ABSTRACT
One may look in vain in Durkheim’s oeuvre for an explicit discussion of social change, to be found neither in his major texts nor as a rubric in the twelve Année Sociologique volumes published in his lifetime. Social change does not figure in Durkheim’s major divisions of sociology (1978a:83). yet, like the Scarlet Pimpernel, it is here, it is there, it is everywhere. No consideration of Durkheim can be considered complete without taking into account his immanent social realism: societal systems structurally change from within, ultimately from qualitative and quantitative changes in social interaction (a presupposition widely shared with Marx and weber, albeit for different primary factors). This seeming paradox can be best understood if one takes into account that the nineteenth century which provided the context for Durkheim was the modern period’s crucible of enormous economic, political, cultural and technological transformations of the social order, with Durkheim’s predecessors and contemporaries all seeking to ascertain the major features, causes and outcomes of the transformation. If Durkheim did not write explicitly about social change, he and his immediate followers (the “Durkheimians” who will be briefly mentioned in this entry) were indeed very cognizant and attentive to addressing social change. This was at least partially recognized long ago by robert Bellah in a seminal article (1960) pointing to the significance of history in Durkheim’s epistemological and substantive thought.
