Sociology is the systematic study of society and social interaction. In order to carry out their studies, sociologists identify cultural patterns and social forces and determine how they affect individuals and groups. They also develop ways to apply their findings to the real world.
being undergone by European societies and remedies which may relieve it” (1897).
In this respect, Durkheim represented the sociologist as a kind of medical doctor,
studying social pathologies of the moral order and proposing social remedies and
cures. He saw healthy societies as stable, while pathological societies experienced a
breakdown in social norms between individuals and society. The state of
normlessness or anomie—the lack of norms that give clear direction and purpose to
individual actions—was the result of “society’s insufficient presence in individuals”
(1897).
His father was the eighth in a line of father-son rabbis. Although Émile was the
second son, he was chosen to pursue his father’s vocation and was given a good
religious and secular education. He abandoned the idea of a religious or rabbinical
career, however, and became very secular in his outlook. His sociological analysis
of religion in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912) was an example of
this. In this work he was not interested in the theological questions of God’s
existence or purpose, but in developing a very secular, sociological question:
Whether God exists or not, how does religion function socially in a society? He
argued that beneath the irrationalism and the “barbarous and fantastic rites” of both
the most primitive and the most modern religions is their ability to satisfy real social
and human needs. “There are no religions which are false” (Durkheim 1912) he said.
Religion performs the key function of providing social solidarity in a society. The
rituals, the worship of icons, and the belief in supernatural beings “excite, maintain
or recreate certain mental states” (Durkheim 1912) that bring people together,
provide a ritual and symbolic focus, and unify them. This type of analysis became
the basis of the functionalist perspective in sociology. He explained the existence
and persistence of religion on the basis of the necessary function it performed in
unifying society.
Durkheim was also a key figure in the development of positivist sociology. He did
not adopt the term positivism, because of the connection it had with Comte’s quasi-
religious sociological cult. However, in Rules of the Sociological Method he defined
sociology as the study of objective social facts. Social facts are those things like law,
custom, morality, religious beliefs and practices, language, systems of money, credit
and debt, business or professional practices, etc. that are defined externally to the
individual. Social facts:
• Precede the individual and will continue to exist after he or she is gone
• Consist of details and obligations of which individuals are frequently unaware
• Are endowed with an external coercive power by reason of which individuals
are controlled
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