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The Place of Religion in Durkheim's Theory of Institutions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Gianfranco Poggi
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Extract

In the Preface to the second edition of Les régies de la methode sociologique (1901) Émile Durkheim defined sociology as “the science of institutions, of their genesis and functioning” (R XXII). In the same text, however, he stated:

In the present state of the discipline, we really do not even know what are the major social institutions, such as the state or the family, the right of property, or contract, punishment and responsibility. We ignore almost entirely the causes on which they depend, the functions they fulfil, the laws of their evolution; we barely begin to perceive some light on a few of these points (R xv).

Type
Reflections on Durkheim
Information
European Journal of Sociology / Archives Européennes de Sociologie , Volume 12 , Issue 2 , November 1971 , pp. 229 - 260
Copyright
Copyright © Archives Européenes de Sociology 1971

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References

* This essay is based on two chapters from a forthcoming book, Images of Society: essays on the sociological theories of Tocqueville, Marx and Durkheim (Stanford, Stanford University Press). The main writings of Durkheim which I have used are referred to in abbreviated form as follows: D: De la division du travail social8 (Paris, P.U.F., 1967)Google Scholar; R: Les règies de la méthode sociologique8 (Paris, P.U.F., 1967)Google Scholar; S: Le suicide Étude de sociologie2 (Paris, P.U.F., 1967)Google Scholar; F: Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse5 (Paris, P.U.F., 1968)Google Scholar; SP: Sociology and Philosophy, translated by Pocock, D.F. (Glencoe, Free Press, 1953)Google Scholar. All translations, except those quoted from the lastmentioned book, are mine.

(1) Aimard, G., Durkheim et la science écanomique (Paris, P.U.F., 1962), p. 25Google Scholar.

(2) See for instance F: 49, 56. Also Durkheim, É., Journal sociologique (Paris, P.U.F., 1969), pp. 461–462Google Scholar, where a short “Note on legal systems” applies to them a distinction between “practices’ and ‘institutions’.

(3) This point seems to have been missed by Lêvi-Stbauss, Cl., judging from his critique of Durkheim now in Totemism, translated by Needham, R. (Boston, Beacon, 1963)Google Scholar. The stress on the creative nature of collective sentiments does not exclude, in Durkheim, an awareness of the derivative nature of individual sentiments.

(4) This point is made in the introduction to the first edition of Division, not reprinted in the current French edition; see the American version, The Division of Labor in Society, translated by Simpson, G. (New York, Macmillan, 1933), p. 417Google Scholar.

(5) Parsons, T., The Structure of Social Action (New York, McGraw-Hill, 1937), P. 321Google Scholar.

(6) See Antoni, C., From History to Sociology (Detroit, Wayne State U.P., 1959), p. 126Google Scholar.

(7) See Bellah, R., Durkheim and History, in Nisbet, R. (ed.), Émite Durkheim (Englewood Cliffs, Prentice-Hall, 1965), p. 168Google Scholar.

(8) On the contrast between the medieval and the Roman conceptions of law see d'Entrèves, A. Passerin, The Notion of the State (Oxford, O.U.P., 1967), pp. 85–88Google Scholar.

(9) See the American version of Division (referred to above in footnote 4), p. 418.

(10) The best short statement of Gehlen's, Arnold theory is probably “Probleme einer soziologischen Handsungslehre”, now in his Studien zur Anthropologie und Soziologie (Neuwied, Luchterhand, 1963), 196 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(11) See Gouldker, A., Reciprocity and autonomy in functional theory, in Gross, L. (ed.), Symposium on Sociological Theory (New York, Harper, 1959), pp. 241 sqqGoogle Scholar.

(12) I leave aside Durkheim's reference to a ‘Church’ as part of his definition of religion, which raises issues foreign to my present concerns.

(13) Quoted by Bellah, R., loc. cit. pp. 166–167Google Scholar.

(14) This passing remark by Durkheim can be seen as the prime source of a great deal of valuable empirical and theoretical work by other French anthropologists and sociologists, from Marcel Mauss to Charles Le Coeur. See in particular the latter's Le rite et l'outi2 (Paris, P.U.F., 1969)Google Scholar.

(15) See the introduction to R. Nisbet (ed.), Émile Durkheim, op. cit.

(16) I develop at length this point in the first chapter of the section on Durkheim of my forthcoming book Images of society.

(17) I attempt to establish this in the second chapter of the section on Durkheim of my book.

(18) Quoted from Korsch, K., Karl Marx (London, Chapman, 1938), p. 139Google Scholar.

(19) Quoted from Heller, H., Staat, in Vierkandt, A. (ed.), Handwoerterbuch der Soziologie (Stuttgart, Enke, 1932), p. 616Google Scholar.

(20) For a sophisticated recent restatement of this position see Fleischer, H., Marxismus und Geschichte (Frankfurt, Suhrkamp, 1969), passimGoogle Scholar.