ABSTRACT
There are various ways of approaching Durkheim’s work, and no single approach is entirely satisfactory. In this section it is proposed to adopt a combination of approaches in order to achieve maximum flexibility and coverage, whilst avoiding the temptation to squeeze Durkheim’s varied and uneven contributions into a single tidy framework. One approach that will be used as an organizing device is the “bio-bibliographical” approach. This entails taking some of the most famous of Durkheim’s works in chronological order: The Division of Labour in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897), and The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). The advantage of this approach is that it proceeds by way of the peaks of Durkheim’s range of scholarly publications, and it can also be related to a biographical sequence of events. In this way we proceed from an examination of a doctoral thesis, The Division of Labour, in which Durkheim set out the main themes of his life’s work. We then move to the aggressively challenging methodological treatise, The Rules, where the author throws down the gauntlet as champion of a new and rigorous social science. In Suicide the ambitious young Bordeaux professor provides a substantive demonstration of the new method at work. Finally we come to the mature work, The Elementary Forms, which represents the culmination of Durkheim’s theoretical development and the distillation of his specialized studies of religion in relation to the moral and cognitive bases of social solidarity.
