Jean Baudrillard’s ‘Implosive’ Critique of the Durkheimian Tradition

Introduction This chapter examines Baudrillard’s (1983) prophetic announcements on how the death of the social necessarily involves the end of classical sociological theory.1 While Baudrillard’s announcements do not make direct reference to Durkheim and Parsons’s writings they do, nevertheless, have a negative, if indirect impact, on certain key theoretical elements found within the Durkheimian tradition itself.