Émile Durkheim

Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) was a French sociologist and writer who argued that social facts require explanations at the level of institutions, norms and collective life. The Rules of Sociological Method defines an object and discipline for sociology, insisting that patterned constraints cannot be reduced to private intention. Suicide tests that claim through comparative rates, connecting apparently individual acts to forms of social integration and regulation. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life examines ritual, the sacred and collective representations to ask how communities make a shared world. Professional Ethics and Civic Morals turns toward occupational groups, citizenship and the moral organization of modern society. Durkheim's work is most legible when method and application are read together: The Rules establishes his programme, while Suicide shows both its analytical reach and the questions raised by its evidence.