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The Rules of Sociological Method The Rules of Sociological Method by Emile Durkheim Edited with an Introduction by Steven Lukes Translated -by W. D. Halls I[!EI THEFREE PRESS New York London Toronto Sydney Introduction and.Se1ection C 1982 by StevenLukes Translation C 1982by The MacmillanPress lJd All rightsreserved. No partof this bookmay be reproducedor transmitted in any form or by any means,electronic or mechanical,including photo­ copying,recording, or by any information storageand retrieval system, without permissionin writing from the Publisher. The FreePress A Division of Simon & ScbusterInc. 1230Avenue of the Americas New York,N.Y. 10020 FirstAmerican Edition 1982 Printedin theUnited States of America printing number 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 Libraryor Congress In Cataloging Publication Data Durkheim. Emile. 1858-1917. The rules of sociologicalmethod. Translation of: Les regles de la methodesociologique. 1. Sociology-Methodology.I. Lukes. Steven. 11. Title. HM24.D962 1982 301'.0\'8 82-8492 ISBN-13: 978-0-02-907930-0 AACR2 ISBN-I0: 0-02-907930-6 ISBN-13: 978-0-02-907940-9 (Pbk) ISBN-l0: 0-02-907940-3 (Pbk) Contents Introduction (by Steven Lukes) THE RULES OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD Preface 31 Preface to the Second Edition 34 Introduction 48 Chapter I: What is a Social Fact? 50 Chapter 11: Rules for the ObS€;,rvation of Social Facts 6Q Chapter Ill: Rules for the Distinction of the Normal from the Pathological 85 Chapter IV: Rules for the Constitution of Social Types 108 Chapter V: Rules for the Explanation of Social Facts 119 Chapter VI: Rules for the Demonstration of Sociological Proof 147 Conclusion 159 WRITINGS OF DURKHE.M BEARING ON HIS VIEW OF SOCIOLOGYAND ITS METHOD Marxism and Sociology: The Materialist Conception of History (1897) 167 Sociology and the Social Sciences (1903) 175 Debate on the Relationship between Ethnology and Sociology (1907) 209 Debate on Explanation iriHistory and Sociology (1908) 211 Debate on Political Economy and Sociology (1908) 229 The Contribution of Sociology to Psychology and Philosophy (1909) 236 241 ",pbo' jlQ'lllY ( 1899) , , in General and Types of Civilisation (1902) 243 I/JcttlKKIof Sociology (1908) 245 , 'S*:tety(l917) 248 - tAttersabout: , The Psychological Character of Social Facts and their Reality (1895) 249 The Nature of Society and Causal Explanation (1898) 251 . The Psychological Conception of Society (1901) 253 The Role of General Sociology (1905) 255 Influences upon Ourkheim's View of Sociology ( 1907) 257 Index 261 Translator's Note References to works cited in the Notes have been checked in editions available and in some cases additions and amendments have been made. W.O.H. Introduction This volume contains the first English translation of Emile Durk­ heim's The Rules of Sociological Method that does justice in terms of accuracy and eleg&nce to the original text. It also brings together his more interesting subsequent statements (most of them hitherto untranslated) on the nature and scope of sociology and its method.1 They take various forms, including contributions to debates and letters, and show him confronting critics and seeking to clarify his positions. They "Cover the period between his first major book" The Division of Labour in Society (1893) and his last, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912). During this period, he not only published and lectured on suicide, the family, crime and punishment, legal and political sociology, the history of socialism, the history of education in France since earliest times, the sociology of morality, primitive classification and the sociology of religion, but he also established the remarkable journal, the Annee sociologique (of which twelve fat volumes appeared be­ tween 1898 and 1913) and, through it, the Durkheimian, school of French sociology. This flourished briefly, until the carnage of the First World War, barely surviving its founder in an increasingly alien intellectual climate between the wars; yet it has had a profound impact 'on the history of the human sciences in France and outside, from the French Annales school through British social anthropology to American sociology. Behind all the detailed work of Durkheim and his collaborators, surveying and analysing world literature in the social sciences for the Annee, writing specialised monqgraphs and inculcating the new science of sociology in a wide variety of students through lectures, there lay a general organising concept�n of sociology - a 1 2 Introduction vision of the map of social scientific knowledge, a programme for its acquisition and systematisation, and a methodological canon for establishing its claims. Durkheim never ceased to expound and defend this conception, against critics friendly and hostile. It was a cause