipline since, unless we takecare,0 1981TheUniversityof North CarolinaPress.0037-7732/81/041054-70$01.701054


3/18

Sociology's Realm / 1055

its realm may be endlessly extended. For there is no phenomenon whichdoesn't emerge in society, from physical-chemical events to those genu-inely social. Thereforethese lattermust be isolated with care lest sociologybe reduced to a mereconventional labelapplied to an incoherent collectionof disparate disciplines.IISimmel has made a significant attempt, almost an exaggerated one, totrace the limits of the field of sociology.2He startswith the notion that, ifthere is to be a sociology it must constitute an independent system of in-quiry perfectly distinct from such preexisting sciences as political economy,history of civilization, statistics, demography, etc. Besides being somethingapartfromthese, it must also have another [different]field of inquiry.Thedifference resides in the fact that the other special sciences study whattranspires in society, but not the society itself. The religious, moral, andjuridical phenomena with which they are concerned emerge within deter-minate groups; but thegroups n the midst of which they develop must bethe targetsof other investigation, independent of the preceding inquiries;and this is precisely the realm of sociology. Men living in society pursue,with the aid of the very society that they constitute, many different kindsof activities: some religious, others economic, and still others aesthetic,etc., and the special sciences have as their specific fields the particularprocesses by which these ends and these activities are achieved. But suchprocesses are not in themselves social or at least they have this characteris-tic only indirectly and only to the extent that they develop in a collectivecontext. Disciplines of this sort arenot, then, properly speaking, sociologi-cal. In that complex which we usually refer to as society here are two sortsof elements which must be carefullydiscriminated: hereis the content, hatis to say the various phenomena which succeed one another amongst theassociated individuals; and the containing, hat is to say the associationitself within which these phenomena are observed. The associations theonly thing thatis genuinely social and sociology is thescience f associationntheabstract."Sociology should look for its problems, not in the content ofsocial life, but in its form. Sociology's whole right to exist rests on thisabstract considerationof social orms. So it is that geometry owes its exis-tence to the possibility of abstracting their spatial forms from materialthings" (l'Annee ociologique,898, I, 72).Buthow can one achieve this abstraction? f it is true that all humanassociations are formed with particularends in view, how can one isolateassociation-in-general from the various specific goals which such associa-tion serves, in orderto determine the principles?


4/18

1056/ Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981

By bringing together associations aimed at quite different ends and abstractingfromthem what they have in common. In this way all the differences seen in theparticular nds pursued and around which societies build themselves, aresubordi-nated and the social form, alone, will emerge. So it is that something like theformationof movements,"schools,"orparties s observed in the worldof art as well asin politics, in industry as well as in religion. If, then, we investigate what is com-mon to all these cases despite the diversity of ends and interests, we will get at thelaws peculiar o this kind of grouping. The same methodallows us to study domina-tion, subordination,the formationof hierarchies,the division of labor, competition,etc.(L'AnneeSociologique,1898, 1, 72).

Now it might seem that in this way we have assigned sociology aclearly defined goal. In reality,we think that such a view serves only tokeep sociology in a metaphysical state from which, on the contrary, itshould above all else be emancipated. We do not deny the right of soci-ology to develop itself by means of abstract deas, since there is no sciencewhich can develop in any other way. Only these abstractions must besystematicallydeveloped and follow the naturaldistinctions in the data.Otherwise they will necessarily degenerate into imaginary constructionsand a useless mythology. The old political economy certainly claimed theright of abstractionand, in principle, one could not contest it; but the wayin which it was used vitiated it, for it put as its fundamental postulate anabstraction that was unwarranted, namely the model of a man whoseactions are exclusively motivated by personal interest. Such an hypothesiscannot be put at the beginning of a study; only repeated observations andsystematic testing provide the opportunity to assess the propulsive forcewhich such a motive may exerton us. Welack the means foraffirming hatcertain sufficiently defined elements exist in us so that one may isolatethem from other factors in our behavior and consider them separately.Who can say, e.g., if there is such a clear-cut distinction between egoismand altruismas common sense unreflectivelyacknowledges?To justify the method advanced by Simmel it is not enough to sum-mon the example of sciences which proceed through abstraction.It mustbe shown that the abstraction referredto is carried out according to theprinciples to which all scientific abstractionmust conform. Now how arewe warranted n making such a radicalseparationbetween formand con-tent (le contenant u contenu)of society?He thinks it enough to assert thatonly form (lecontenant)s by nature social and that the content of conducthas this characteronly indirectly.There is then no proof to buttress such aproposition which, farfrombeing able to pass as a self-evident axiom, canbe regarded by the scholar as a gratuitous assertion.Of course, everything that happens in society is not social, but onecannotsay the same for everythingwhich develops in and throughsociety.As a result, to cast outside of sociology the various phenomena whichconstitute the fabricof social life, it would have to be shown that such


