The Two Durkheims: Founders and Classics in Canadian Introductory Sociology Textbooks
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Abstract:
For contemporary Durkheim scholars, the presentation of Durkheimian sociology in introductory textbooks is notoriously flawed. In this article, we examine the presentation of Durkheim’s work in popular English-language Canadian sociology textbooks. We show that textbooks present two distinct “Durkheims.” First, they characterize him as a founder of the discipline and the sociological project of challenging common-sense explanations of social life. Second, Durkheim appears as the father of structural functionalism who advocates a conservative, integrating vision of society. We argue that to understand why these two versions of Durkheim persist in sociology textbooks, we must appreciate the symbolic place of classical authors in the discipline. The two “textbook Durkheims” endure because they operate as symbols for both the coherence and divisions of the discipline. We suggest that integrating contemporary Durkheimian scholarship into textbooks would require revising conventional textbook approaches of sorting classical authors as founders of contending sociological perspectives.Keywords:
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Sociological Theory
History of sociology
This course examines selected works by the founders of modern sociology and selected recent sociological theorists. Its goal is to provide an understanding of differing approaches to sociological analysis through detailed textual interpretation of classical texts. Thus, we read works by a few sociologists in depth instead of by many sociologists in brief. The first half of the course focuses on works by Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim. It considers their analyses of the rise of industrial society, the distinguishing features of this society, and their assessment of the probable direction it would take. The second half of the course begins with the work of W.E.B. Du Bois and then considers symbolic interactionist, postmodernist, and feminist sociological theories.
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Abstract Sociological theory is not irrelevant to the South but needs to be deparochialised. The parochiality of sociological theory as it exists today can clearly be seen from the canon. The canon would have us believe that sociological theory was the sole creation of a few white men who lived in the nineteenth century. The absence of non‐European thinkers in accounts of the history of sociological theory is particularly glaring in cases where non‐Europeans had not only contributed to systematic thinking about the nature of society in the modern period but also influenced the development of sociology in the West. Typically, a history of social thought or a course on social thought and theory would cover theorists such as Montesquieu, Vico, Comte, Spencer, Marx, Weber, Durkheim, Simmel, Toennies, Sombart, Mannheim, Pareto, Sumner, Ward, Small, and others. Generally, both non‐Western thinkers as well as women founders are excluded. Although sociology is slow to take a decolonial turn, there are now efforts to critique and rethink the canon. This article is a contribution in the direction of critiquing and expanding the canon to render it less parochial.
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This article improves upon our current understanding of the Sociological Society’s contributions to the development of sociology in Britain. It challenges the assessment of the Society’s legacy made by Philip Abrams in 1968 and the more recent conclusions reached by scholars who contributed to a debate published in The Sociological Review in 2007. The article is built on original findings garnered from empirical research undertaken at The Sociological Review’s archives in Keele. It shows that, despite achieving some results in its attempts to introduce a particular type of sociology into Britain, the influence of the Society in establishing, both institutionally and intellectually, a sociological tradition was largely unsuccessful. A limited legacy, however, does not mean that the history of the Society is of little importance in the history of sociology in this country; on the contrary, as this article attempts to highlight, the Society deserves a critical examination precisely because of its limited legacy.
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This course introduces and explores central themes of sociological theory in a way that traces their origins in modern sociological writings of the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. The course gives the student the opportunity to learn how to work with and use theory in understanding social phenomena. We will consider the context in which theorists worked, the merits of the theories in their own terms, their political implications, and issues they pose for sociology today. This course should prove important to sociology majors and other students interested in the modern sources of contemporary social analysis.
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This course focuses on the major strands of sociological theory in the years before 1930,
the formative years of the discipline. We will devote the most attention to three of these
important founders, Karl Marx, Max Weber, and Emile Durkheim, but we will also read a
number of other thinkers.
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Masamichi Shimmei was the first one in Japan who wrote the outstanding 'History of Sociology', and it was well worthy of his wide erudition. His sociological history took a general view of the world sociological development from his original basic theory (Handlungszusammenhang) constructed in the early stage of his academic life. His method of sociological history is to understand the sociological theory and social thought in their mutual relations, and this idea was gradually consolidated in his later years. This very method of Shimmei's is one which is very alike to the concept of the 'Sociological Thought' or 'Sociology of Sociology' - the object of recent attentions in Europe and the United States of America. Yet one cannot say this method is realized successfully in his sociological history. And when he takes the standpoint of sociological thought, it is inevitably contradictory to his other arguments, especially his critique to the medium concept of Karl Mannheim's 'geistige Schichten', which he enthusially insisted in his early works. Thinking of his long academic life, it is no wonder that there is some inconsistency of his position, but I believe it is very important to clarify those points in order to understand the relation between Shimmei's position in 'sociology of knowledge' and his systematic theory, as well as his attitude to the Marxism.
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This effort provides a sociological analysis of the current social/political dichotomy in the United States of America (USA). This analysis will be drawn from two opposing sociological theorist, Talcott Parsons (Functionalism), and Raf Dahrendorf (Conflict View).
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This paper is concerned with the conditions requisite to an understanding of "classic" works in sociological theory, using Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life as the example. Included are (1) a discussion of "presentist" and "historicist" approaches to the history of sociological thought; (2) a criticism of presentist "statements of contribution" in the secondary literature on the Elementary Forms; (3) an assessment of Merton's distinction between the "history" and the "systematics" of sociological theory; (4) a reconsideration of "contextual" approaches to classical social theory; (5) the proposal of a new approach to the history of sociological theory, illustrated by a very tentative reinterpretation of Durkheim's theory of sacrifice; and (6) a concluding section on the value for sociology itself of an authentic history of sociological thought.
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One of the earliest sociological ‘perspectives’ (or theories) was developed from the work of Emile Durkheim. His theories are considered to be the first major works in now what is considered Functionalism, a term made popular by an American theorist called Talcott Parsons in the early-mid 20th century
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Jonathan H. Turner is the Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of California at Riverside and, for many decades, the world’s leading authority on sociological theory, with research interests in many other areas such as human and societal evolution, social stratification and inequality, philosophy of science, and historical sociology. Professor Turner has authored, co-authored, edited, or co-edited a number of works, including more than 43 influential books, which have been published in twelve different languages, including The Structure of Sociological Theory, The Emergence of Sociological Theory, and many others. He is a member of the American Sociological Association and a former president of the Pacific Sociological Society and the journal editor for Sociological Theory. Professor Turner received a B.A. with honors from University of California at Santa Barbara, a M.A. and a doctorate in sociology from Cornell University. The interview is Professor Turner’s critical reply to the arguments raised in the article “Against Grand Theories: A (Cautionary) Tale of Two Disciplines,” which presents the view that universally accepted grand theories in social sciences are not achievable because of the lack of a common methodology or a theoretical core which results in their multiparadigmatic nature, value-leadenness and insufficient objectivity. The interview took place on March 23, 2021 online.
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