ABSTRACT
In The Rules of Sociological Method, Emile Durkheim sought to establish the “social milieu,” or society itself, “as the determining factor of collective evolution.” Society, in turn, he took to reflect not the mere summation of individuals and their characteristics, but “a specific reality which has its own characteristics.” And the basis of this “specific reality,” Durkheim held, was “the system formed by [individuals’] association, by the fact of their combination.” Hence, “if the determining condition of social phenomena is… the very fact of association, the phenomena ought to vary with the forms of that association, i.e., according to the ways in which the constituent parts of society are grouped” (Durkheim 1895:116, 103, xlvii, 112). In short, Durkheim attributed the range of possibilities for individual action in the short run and collective evolution in the long run to changing forms of social solidarity.1
