Sociology as subversion: Discussing the reproductive interpretations of Durkheim

Abstract

This article presents a critical analysis of a recurring interpretation of Émile Durkheim’s sociology, namely that it views society as fixed in a rigid, instituted form, doomed to self-repetition, and impervious to any type of change except that of its own necessary internal development (see the work of Albert Bayet, Georges Sorel, Georges Gurvitch, Talcott Parsons, Robert Nisbet, or Raymond Boudon). It is argued here that this reproductive interpretation is based on Chapter 3 of The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), but that Durkheim himself rejected it altogether in his later writings. From his 1898 article, ‘Individual and Collective Representations,’ to The Elementary Forms of Religious Life of 1912, Durkheim came to see one activity of society – the transformative activity of collective ideation – as unconcerned with the satisfaction of purely morphological needs. The point, however, is not that Durkheim’s sociology developed from a morphological approach governed by a principle of self-reproducibility to a psychological approach that transcends the production/reproduction dichotomy. The article argues instead that by neglecting the contribution of the discipline of sociology, and of the epistemological principles on which it is based, to the instituting activity of collective ideation, the reproductive interpretation offers only a partial reading of The Rules of Sociological Method: sociology, as a scientific form of collective ideation, actually instantiates its transformative, even subversive, force.