Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity (review)

This book, the second volume in Blackwell's Modernity and Society series, is composed of selections from the work of Durkheim, organized thematically and paired with selections from a wide range of more contemporary authors chosen for the ways in which they extend, respond to or throw new light on Durkheim's contribution to the development of contemporary sociological thought. The selections are chosen to form an extended conversation on central theoretical debates and key topics in sociological inquiry.

The general emphasis of the book, in keeping with others in the series, is on an understanding of the topography, institutional order and morality of modern societies. Specific topics include social structure and collective consciousness; culture and symbolic classification; collective emotions and ritual process; individual and collective agency; the modern state and economy; occupational groups, family and education, and a magnificent final section on individuality and autonomy. Selections are taken from a wide range of Durkheim's oeuvre, moving beyond the usually-mined sources to include selections from The Evolution of Educational Thought, Socialism, and essays on the dualism of human nature, moral facts, individualism, penal evolution and — delightfully! — sex education. A wide range of subsequent luminaries are brought into dialogue with Durkheim, including but not limited to Pierre Bourdieu, Marc Bloch, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Mary Douglas, Kai Erikson, Michel Foucault, Victor Turner, Randall Collins, Erving Goffman, Jeffrey Alexander, Talcott Parsons, bell hooks, and Antonio Gramsci. The selections are bracketed by Emirbayer's opening discussion of Durkheim as a "sociologist of modernity" and by a concluding section on Durkheim's "methodological manifesto." The selections are necessarily short, but are well-chosen and read without too much choppiness or fragmentation. The editor's hand is firm but unobtrusive.

Emirbayer's purpose is to present a "useful Durkheim" demonstrating both the "expansiveness" and "coherence" of his work, and highlighting some of its key contributions to contemporary sociology, including some which have suffered a relative neglect. Emirbayer organizes these contributions into two broad thematic groups: one concerned with questions of structure and agency, and another with institutions and institutional sectors. With regard to the first, Emirbayer stresses Durkheim's integrative approach to social structure and culture: cultural analyses of symbolic polarities are framed in relation to specific elements of social organization and differentiation. Emirbayer makes the important point that Durkheim never separated emotion and reason (as he is often accused of doing), regarding emotions as transpersonal and relationally grounded: for example, he was profoundly interested in patterns of emotional commitment animating such rationalized social forms as the Jesuit order. Similarly, Emirbayer notes that Durkheim's later emphasis on collective effervescence reveals an interest in the creative, dynamic and agentic aspects of revolution, conflict and contestation.

Durkheim's institutional sociology suffered because of the relatively late publication of the lectures entitled Professional Ethics and Civic Morals, delaying recognition of the breadth of his interest in the structure and practices of civil society; the "intermediate" domains of families, education corporations and professions. Then and now, Durkheim poses an alternative to political sociologies trading on a simple state/economy duality, and Foucault arguably owes him much in this light. Durkheim saw democratic societies as characterized by a productive (and historically unstable) tension between state agencies, individuals and intermediary institutions, and he developed sustained critiques of both conservative traditionalism and revolutionary socialism. Nonetheless, Durkheim offered a trenchant analysis of class conflict as a form of moral conflict, and of industrial capitalism as a transitional social form.

The format of this book lends itself to use in undergraduate and graduate courses in sociological theory, the sociology of modernity, and institutional or cultural sociology. Had a lesser editor been in charge, it could easily have failed to inspire. But in Emirbayer's capable hands, this book emerges both as an excellent course text and as a significant contribution to Durkheim scholarship in its own right. Emirbayer's own innovative reworking of the pragmatist tradition and network theory have helped re-invigorate discussions of the intersection of culture and action...