Durkheimian Studies

It is well known that Durkheim’s appointment to the Sorbonne in 1902 was to take up a post in education which became vacant when Ferdinand Buisson left the University to enter politics’ service once more. Buisson had been Director of Primary Education between 1879 and 1896. Durkheim’s appointment was initially as chargé du cours de Science de l’Education, although in Bordeaux he had held professorial rank. In the Paris appointment there was no mention of sociology. Then in 1906 it was decided that the time had come to fill the chair of the Science of Education. It was for the Faculty in the Sorbonne under the chairmanship of the Dean, A. Croiset, to nominate a candidate to the Minister of Higher Education. In the minutes of the Conseil de la Faculté for 16 June, 1906, it is by no means the case that Durkheim, who was a strong candidate, was without serious opposition.1 As is seen below, Bouglé, who was then in Toulouse, was not far behind him and Durkheim’s success was in no way a walk-over. It might also be noticed that Durkheim was not universally popular among teachers at the Sorbonne, let alone among Parisian academics outside the university (see Lukes 1973:363).

A few weeks before Durkheim was recommended for the chair as mentioned above, he was billed to give a lecture entitled ‘Du Sentiment de l’honneur’ on 8 May 1906.1 It was one in a series of public evening lectures in Paris, organised by the Ecole de la Paix. The Ecole, was a private institution founded in 1905 by Horace Thivet, with the object of spreading pacifism. Among the advertised lecturers in the weekly series were Gustav Belot on ‘La Liberté’ and M. Izoulet on ‘L’Elite et la foule’. F. Buisson and D. Parodi also gave lectures in other years. The Ecole appears to have dissolved in 1912.

A local historian of Epinal and professor at the Lycée wrote a short article in La Liberté de l’Est on Durkheim as a native of Espinal and a ‘grand philosophe’. The author, Robert Javelet (1914-86), had become a friend of Henri Durkheim (1881-1978) – the only child of Joseph Félix Durkheim, Emile Durkheim’s elder brother. Henri’s mother died when he was very young, and his father died in 1889. Uncle Emile, who had married in 1887, became very much the orphan’s guardian and adopted father. Henri and Marcel Mauss, who was a little older than himself, lived in Bordeaux for several years. Henri became a judge on the outskirts of Paris. His acquaintance with Javelet must have occurred on Henri’s visits to Epinal. It was from his conversations with Henri Durkheim that Javelet constructed this article.

From its historical root the word croyance refers to religious belief. It is associated with an assertion relating to a religious proposition. Such propositions (beliefs) have sometimes been gathered together to form a creed, as recited by Christians in public worship, or which can be held to be a test of orthodoxy (see Ruel 1982).

‘Representation’ is the key theoretical term of Durkheim’s sociology. It is both central to the nature of social experience and to how this is accessed by the social theorist (see Pickering 2000). In the second edition of Les règles Durkheim stated: ‘Social life is entirely made of representations’ ([1895a] 1987:xi). He made this statement with an obvious degree of irritation, for he insisted that he had ‘expressly stated and repeated (this) in every way’ (ibid). Durkheim had clearly been stung by accusations that he had denied the ‘mental element’ from social experience.

The title rightly suggests that I shall be attempting to give a view of Bourdieu’s perception of Durkheim. I shall not try to judge whether Bourdieu’s perception of Durkheim was correct, nor shall I seek to compare the validity of the positions adopted by Durkheim and Bourdieu. Instead, I shall concentrate on the general context of Bourdieu’s view of Durkheim and focus on Bourdieu’s references to Durkheim in two important texts – the first is an article entitled ‘Sociology and Philosophy in France since 1945: death and resurrection of a philosophy without subject’, published in Social Research in 1967, and the second a book published in 1968 with the title: Le métier de sociologue. It should also be noted that the article was written in collaboration with Jean-Claude Passeron and the book was written in collaboration with Jean-Claude Chamboredon as well as Jean-Claude Passeron (referred to throughout as Bourdieu et al.). I focus on Bourdieu’s view of Durkheim’s work, but one of the points which will become clear is that Bourdieu found it difficult to dissociate his judgement of Durkheim’s intellectual endeavour from his view of Durkheim’s social significance and from his view of the adverse influence of the Durkheimians. I shall make two asides which will suggest ways in which it is clear that the development of Bourdieu’s thinking and career was affected by the consequences of Durkheim’s influence rather more than by the substance of his writing.

