ABSTRACT
During his lifetime, Emile Durkheim's methodological writings were notoriously subject to controversy, and his 'sociologism' was widely condemned. These early critiques, often involving quite inaccurate versions of Durkheim's views, have long since ceded place to critical interpretations of Durkheim's writings which are founded upon a more adequate understanding of the themes and the dilemmas inherent in his sociology. Durkheim is often regarded as being fervently 'anti-individualist'. But in fact his works contain a vigorous defence of individualism. In other words, Durkheim's writings represent an attempt to detach 'liberal individualism', regarded as a conception of the characteristics of the modern social order, from 'methodological individualism'. Durkheim's endeavour to elucidate the distinctive properties of the subject-matter of sociology contains what has become one of the most well-known, and oft-quoted, passages in his work. There is in every society a certain group of phenomena which may be differentiated from those studied by the other natural sciences.