5/18


phenomena are not the work of the collectivity, but that they have analtogether different origin and that they just happen to be placed in thegeneral frameworkconstituted by society. Now as we know, this demon-stration has not been attempted nor has the research which it supposesbeen begun. Nonetheless, it is easy to see at a first glance that the tradi-tions and common practices of religion, law, morality, and of the politicaleconomy are no less social phenomena than the external forms of socia-bility. And if one pushes the examination of these phenomena, this firstimpression is confirmed: everywhere one finds the work of society whichgenerates these phenomena, and theirrepercussionon socialorganizationis altogetherclear. They are society itself, living and acting. What a queernotion it would be to imagine the group as a sort of empty form, any sort ofmold whatsoever which could receive, indifferently, any sort of content!One may agree that there are structures of behavior that one encounterseverywhere, whatever the nature of the particularends pursued. And it isaltogether evident that whatever the differences between these ends, thereare also characteristics n common. But why should these latter alone havethe characterof the social to the exclusion of the former?Not only is this use of abstractionmethodologically unsound, sinceit results in separating things which have the same qualities; but the ab-stractionsthus obtained-those they wish to makethe objectof the science-are altogetherindeterminate. Indeed, what do expressions such as socialforms, ormsofassociationn general,mean?If we want to consider only theway in which persons are related to one another within an association, thedimensions of association, its density, in a word, its external and morpho-logical characteristics,then the idea would be definite, but also too re-stricted to constitute by itself the sole object of a science; for it wouldreduce sociology to consideration alone of the substratumon which sociallife rests. But as a matterof fact, our author accords a much more sweepingsignificanceto this term. He understands by it not only the ways of group-ing, the static condition of the association, but the most general forms ofsocialrelationship.These are the most broadlyconceived forms of relation-ships of all sorts which are bound into the life of society.And these are thephenomena which are presented to us as belonging directly to sociologysuch as, e.g., the divisionof labor,competition,mitation, he state of freedomor dependencen which the individual finds himself with respect to thegroup (Revyede metaphysiquet de Morale,II, 499). But then, as betweenthese relations and other more particularrelationships, there is only adifference of degree: and how can a simple difference of this sort justifysuch a deep division between two ordersof phenomena?If the first consti-tutes the subject matter of sociology, why should the second be excludedifthey belong to the same species?The seemingly fundamental characterofthe abstractionproposed [by Simmel], an appearance deriving from theopposing of form to content [le contenant au contenu] disappearsas soon


6/18

1058 / Social Forces Volume 59:4,June 1981

as one specifies more precisely the meaning of these terms and sees thatthey are only loosely used metaphors.The most general aspect of social life is not the content or the form,any more than arethe particular eatures that social life displays. Wedo nothave here two species of reality which, although related, are distinct anddissociated, but ratherphenomena of the same nature looked at at differentlevels of generality.But what, on the other hand, is the necessary degreeofgenerality for such phenomena to be classified as sociological?No one cansay: the question is one of those which can't be answered. We see howarbitrary uch a criterionis and how one can, using it, extend or limit theboundaries of a discipline at will. Under the pretext of bounding the re-search,such a method in reality ends itself to individualwhim. Thereis norule, no guideline which allows one to determine in an objectivefashionwhere the circle of sociologicalphenomena begins and ends. For not onlyare the limits flexible, which would be legitimate, butthereis no reasonableexplanation for their being put at one point rather than another. Add tothis the factthat if we are to study the most general sort of socialbehaviorsand theirlaws, we must know the laws of particular ypes since the formercan'tbe studied and explainedexcept through systematicallyrelatingthemto the latter. Fromthis perspective, every sociological problem assumes athorough knowledge of all the special sciences that Simmel would wish toput outside sociology but without which it cannot exist. And since suchuniversalerudition is impossible, one must content himself with a short-hand approach, materials hastily gathered and not rigorously handled.In fact, these are characteristicsof Simmel's work. We appreciate theirshrewdness and ingenuity; but we do not believe it possible to outline thechief divisionsof our disciplineas he understandsthem. Wesee no connec-tions among the issues he suggests as objects of sociological inquiry.Theyare mattersfor reflectionwhich do not tie together into a scientificsystemwhich forms a whole. Furthermore,the proofs he relies on are usually anumberof examples. Factsare cited which are drawn fromthe most dispa-rate sources and with no assessment of them, and consequently with noconceptionof their worth. If sociology is to merit the name of a science, itmust consist in something other than a numberof philosophicalvariationson the theme of social life, chosen more or less randomly, accordingto theinclinationsof particular ndividuals. The problemmust be posed so as toenable a logicalsolution.IIIIt is not that there aren't really two different elements to distinguish insociety,but ratherthat the distinctionshould be made in anotherway andshould aim at dividing the realmof sociology, not in restricting t arbitrarily.


