ABSTRACT
After studying at the Ecole Normale Supérieure (1879-82), Durkheim taught at a number of Lycées between 1882 and 1887, a period broken by a term’s study in Germany, Berlin and Leipzig (1886) before taking up his first University position at Bordeaux where he worked from 1887-1902 (holding the ‘Chaire de Science Sociale’ from 1896). A second period of fifteen years was then spent at the Sorbonne in Paris 1902-17 (holding the ‘Chaire de Science de l’Education’ from 1902, and the ‘Chaire de Science de l’Education et Sociologie’ from 1913). Founder of the famous sociological yearbook, the Année Sociologique, and the school of sociology known as the Année school, or more simply the Durkheimian school, his stature has grown rather than diminished in sociology in the period since his death, at least outside of France. Today the ‘founding fathers’ of modern sociology are generally regarded as the trinity: Marx, Weber and Durkheim. Although it would be a gross error to think these are the only influences of any significance on modern sociology, or even its direct progenitors, they are without doubt its most brilliant formative influences. Translations and commentaries of Durkheim’s writings, at first only a trickle, have become an inundation.
