ABSTRACT
In the Preface to the first edition of the De la Division du Travail Social ([1893] 1960), the reader is informed that ‘the fact that we propose above all to study reality does not mean that we should abandon the attempt to improve it; indeed, we would consider that our research was not worth a single hour’s effort if it had no more than speculative interest’ ([1893] 1960:3). Durkheim’s initial intention was to make ‘social science’ or sociology (which he considered it was his task to create) an instrument of social change. The (political as well as pedagogical) reforming mission Durkheim embraces is closely linked to the theoretical model he constructs: the model enables him to justify the ultimately practical function of a science of society, to justify approaching a society in terms of both what it is and what it should be given what he calls its ‘conditions of existence’. This ambiguous, but characteristic, Durkheimian usage transcends the simple Comtean distinction between social statics and social dynamics, since it serves to diagnose, or even to guide by reference to, the ‘normal’ becoming of a specific society. The sociologist will reveal incoherences characteristic of a social system and survivals of archaic traits or structures. It will also be the sociologist’s task to assess the new aspirations which appear in the system that are the very motor of development. Thus socialism, according to the definition Durkheim was to give of it, could appear to him to be ‘implied in the very nature of higher societies’ (1970:235).1