7/18


Social life is built out of various manifestations the nature of whichwe shall indicate in a moment. But whatever they are, they all have thecommon characteristicof having emerged from a group, simple or com-plex, which is their source. Now the study of the social substratum (sub-strat social) clearly is in the province of sociology. It is indeed the mostimmediately accessible matter for investigation by the sociologist since it isendowed with material form which our senses can discern. In reality, themakeup of society consists of certain combinations of persons and thingswhich arenecessarily registeredin space. On the other hand, the explana-tory analysis of this substratum should not be confused with the explana-tory analysis of the social life which emerges on this foundation. The wayin which society is formed is one matter and the way it acts quite another.These are two sorts of realities so different that they can't be treated withidentical procedures and must be separatedin research.The study of thefirst forms, then, a special branch, although a fundamental one, of soci-ology. Wehave here a distinction analogous to that which we see in all thenatural sciences. Alongside chemistry which studies the makeup of ele-ments, we have physics which inquires into all kinds of phenomena whichare rooted in the various elements. Alongside physiology which investi-gates the principles of vital phenomena, there is anatomy or morphologywhich inquires into the structureof living beings, the way they are formed,and the conditions which govern them.The chief problems which are posed as to the domain of sociologyare the following:The social substratum must above all be determined in its externalform. This is chiefly a matter of: (1) the size of the territory; 2) the siteoccupied by a given society, that is to say, whether its locationis centralorperipheralin relation to the continents and the way it is hedged about byneighboring societies, etc.; (3)the form of its frontiers.In fact, as Ratzelhasshown, the frontierschange in natureand aspect depending on the coun-try concerned: here, they involve more or less extended surfaces; else-where, a geometric line defines them; in certain cases they intrude as acorner penetrates a neighboring country while elsewhere they bend backand thrust toward the interior,etc.There is in addition the content, that is to say, in the firstplace thetotal mass of the population in terms of numbers and density. There aresecondary groupings of differing importance within the body of societywhich have a material base such as the towns, cities, districts, and prov-inces. And as to each of them, there are always questions to pursue on thecollectivity:how large is the area inhabited?What is the size of the town orthe city?water sources?the outer boundaries?the number and density ofpopulation? etc.Finally each group, taken as a whole or in part, uses the soil or somepart of it according to its needs. Nations are surroundedwith fortifications


8/18

1060 / Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981

and studded with fortifiedcities. Communicationsnetworks arebuilt. Thelayout of streets and squares, the architectureof houses and buildings ofall sorts vary fromvillage to town, from metropolis to small city, etc. Thesocial substratumwill be differentiated n a thousand ways as man inter-venes; and these differences have another sociological significance, eitherin terms of the causes which produce them or the effects that result fromthem. The presence or absence of walls, of markets, the building of publicworks, the differencesin the relationshipbetween these and privateestab-lishments, all these facts bearon essential mattersin the collective life andat the same time combineto place a distinctivemark on a society.

But the sociologist's task is not simply to describesuch diverse phe-nomena as those in the precedingenumeration(which does not pretendtobe complete). He must contrivesome explanations,that is to say, link suchphenomena to their causes and determinetheir functions. He will raisethequestions, e.g., why do societies, accordingto the stage of their develop-ment, prefer central sites to peripheralones? what is the function of terri-tory in the life of nations? how does it happen that frontierscome to takesuch and such a form?what circumstanceshave given rise to villages, thento cities?what makes for the development of urban centers?Now all thesecauses, and effects, necessarily involve changes. Littleby little, under theinfluence of various forces, social elements arrange themselves in variousforms. There are internationalmigrationswhich determine the conditionof nations, the natureof theirfunctions; n fact, these beara direct relation-ship to the expansive thrusts of each society.Therearecurrentsof internalmigration which determine the relative importance of urban and ruralpopulations. Thereare factorsconditioningbirthand death and so affect-ing the number in the general population. The tendency of a society todisperse or concentrate ts population explains its density.Hence this division of sociology is not simply that of a staticscience,and this is why we think it inappropriate o use this term3which expressespoorly how society in itself should be considered; and no more does itexpress the fact that in reality it is not a matter of considering society at agiven moment in time, frozen in an abstraction, but rather of analyzingand explaining its formation. Doubtless the phenomena which bear onstructurearerathermore stable than the functionalphenomena; butthereis only a difference of degree between the two orders of facts. Structureitself is revealed in society's becoming nd one can only illuminate it oncondition of not losing sight of this process of becoming. It [social struc-ture]is constantly becoming and changing [formingand breakingdown]; itis life having crystallized to a degree; and to distinguish it from the lifefromwhich it derives or the life that determines it amounts to dissociatinginseparable things.4


9/18


IVBut the substratum of the collective life is not the only matter of socialmoment which exists in nature. That which issues from it or which issustained by it necessarily has the same character and falls within thescope of the same science. Alongside social ways of being there are socialmanners of acting: along with morphological phenomena we have func-tional or physiological phenomena. Obviously the latter should be morenumerous than the former; for the manifestations of vital phenomenaare much more varied and complex than the morphologicalcombinationswhich constitute the basic condition.How may they be recognized? Where does this region of the collec-tive life, that of social physiology begin and end?First of all, it is clear that the generality of the phenomenon, byitself, would be a misleading index. The fact that a certain number ofindividuals behave in the same way does not prove that these likeactions,even were they identical, are necessarily social, just as two persons do notconstitute a group by the fact alone that they are neighbors and look alike.We must seek elsewhere for the distinctivecriterionthat we need.

