Durkheimian Studies

Thanks to an original archive, this article aims to characterize Durkheim's interventions at the Council of Professors in Bordeaux from 1887 to 1902. Frequency, tonality and above all the subjects of interest of his interventions are studied. We are able to see that he paid great attention to the students and their education (i.e. their courses, fees, grants, the problem of the predominance of Latin, proposals for reform of the competitive agrégation in philosophy) but that he was also interested in administrative subjects (modalities of attribution of new courses and new chairs, procedures of the council) and research subjects (subscriptions for the university library, life of the historical and local Annales du Midi). We finally discover that he certainly had administrative ambitions – to become the dean – ended by political circumstances (the Dreyfus Affair).

Ce texte daté du 2 décembre 1899 est la première leçon de la quatrième année du cours de Durkheim sur la Physique générale du droit et des mœurs. Il est intitulé Plan du Cours – Les Sanctions pénales. Dans la première partie du texte, Durkheim présente le plan de cette dernière année du cours. Il se propose d'abord de compléter l'étude de l'éthique objective des systèmes de morale familiale, professionnelle, civique et juridique (que nous connaissons parce qu'elles ont été publiées dans les fameuses Leçons de sociologie) par l'étude objective des sanctions et responsabilités. Cette première partie du cours sera consacrée à la théorie spéciale des sanctions (négatives pénales et civiles, positives) et responsabilités. La dernière partie du cours, sa conclusion, portera sur l'éthique subjective. Une fois ce plan de cours exposé, dans la deuxième partie du texte, Durkheim propose une définition sociologique de la sanction pénale qu'il justifie d'abord par la réfutation des définitions de la peine qui postulent un lien entre souffrance et peine. Ensuite, pour illustrer le caractère sociologique et justifier sa définition préalable de la peine, Durkheim commence à présenter une typologie des sanctions négatives (sanctions punitives pénales, publiques ou privées, sanctions restitutives civiles, etc.). Au terme de sa leçon, il considère avoir défini la peine de manière sociologique, c'est-à-dire en s'en tenant aux caractéristiques extérieures les plus saillantes de son objet, sans recourir à l'intention du patient ou du législateur ni à la question de la responsabilité.

This is the first English translation of Durkheim's lecture for the first class of the fourth and final year of his course ‘On the General Physics of Law and Morality’. The content from the previous year's course is contained in Professional Ethics and Civic Morals (Durkheim [1950] 1992). Durkheim discusses the importance of a special theory of sanctions and provides a typology of their negative and positive forms. He makes a case for the sociology of penalties and responsibilities, one based on the examination of their external and visible characteristics. Crucially, Durkheim displaces the ostensible causal importance of the intentions of juridical subjects, whether legislators or wrong-doers. The translation is accompanied by an extended critical introduction by R. P. Datta and Fr. Pizarro Noël.

La publication de la leçon inédite du cours de physiques des mœurs et du droit de 1899 sur les sanctions pénales permet de mieux comprendre la typologie des sanctions et responsabilités que Durkheim planifiait de déployer dans le cadre de cette dernière partie de l'éthique objective consacrée à la théorie spéciale des sanctions. Nous nous attardons plus particulièrement, dans cet article, sur la réfutation de la définition de la peine par la douleur et sur les arguments que Durkheim amène pour corriger la définition de la peine qui figure dans la DTS. Nous présentons également l'ébauche d'une typologie des sanctions négatives qui figure dans cette leçon et qui montre que la définition sociologique des sanctions pénales passe par leur comparaison avec d'autres sanctions négatives, tant répressives (publiques et privées) que restitutives (civiles). Enfin, nous soulignons l'intérêt qu'il y a à explorer certains éléments du texte, notamment les sanctions positives et l'éthique subjective qui, bien qu'ils y soient peu développés, permettraient sans doute de parfaire notre compréhension de la sociologie de la morale de Durkheim.

This article provides a critical introduction to the first English translation of Durkheim's Saturday, 2 December 1899, lecture that he entitled ‘Course Outline: On Penal Sanctions’. It was written for the first class of the final year of his course ‘General Physics of Law and Morality’. We provide some context to the lecture, a description of the four-year long course at Bordeaux of which it was a part, offer notes on our translation, and discuss the salience of its content. Of particular note is Durkheim's sociological reasoning, and the critical impact of antisubjectivism on the development of his special theory of sanctions and conception of morality as part of social reality.

The newly found exchange of letters between Marcel Mauss and Victor Branford dated 1926 testifies to the active exchanges between both their traditions. Durkheimian sociology owed a great deal to the Branford-Geddes network of colleagues across the Channel, not less than a funding of the republication of their iconic journal, the Année sociologique. On the other hand, Branford was far from apologetic about his own tradition of thought and even went as far as to criticize the Institut Français de Sociologie in the 1920s. All this shows the enduring links between both countries in the field of sociology, contrary to what has often been held.