to which he 'devoted [his] life'2 and one that, as I shall suggest, went far beyond questions of scientific method and academic boundaries. His successive expositions and defences are instructive, in various ways. In particular they throw light on Durkheim's and the Durkheimians' project; they make clear where the limits of such a 'conception of sociology and social .science lie; and they suggest what part extra-scientific interests and objectives may have played in its very constitution. There are. in short, at least three ways of , reading The Rules and these accompanying texts: as an expression of Durkheim's avowed intentions; as exemplifying the limits of his view of sociology; and as a study in the politics of theorising. I Durkheim's project Durkheim intended The Rules as a manifesto on behalf of 'the ' cause of a sociology that isobj ective. specific and methddical'.3 By 1901, in his preface to the second edition, he could report that the cause 'has continually gained ground. The founding of the Annee sociologique has certainly contributed much to this result. Since it embraces at one and the same time the whole field of the science, the Annee, better than any more specialised publication. has been able to impart a feeling of what sociology must and can become.,4 His aim. he wrote�n i907. had been to imbue with the sociological 'idea those disciplines from which it -was absent and thereby to make them branches of sociology'. S His explicit methodological intentions for sociology. then. concerned its objectivity. its speci­ ficity, its methods of explanation and- its tntnsformative relation to other disciplines. �ociology's objectivity was, in Durkheim's famous phrase. a matter of treating 'social facts as things'. This elliptical formula really meant that 'social facts' should be regarded by the sociolog­ ist as realities; that is, as having characteristics independent of his conceptual apparatus, which can only be ascertained through empirical investigation (as opposed to a priori reasoning or Introduction 3 intuition ) and, in particular, through 'external' observation by' means of indicators (such as legal codes, statistics, etc.), and as existing independently of individuals' wills, and indeed of their individual manifestations, 'in definite forms such as legal or moral rules, popular sayings, in facts of social structllre', in forms which 'exist permanently: .. and constitute a fixed object, a constant standard which is always at hand for the observer, and which leaves no room for subjective impressions or personal observations' .6 Durkheim embraced the label 'rationalist'. Like Descartes he adhered to an 'absolute conception of knowledge'7 as pertaining to a reality that exists independently of that knowledge, and to the goal of 'clear, distinct notions or explanatory concepts',1I Con� cerning science, he was a realist. The initial definitions by which phenomena are classified 'must express the phenomena as a function, not of an idea of the mind, but of their inherent properties', according to 'some integrating element in their nature', in terms of observable 'external' characteristics, with the eventual aim of attaining those which, though 'less apparent are doubtless more essential'. 9 Tb.e sociologist must adopt what Durk­ he!m thought was 'the state of mind of physicists, chemists and physiologists when they venture into an as yet unexplored area of III their scientific field'. This involved making the move that had led from alchemy to chemistry and astrology to astronomy, abandon­ ing o�r everyday 'prenotions'. These, because they were 'de­ veloped unmethodicaHy in order to satisfy needs that are of an exclusively practical nature, are devoid of any scientific value. They no more exactly express social things than the ideas the ordinary person has of substances and their properties (light, heat. sound, etc.) exactly represent the nature of these substances, which science alone reveals to us'.11 Only through following scientific method could the social scientist achieve a parallel success. The nature his science is to reveal is distinctively social, and herein lies the specificity of sociology. 'For sociology to be possible', wrote Durkheim, 'it must above all have an object all of its own' - a 'reality which is not in the domain of the other sciences',12 In The Rules he offered a 'preliminary definition' of social facts, singling out as their distinguishing criteria externality, constraint and generality plus independence. U As I have argued in detail elsewhere,14 this was a crucially ambiguous definition. 4 Introduction When writing of social facts as 'external to individuals' he usually meant 'external to any given individual', but often 'suggested (especially to critical readers) that he meant 'external to all individuals in a given society
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