Let us begin by asserting a proposition which may be taken asaxiomatic: If there is to be a truesociology, heremust be certainphenomenaproducedn eachsocietywhicharespecificallyausedby thatsociety,whichwouldnotexist in the absence f that societyand which are what they are onlybecausesociety s as it is. A science cannot establish itself when it lacks a subjectmattersuigeneris,distinct fromthat which is the focus of inquiryfor othersciences. If society were not to generate phenomena peculiarto itself anddistinct from those observed in other realms of nature, sociology wouldhave no subject matter of its own. For it to be able to have a raisond'etre,there must be in reality some elements which merit being called socialandwhich are not simply aspects of another order of things.A corollaryof these propositions is the following: social phenomenado not have their immediate and determining cause in the nature of indi-viduals. As a matter of fact if it were otherwise, if they derived directlyfrom the organic or physical makeup of man without any other factorintervening in their elaboration, sociology would reduce itself to psy-chology. Certainly t is true that all the functional phenomena of the socialorderarepsychologicalin this sense that they all combineto makea way ofthinking and acting. But if sociology can have a subject matter peculiartoitself, these collective ideas and actions must be different in nature fromthose which originatein the individualmind, and they must be framedinspecial laws. One might say that social physiology is a psychology, butonly if one adds that it is a psychology which must under no conditionsbeconfused with the sciencewhich is customarilyso designated and which isexclusivelycommitted to the study of the mentalmakeupof the individual.


10/18


This very simple statement runs athwart a very old sophistry to theinfluence of which some sociologists still unwittingly respond, unawarethat it is the negation of sociology itself. It is said that society is onlyformed of individuals and that, since there can be nothing in the wholewhich is not found in the parts, everything which is social is reducibletoindividual factors. By this reasoning we would have to say that there isnothing in the livingcell except what there is in the hydrogen, carbon,andnitrogen atomswhich combine to form it. Yetobviously these atoms do notlive. This way of reasoning that we have just indicatedis radicallyfalse. Itis not true that the whole is always equal to the sum of its parts. Whenelements arecombinedthereemerges fromtheircombination a new realitypresenting entirely new qualities, sometimes quite contrary to those ob-served in the constituent elements. Two soft entities, copper and tin, formin their union one of the hardest materials that we know, bronze. Perhapsit will be contended that the properties revealed in the whole actually arepreexistent, in a germinal state, in the parts. A germ is something which isnot yet the whole that it will sometime be, but something which existsfrom this moment: it is a reality which has so far only fulfilled the first stageof its development, but which does exist in the present and which givesevidence of itself through characteristicphenomena. Now what is there inthe mineralatoms which constitutes the living substanceand discloses theslightest germ of life? Had they remained isolated from one another, ifsome unknown cause had not united them intimately,never would any ofthem have revealed any propertywhatsoever which could-other than inmetaphor or by analogy-be described as biological. If, then, non-livingelements can in uniting form a living being, there is nothing remarkablydifferentin the factthat a joining of individual minds provides the field ofaction for phenomena sui generis,phenomena that these associated mindscould not have produced simply through the force of their own natures.Having made this point, we are in a position to specify a criterion nterms of which it will be possible to recognize the phenomena of socialphysiology. These phenomena cannot be considered physiological in thesame sense as in dealing with the individual; for they are not of the sortwhich disclose themselves simply by developing their intrinsicproperties.In otherwords, such phenomena can only become partof the individualasthey are imposed on him fromoutside. They must exert some pressureonus if we are thus to be led beyond our individual natures. This pressuremay not be noted, just as we may not be aware of atmospheric pressure onour bodies. It may be also that we capitulatewithout resistance. But wit-tingly or not, freely accepting or passively submitting, it is nonethelessreal. This is what we meant in designating as constrainthis characteristicproperty of social phenomena of imposing themselves on the individual(see Reglesdela me'thodeociologique,). Wedo not mean by this that collec-tive beliefs and behaviors must necessarily be inculcated in man through