Despite the ostracism he maintained towards them, Le Play's social science continuers did not ignore Durkheim's work and commented on it – even if laconically – in their journals. The LePlayists loyal to the master's orthodoxy raised the same grievances against Durkheim throughout his academic life. They refused to accept his conception of the social fact as superior and prior to the individual, imposing itself on him with a coercive force. Their criticisms, however, were less virulent after Durkheim's death, as sociology proved a sustainable science whose project had become irrefutable. With the dissident LePlayists, the view is different. Emerging later, it dealt with the object of sociology and the method advocated by the author of the Règles. From the Tourvillians’ point of view, Durkheim's sociology does not adopt the best path for social science (investigation by direct observation), and neglects its process of coordination of social facts (the nomenclature developed by Tourville). Consequently, Durkheim's results are questionable. The debate the Tourvillians wanted to have with Durkheim took place post mortem, thanks to Bouglé and his students from the Centre de documentation sociale, and their engagement, in the 1930s, with Durkheimian sociology and social science.

La Doctrine de Durkheim, texte écrit par Halbwachs en 1918, nous éclaire sur la filiation intellectuelle qui les relie l'un à l'autre. En effet, il met en évidence un intérêt qui va s'avérer durable dans l'œuvre d'Halbwachs : la sociologie de la connaissance, dans la droite ligne de ce que Durkheim présente dans la conclusion des Formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse. Or si Halbwachs insiste sur la portée de l'œuvre de Durkheim en matière de sociologie religieuse dans le domaine de la connaissance, c'est aussi le seul point sur lequel il se permet dans le texte d'adjoindre un développement personnel, preuve supplémentaire qu'il lui accorde de l'importance. Il est d'accord avec Durkheim pour affirmer que la connaissance consiste en un ensemble de classifications dont l'origine est sociale, et qu'ainsi la pensée conceptuelle répond au même besoin que la pensée capable déjà de classer, des primitifs, si bien qu'entre leur pensée logique et la nôtre, la différence n'est que de degrés et pas de nature. Il s'accorde aussi à dire, à la suite de Durkheim et Mauss, que l'évolution fait passer de classifications totémiques à des classifications spatiales, et à la pensée conceptuelle contemporaine, mais selon lui sans qu'on en sache beaucoup plus sur le passage du 2^e au 3^e stade de cette évolution. Aussi Halbwachs esquisse-t-il, en guise de complément, un élément de réponse pour combler ce vide, et, ce faisant, révèle une sensibilité qui annonce ses travaux futurs. Aux catégories de la pensée (espace, temps, causalité etc.) déjà étudiées par Durkheim, il ajoute celles de changement et d'individu, dont il va faire usage dans ses travaux ultérieurs pour expliquer ce mouvement de civilisation qu'est le passage des sociétés rurales aux sociétés urbaines.

‘La doctrine d'Émile Durkheim’, sheds light on the intellectual connection between Durkheim and Halbwachs. Halbwachs agrees with Durkheim that knowledge consists of a set of classifications whose origin is social, and that evolution moves from totemic classifications to spatial classifications and contemporary conceptual thinking, but without much knowledge of the passage from the second to the third stage of this evolution. Halbwachs sketches, as a complement, an element of response to fill this void, and in doing so, announces his future work. To the categories of thought studied by Durkheim, he adds those of change and of the individual, which he will use in his later works to explain the movement of civilization. In doing so, he proves his involvement in developing the durkheimian program onsociology of knowledge.

This article discusses the relationships between sociology and psychology through the dialogue between Georges Dumas and Marcel Mauss about the expression of emotions during the 1920s. Firstly, the aim is to show the affinities of their engagements concerning the disputes between human sciences and philosophy. Secondly, from an analysis of their trajectories, the aim is to show that the positions taken in the debates are associated with the positions psychologists and sociologists took inside the academic field from 1900 to 1930. Finally, the article aims to show that the dialogue between Mauss and Dumas reveals a process of sociologization of psychology rather than a psychologization of sociology, which has produced criticism from psychologists aiming to regain their lost position and from sociologists from the new generation aiming to overcome Durkheimian sociology.

It is well known that Durkheim was a major source of influence in most of Boudon's writings. But his vision of Durkheim has evolved a lot over the years. In the 1960s until the 1990s, he presented Durkheim as a positivist, fairly close to Auguste Comte, and he considered The Rules of the Sociological Method as a mediating work which announced all of the Durkheim's thought. In his most recent works, Boudon brings an original perspective that Durkheim was an important theorist of rationality.

This literature review presents seven major works on Durkheim written by leading Chinese researchers and published during the last 10 years. Some of them try to analyse Durkheim's views in order to understand contemporary Chinese society, by questioning what Durkheim teaches us about moral education, or by examining his conception of the nation. Others are more in the nature of scholarly commentary on his theory, whether by examining notions of anomie, the division of labour, suicide or a moral science.