This book looks at this classical sociologist's work on the family. Durkheim's writings in this area are little known, but the family was nevertheless one of his primary interests. It brings together Durkheim's ideas on the family from diverse sources and presents his family and sociology systematically and comprehensively. Chapter topics include: * Durkheim's life and times * his evolutionary theory of the family * methodologies for studying the family * the changing relationship of kin * conjugal family and the state * the interior of the family * family policy * gender * sexuality His work is situated in it's historical context and comparisons are drawn to present-day sociology of the family and family issues.

This study of Durkheim seeks to help the reader to achieve a historical understanding of his ideas and to form critical judgments about their value. To some extent these tow aims are contradictory. On the one hand, one seeks to understand: what did Durkheim really mean, how did he see the world, how did his ideas related to one another and how did they develop, how did they related to their biographical and historical context, how were they received, what influence did they have and to what criticism were they subjected, what was it like not to make certain distinctions, not to see certain errors, of fact or of logic, not to know what has subsequently become known? On the other hand, one seeks to assess: how valuable and how valid are the ideas, to what fruitful insights and explanations do they lead, how do they stand up to analysis and to the evidence, what is their present value? Yet it seems that it is only by inducing oneself not to see and only by seeing them that one can make a critical assessment. The only solution is to pursue both aims--seeing and not seeing--simultaneously. More particularly, this book has the primary object of achieving that sympathetic understanding without which no adequate critical assessment is possible. It is a study in intellectual history which is also intended as a contribution to sociological theory.

Ranging from Durkheim's original lecture in sociology to an excerpt from the work incomplete at his death, these selections illuminate his multiple approaches to the crucial concept of social solidarity and the study of institutions as diverse as the law, morality, and the family. Durkheim's focus on social solidarity convinced him that sociology must investigate the way that individual behavior itself is the product of social forces. As these writings make clear, Durkheim pursued his powerful model of sociology through many fields, eventually synthesizing both materialist and idealist viewpoints into his functionalist model of society.

This comprehensive volume ranges across the entire spectrum of contemporary sociological inquiry, as seen by Durkheim. It also includes secondary readings by social thinkers of today, connecting the classic writings of Durkheim to contemporary issues. Organizes Durkheim's writings thematically, in a comprehensive collection Includes selections from Durkheim's best-known writings as well as less widely-known texts that explore the themes of modern sociology Contains secondary readings by key contemporary social thinkers today Connects the classic writings of Durkheim to contemporary issues Includes a substantial editorial introduction by a leading Durkheim scholar

This new volume of the SAGE Social Thinkers series provides a concise introduction to the work, life, and influences of Émile Durkheim, one of the informal “holy trinity” of sociology’s founding thinkers, along with Weber and Marx. The author shows that Durkheim’s perspective is arguably the most properly sociological of the three. He thought through the nature of society, culture, and the complex relationship of the individual to the collective in a manner more concentrated and thorough than any of his contemporaries during the period when sociology was emerging as a discipline.

This book proposes a new representation of Emile Durkheim, as the philosopher and moralist who wanted to renovate rationalism, challenge positivism, reform sociology, and extend Schopenhauer's philosophy to the new domain of sociology. Above all, it highlights Durkheim's vision of sociology as the 'science of morality' that would eventually replace moralities based on religion.

The Birth of the Gods is dedicated to Durkheim's effort to understand the basis of social integration. Unlike most social scientists, then and now, Durkheim concluded that humans are naturally more individualistic than collectivistic, that the primal social unit for humans is the macro-level unit ('the horde'), rather than the family, and that social cohesion is easily disrupted by human self-interest. Hence, for Durkheim, one of the "gravest" problems facing sociology is how to mold these human proclivities to serve the collective good. The analysis of elementary religions, Durkheim believed, would allow social scientists to see the fundamental basis of solidarity in human societies, built around collective representations, totems marking sacred forces, and emotion-arousing rituals directed at these totems. The first half of the book traces the key influences and events that led Durkheim to embrace such novel generalizations. The second part makes a significant contribution to sociological theory with an analysis that essentially "tests" Durkheim's core assumptions using cladistic analysis, social network tools and theory, and data on humans closest living relatives—the great apes. Maryanski marshals hard data from primatology, paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and neuroscience that enlightens and, surprisingly, confirms many of Durkheim’s speculations. These data show that integration among both humans and great apes is not so much group or kin oriented, per se, but orientation to a community standing outside each individual that includes a sense of self, but also encompassing a cognitive awareness of a "sense of community" or a connectedness that transcends sensory reality and concrete social relations. This "community complex," as Maryanski terms it, is what Durkheim was beginning to see, although he did not have the data to buttress his arguments as Maryanski is able to do.

Émile Durkheim remains one of the most controversial, and one of the most deeply misunderstood, classics of social theory. The Oxford Handbook of Émile Durkheim takes stock of the different recent debates on Durkheimian sociology, and makes them accessible to a wide audience spanning various disciplines; this includes crucial debates that, due to language barriers, are not easily accessible for an English-reading public. In doing so, this volume is an important resource for all scholars and students looking to understand Durkheimian sociology.

A five volume collection of scholarly journal articles and chapters from books covering the subject of Emile Durkheim's work. The five volumes are thematically organized in the following sections: Volume I: 1. Durkheim: The man himself, 2. General sociology. Volume II: 3. Religion, 4. Epistemology and the philosophy of science. Volume III: 5. Morality and ethics, 6. Political sociology. Volume IV: 7. Suicide and anomie, 8. Division of labour and economics, 9. EducationP