11/18


violence and coercion. The force which prompts us to defer to them and towhich we conform is not a material thing, or at least it is not necessarilymaterial.If we submit unresistingly to the forces and mandates of society,it is not only because society is a more powerful being than we are. It isgenerally a moral authority which justifies all the outcomes of our activityand which bends our minds and wills. For everything coming from it isendowed with a prestige which inspires us in varying degrees with feelingsof deference and respect. When we are confronted with modes of thoughtand action not of our making, which result from the collective experience(generally secular), we come to a halt, understanding that here in theseforms of behavior there is something which goes beyond the ordinarypermutations of the individual mind and which we cannot lightly dismiss.And this feeling is the more reenforced by what we feel when we gobeyond or rebel against [the collective pattern]. Individual undertakingsdirectedagainst social realities, either with the aim of destroying them orof altering them, always run into strong resistance. These forces, moral ornot, against which the individual raises himself, react against him and at-test to theirsuperioritywith the usually irresistibleenergy of their reaction.The preceding analysis has been chiefly a dialecticalone; and for thereason that we indicated. We were anxious to clarifyfrom the beginningthe characteristicsof social facts, startingwith this axiom:they are social,and therefore not individual. The reader in following our argument musthave noticed the data which served to support it. There was a wholeimpressive group of beliefs and behaviors which reveal in the highestdegree the characteristicsust indicated;that is to say, beliefs and practicesof religious, moral, and juridicallife. All of them imply, to the very core,mandatorybehaviors.All impose themselves normally by the respect theyinspire, by the sense of obligation which prompts us to defer to themand, whenever we happen to run counter to them, by the coercive influ-ence that they exert in the form of sanctions. This shows more clearly stillin religious phenomena since the very way in which they are conceivedshows that their realitycomes from a source beyond the individual, sincethese phenomena are supposed to issue from an authoritydifferentfromthat with which man, as man, is endowed; and froma higher source. Andso it is with law and with morality which, since they derive fromreligion,could not but have the same character, he latter like the formerexactingstrictobedience of us. Thus we can understand the authoritativetone inwhich we speak of Duty, or the way the popular imagination delights inacknowledging the voice of a being superior to man, a Divinity. The be-liever takes this symbolic manifestationliterallyand for him the religiousor moral imperativeis logically explained by the preeminent natureof thedivine personality. Forthe scientist such a question doesn't arise since thedomain of science does not go beyond the empiricaluniverse. Science isnot even concerned with knowing whether another reality exists. For it,


12/18

1064 / Social Forces Volume 59:4, June 1981the only thing which is established is that there exist ways of acting andthinking which are obligatory and which, as a consequence, are distin-guished from all other forms of behavior and of mental constructions (re-presentation).And from the fact that all sense of obligation presupposessome authoritywhich obliges, superior to the subject who is obligated;andsince, on the other hand, we do not know on the empirical level anyauthority superior to that of the individual if it is not the authorityof thecollectivity, we must therefore consider every phenomenon having thischaracteras being of a social nature.Consequently, even though these phenomena were the only onespresenting this distinctive characteristic, t is just as necessary that they bedistinguished from other phenomena studied in individual psychologyand assigned to another science. In this way sociology would have a fieldof inquirywhich might appear restrictedbut which would at least be welldefined. In realitythereareotherphenomena having the same characteris-tics, although to a lesser degree. Does not the language which we speak inour country resist the daring innovator with a forcecomparable o that feltby those who are inclined to violate religious rites, maxims of law andmorality?There is something involved in language which inspires defer-ence. Traditionalcustoms, even when there is nothing of the religious ormoral n them, feasts, the customs of courtesy, etc., fashions, themselves-these are protectedby a great range of sanctions against individual inclina-tions to rebel. Also our economic organization mposes itself on us with animperious necessity. If we try to rebel against it, we are not necessarilyblamedfor this reason alone; but we must add that such innovations oftenarouse resistances which are not altogether lacking in moral quality.It isappropriateto take account not only of the materialimpossibility of notconforming in large measure to the rules of the hallowed ways (techniqueconsacree),ut also of the fact that this word "hallowed"is not an idle one.In industrial ife as well as in other of our daily relationships,the traditionalpracticesrespectedin our societies exert over us, at the least, an authoritysufficient to restrain deviant tendencies, an authority which, however,being less, is less effective in curbing such tendencies than that derivingfrom moral rules. Nonetheless, there is only a difference in degree be-tween them [these sorts of authority], a differencewe need not now lookinto. In conclusion, social life is nothing other than the moral milieu, orbetter, the sum of the various moralcontexts which surroundthe person.In calling them moral we mean that these milieuxconsist in a complex ofideas: as a result they are, with respect to individual minds, just as thephysical setting is to living organisms. Both the moral and the physicalmilieuxconstitute independent realities, at least independent of one an-other to the extent that this can be in a world where everything is boundtogether. But the reality, the coercive forceto which we submit, in the oneinstance our bodies, in another our wills, is not the same in the two cases


13/18


and does not derive fromthe same causes. The one stems from the intrac-tability of molecuilaragents which constitute the physical reality and towhich nature requires us to adapt. The other consists in this prestigesui generiswith which social facts are endowed and which sustains themagainst threat of individual deviation.Wedo not mean to assert, in addition, that social beliefs and behav-iors insinuate themselves in invariantfashion in individuals. This wouldnot accord with the facts. In dealing with collective institutions, in assimi-lating them, we render them individual, imprinting them with a more orless personal character,just as in apprehending the world of the senseseach of us colors it according to his temperament so that we see manythings differently,express things differently, deal with them differentlyinthe same physical setting. This is why each of us, up to a point, formulateshis own religious faith, his own cult, his own morality,his own ways ofdoing things. There is no social uniformitywhich does not admit a wholerange of individual gradations. There is no collectivefact which is imposedin a uniform manner on all persons.This is not to deny, however, that the rangeof possible and toleratedvariation s not always and everywheremore or less restricted.Virtuallynovariation is allowed in the moral and religious domain where innovationand reformarefatally viewed as crimes and sacrilege;while rathermore ispermittedin the realmof economic phenomena. But sooner or later thereis, nonetheless, a limit beyond which we cannot go. Thisis why the charac-teristicof social phenomena is entirely found in the ascendancy which itexercises over particular individual]minds.As to external indices, there are at least two which seem relativelyeasy to use and especially appropriate.Thereare firstof all the resistanceswith which social groups oppose individual deviations in ways of actingand thinking. It is very easy to see such resistances when they operatethrough specific sanctions, religious, legal, or moral. In all these cases,society directly imposes its will on the individual, requiringhim to thinkand behave in determinate ways. It is this which reveals indisputably thesocial characterof all obligatoryrules in the realms of religion, law, andmorality.Sometimes, however, socialresistanceis not so readily perceivedand operates in less conscious and more hidden ways. Such is that whichopposes too radical innovations in matters of economic methods. It istherefore useful to adopt another criterion which can be more easily ap-plied in all cases: we shall find it in the special way in which social phe-nomena are inculcatedin the individual. Since society imposes them on itsmembers, these social phenomena must have a certain generality withinthe groupto which they belong;since they derive fromsociety, they cannotbecome part of individuals except by some process which moves fromoutside to inside. In fact, the rules of morality, he customs of courtesy,theopinions and traditionalmanners of our groups arebroughthome to us by


14/18

1066 / Social Forces Volume 59:4,June 1981

means of a common education; the rules of professional techniques, byway of technical education; articles of faith through religious education,etc. And what shall we say of the juridical rules, most of them beingmatters that we can live in ignoranceof throughout a lifetime, so that wemust consult with specialists when some need arises to know them? Onthe one hand, generality alone is not a sufficient criterion, as we havealready shown; on the other hand, knowledge of the process throughwhich social phenomena are implantedin individual minds would not, ofitself, be a more adequate criterionfor distinguishing the realm of soci-ology. For ideas and behaviorsmay be suggested to us which come fromoutside us and yet which involve nothing of society in them. But if we putthese two specificationstogetherthey are, on the contrary,altogetherchar-acteristic [of social phenomena]. Ways of acting and thinking which aregeneralin a given society,but that persons draw fromoutside themselves,can only owe their generality to the influence of the only moral milieuwhose influence they feel, that is to say, the social milieu. These mpersonalnormsof thoughtandactionarethosewhichconstitute hesociological henome-nonparexcellencend bear he samerelationshiposocietyas vitalfunctionsbearto theorganism:heyexpress hewayin whichthe collectiventelligencendwillaremanifested.Theyare, then, the appropriate aterial flforsocialphysiology.[italicsmine-E.K.W.]At the same time that this definitiondelimits the field of sociologicalresearch, it serves to orient it. If one wishes to restricthimself, to reducesocial phenomena to being merely more or less developed psychologicalphenomena, one is doomed to create a sociology that I may call facile,weak, and abstract.To tell the truth, under these conditions the task pre-sented by sociology is relativelysimple since, society having no laws of itsown, there is none to discover. All that remains is to borrow from psy-chology the laws it thinks to have formulated and to inquire how thephenomena that it studies can be deduced [from such laws]. The onlydifficulty which might appear is the following: what becomes of thosegeneral faculties of human naturein the relationshipsof all sorts that mencan have with one another?For the same reason, all detailed and concreteillustrationof social phenomena, everything which reveals their richnessand specificity, must necessarily escape. The province of the individualmind is too simple, too general, and too indeterminateto be able to takeaccount of the phenomena seen in social beliefs and behaviors, the varietyof their forms and the complexity of their character.These systems areconsequently limited to developing with more or less ingenuity some quiteschematic views, concepts altogetherformal which, because vague or in-determinate,do not lend themselves to control. If, on the contrary, here isa socialrealmas differentfromthe individual realmas the realmof biologyis distinct from the mineral kingdom, then the domain of sociology in-cludes an immense and unexploredworld, involves unimaginedforces-a


15/18


domain where, as a result, there are many discoveries to be made. We findourselves confronted with unknowns which must be conquered and bentto human intelligence. Such a conquest is not easy. In such virgin territorywe can only move slowly and circumspectly.To discover laws bearing onthis complex reality,equally complex proceduresmust be adopted: it is notenough to observe, classify, and compare, but the methods of observation,classification, and comparison must be appropriateto the nature of thisspecial study.VNow doubtless, sociology thus understood is still subject to Simmel's re-proach. The phenomena with which it concerns itselfhave been studied by[other] sciences for a long time: population movements by demography;economic phenomena by political economy; religious beliefs and practicesby the comparative history of religions; moral ideas in the history of civili-zation, etc. Would not sociology then be simply a label affixed to a more orless coherent cluster of old disciplines, being nothing new exceptin name?

But it is important to recall that if this criticism were justified, itwould still not provide a good reason for arbitrarilyimitingthe termsoci-ology to who-knows-what categoryof studies which have not been deter-mined with any precision and which in any case have no right to such adistinction. But further,it is altogetherinaccurateto say that in so joiningunder a given rubricthese different special disciplines there is only in-volved a change of words. In fact, on the contrary,this change of nameimplies and provides the outward symbol for a profoundchange in things.All the special sciences, political economy, comparative history oflaw and religion, demography, human geography, have until now beenconceived and applied as though each constituted an independent wholewhen on the contrary the phenomena with which they deal are only di-verse manifestationsof one given activity,the collective activity.As a resultthe bonds which unite them are overlooked.Who, until quite recenttimes,would have suspected that there were relationships between economicand religious phenomena, between demographic adjustments and moralideas, between geographic conditions and collective manifestations, etc.?A still more serious consequence of this isolation is thateach science stud-ied the phenomena of its own realmas though they were not linked withany social system. Consider thc laws of politicaleconomy or, to be moreprecise, the propositions that the economists elevate to the status of laws!Quite independent of time and space, they seem to be altogether indepen-dent of any formof social organization.One would never think it possibleto have clearcuteconomictypes related to equallydeterminatesocialtypes,just as differentdigestive and respiratoryapparatus s linked to the nature


16/18


of animalspecies. All the phenomena of the economicorderare supposedto proceedin terms of very simple, very generalmovements common to allmankind. And quite similarly,comparativehistoryof religionsstudies reli-gious beliefs and practicesas if they only expressed certain inner states ofthe individualmind; e.g., the fear that great natural forces inspire in manor the reflectionswhich certain phenomena of life suggest to him, thingslike dreams, death, sleep. Only recently in the comparativehistory of lawhave there been some efforts at articulating ome domestic institutions andcertain forms of social organization: but how timid such efforts alwaysare, embryonic,unsystematic, even though they have been particularlyat-tempted by Post and his school and even though Post was a sociologist.SUntil Ratzel's time, who thought of seeing in politicalgeography a socialscience or, more generally, an explanatoryscience in the real sense of theword?This statement might, furthermore,be generalized. Much researchnot only has nothing of sociology in it but is only quasi-scientific.In failingto link social phenomena4 o the social milieu in which they have theirroots, such inquiries remain suspended in mid-air, with no connectionwith the rest of the world, making it impossible to see the connectionslinking one to the other and to see their unity. Under these conditions itonly remainsto report these phenomena without classifyingor explainingthem, as the pure historian does, or even to collect general observations,indiscriminately, n terms of some schematic view in which [social phe-nomena] lose their identity. But such a method precludes success in deter-mining definite relationships between definite classes of facts. Yet this isprecisely what one calls laws in the most general sense of the word. Nowwhere there are no laws can there be science?It is unnecessary to explain at length how such a limitationwill beeliminated as soon as we see in the varioussciences he branches f a singlesciencewhichembraces hem all and to whichwe give the nameof Sociology.[italics mine-E.K.W] From the moment that one cultivates one of thesedisciplines, it is no longer possible to remain oblivious to the others; thephenomena which are studied in their reciprocity interdigitate like thefunctions of a given organism and are, as a result of this interlocking,intimatelyconnected. At the same time, they appear to us in quite a differ-ent way. Products of society, we now see them as functions of society andnot as functions of the individual, and as such can be renderedintelligible.Depending on the way in which society is constituted and on the way inwhich we are individually constituted, one can explain why these phe-nomena appear under one form ratherthan another. Hence they are nolonger elusive, able to slip throughthe graspof science;and they become asubstratumby means of which they join again the rest of human phe-nomena. That is what they are, the social substratum;and so it is that wecan succeed in establishing definite relationships between these facts andin determining laws, properly speaking.


17/18


Another cause, however, has contributed to this change in orienta-tion. If one is to investigate the laws of social phenomena, he must firstknow what natural laws are and the methods by which one can discoverthem; such a sense (intuition)can only be picked up in the practice of thesciences in which discoveries of this sort are made every day, that is, in thenatural sciences. Now the writers who devote themselves to special socialstudies, the economists and the historians, have a culture that is moreliterarythan scientific. In general, they have only a very vague notion ofwhat a law is. The historians systematically deny and forswear the exis-tence of laws in the whole social domain; and as for the economists, theyare notorious for confusing laws with abstracttheorems which are simplyexpressed as ideological possibilities, having nothing in common with theword law as it is used in physics, chemistry, or biology. Quite to the con-trary, he thinkers who first used the word sociology and who, as a result,anticipatedthe affinity of all these phenomena which seemed up to thenindependent of one another, Comte and Spencer, were quite abreastof themethods used in the natural sciences and with the principles on whichthey are founded. Sociology was born in the shadow of these sciences; andin intimatecontact with them it drew into its own sphere of action all thesespecial social sciences that it comprises in principleand which today findthemselves informed with a new spirit. It goes without saying that amongthe firstsociologists, some were wrong in exaggerating this relationship tothe point of failing to understand the independence of the social sciencesand the autonomy which they must enjoy with respect to the other sci-ences which preceded them. But this excess should not lead us to forgethow much of value there is in these principalseats of scientificthought.We must admit then that this term sociology with the meaning wehave given it is not a simple addition to the vocabulary,but that it is andremains the sign of a thorough reshaping of all the sciences investigatinghuman affairs;6 nd this is the task of sociology in the present day scientificmovement. Under the influence of the ideas represented in this word, allthe studies, which up to now have taken their sourcerather rom literatureor in scholarly erudition, show that their real affinitiesare elsewhere andthat they seek theirmodel in a quite differentdirection.Rather than stop-ping with the consideration of events on the surface of social life, we feelthe need for investigating the deeper wellsprings of social life, the intimatesources, the impersonaland hidden forces which motivatepersons and thecollectivity.Such an inclination has alreadybeen seen among the histori-ans; but it belongs to sociology to provide this tendency with a clearerconsciousness, to clarifyand develop this tendency. Certainlythe move-ment is still in its beginnings; but there is alreadya good start, and at thepresent our task is simply to speed it up and give it specific direction.We are not, however, saying that sociology ought always to limititself to being only a system of special sciences. If all the phenomena thatthese sciences observearerelated,if they areonly species of a given genus,


18/18

1070/ Social Forces Volume 59:4,June 1981there is reason to ask what it is that makes for the unity of the genus itself,and this is the task of a special branchof sociology. Society,social life in thewhole reach of its development, forms a whole. And a science does notcover this whole, since it studies the elements of the whole, separately.Following analysis, there must be synthesis, showing how the elementsarejoined into a whole. This is the justification or a Sociologie enerale.f allsocial phenomena present certain common characteristics,it is becausethey all derive from the same source or from roots of the same species. It isthe task of general sociology to find these primaryroots.In matters of morphology, sociology will inquire what is the elemen-tary group which gives birth to increasingly complex groups. As to physi-ology, it will ask what the elementaryfunctionalphenomena arewhich, intheir combinations and permutations, have progressively formed the in-creasingly complex phenomena which have emerged in the course of evo-lution. But the worthwhileness of the synthesis clearly depends on thevalue of the analysis with which the special sciences concern themselves.Hence it is necessary for us to attend to and develop these special disci-plines. This last seems the most urgent task confronting sociology today.Notes1. This translationwas done in 1960from an Appendix in ArmandCuvillier's1953 essay, Ouvalasociologiefrancaise?Cuvillier ustifiesthe republication f Durkheim'spaper (carriedby theRivista italianadi sociologiain 1900) by saying that:Wethought it useful to translateand publish it here in an appendix since Durkheim,in thispaper, opposes his conception of sociology to the purely formalisticconceptionof GeorgSimmeland, as I have indicatedat many points in the foregoingwork [reference s to Oava lasociologierancaise?-E.K.WJ many of his criticisms seem still valid as they apply to certainconceptions of sociology currently n vogue. Furthermore, t is of some interest to comparethe concept of social morphology as he develops it here (cf. Divisiondu travail ocial, iv. II,Chapter2, andR&gles e amethodesociologique, hapter5, Part II)with other interpretations fthe ideaof form n sociology-A.C.2. See his articleon "le probleme de la sociologie," n the RevuedeMetaphysiqueet de Morale,Vol. II, September, 1894, p. 497, and his memoire or monograph, "Commentles formessocialesse maintiennent,"n l'Annee Sociologique,ol. I, 1898, pp. 71-109-E.D.3. Theallusion here is to the Statiqueocialeof Auguste Comte-A.C.4. We see here how inaccurate t is to accuse Durkheim, as is still often done, of havingperceivedonly the crystallizedor frozenaspects of social life-A. C.5. HereDurkheimrefers to a Germanjuristand ethnologist, AlbertHermann Post (1839-95)who sought to linkvarying legal forms with changing familypatterns;and to uncoverstagesof socialevolution. FriedrichRatzel(1840-1904)was a human geographer nfluential n sup-port of the view that culturalpatternsand social forms are shaped by the physicalenviron-ment-E.K.W6. And psychology, too, is destined to feel some changes under this influence. If socialphenomena penetrate the person from the outside, there is a whole realm of individualconsciousnesswhich depends in parton social causes and which psychologycannotabstract[disregard]without becomingunintelligible-E.D.

Date post:	06-Apr-2018
Category:	Documents
Upload:	hermann-garcia-luna
View:	218 times
Download:	0 times

The Realm of Sociology as a Science- Durkheim

Documents