Prolegomena Four caveats have to be entered at the outset. The first is that the term persecution is hard to define in a way that covers phenomena which some scholars would want to include, especially in the light of recent historical events. One calls to mind words commonly associated with phenomena of the past - martyrdom, massacre, torture, jihad. But in modern times further terms are crying for inclusion in a definition of persecution - the Holocaust, ethnic cleansing, genocide, communal violence, physical abuse, the violation of human rights. The task of trying to find a definition of persecution which would cover these and other terms is complex and demanding. It raises such difficult issues that some might want to argue that the diverse nature of phenomena that could be included under the concept of persecution makes the task of definition impossible. Indeed, the word persecution, some might go so far as to assert, is best abandoned as a workable concept. Since these issues are so large, they have to receive special attention which is beyond the scope of this paper.

This article, located within the sociology of religion, aims to demonstrate ways in which the insights of Durkheim and Mauss can be applied to the study of tantric Buddhism. In order to do so it explores a specific theme, the significance of speech in religion. I will therefore begin with sections from the recent translation of Mauss's thesis on prayer, highlighting two essential propositions (1909/t.2003). Firstly, Mauss argues that prayer is an extremely diverse phenomenon, which can take a variety of forms. A second, related point is his suggestion that speech is particularly important to our understanding of religion, because it is related to both belief and action. It is this second idea that I will explore extensively in the context of tantric Buddhism because it illuminates a number of features of this religious tradition. In addition, these reflections may contribute to a broader debate, concerning the role of collective representations in the thought of both Durkheim and Mauss.

The Musée de l'Homme closed its ethnological collections to the public during April 2003, after years of failing to receive appropriate finances, which brought about the run-down state of its premises, a lack of qualified staff and a distressing intellectual and moral atmosphere (Heritage-Augé 1991). With its library in the process of dispersion and its galleries emptied and silent, it is difficult to understand the fascination that the museum has had on vast sections of the population and the convergence of artistic, philosophical and political expectations of its creators in the 1930s (see Karsenti 1997). This article explores the influence of the Durkheimian school of sociology in the shaping of the so-called 'myth of primitivism' (Rubin 1984; Hiller 1991). It also addresses the meaning and significance given to objects and to collections in the avant-garde circles close to the Musée de l'Homme and notably amongst the immediate friends and collaborators of the French museologist, Georges Henri Rivi´re. It was an ideology that could be characterized as an object-based and philosophically inspired anthropology shaped by the unique convergence of multiple and often conflicting politico- and socio-cultural streams existing in the France of the Third Republic. This article also focuses on the epistemological con-sequences of a museology of 'presence' in the context of a growing heterogeneous society and of an aesthetic of collage 'that valued the fragmented, curious collections, unexpected juxtapositions, that works to provoke the manifestation of extraordinary realities drawn from the domains of the erotic, the exotic and the unconscious' (Clifford 1994:118).

Emile Durkheim. L’Évaluation en comité. Textes et rapports de souscription au Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 1903-1917, présentés et édités par Stéphane Baciocchi et Jennifer Mergy, Oxford and New York: Durkheim Press/Berghahn Books. 2003. p. 207.

Marcel Mauss, On Prayer, translated by Susan Leslie, edited with an introduction by W. S. F. Pickering and anthropological commentary by Howard Morphy, Oxford and New York: Durkheim Press/Berghahn Books. 2003. pp. 208

Massimo Rosati e Ambrogio Santambrogio (eds). Émile Durkheim, contributi per una rilettura critica, Rome: Meltemi. 2002. pp. 308.

Ken Thompson. Emile Durkheim, Revised edition. London: Routledge. 2002. pp. 179.

Michèle Richman. Sacred Revolutions, Durkheim and the Collège de Sociologie, Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press. 2002. pp. 248.

Robert Parkin. Louis Dumont and Hierarchical Opposition, New York and Oxford: Berghahn Books. 2003. p. 251.

Raymond Boudon avec Robert Leroux. Y a-t-il encore une sociologie?, Paris: Odile Jacob, 2003. pp. 249.

Texts by Emile Durkheim 2003 L’évaluation en comité. Textes et rapports de souscription au Comité des travaux historiques et scientifiques 1903-1917, édités et présentés par Stéphane Baciocchi et Jennifer Mergy, Oxford and New York: Durkheim Press/Berghahn Books. (Its dating-enumeration according to Lukes is 2003a.)

The Centre very much appreciates the donation of Mrs Margaret M. Jeffrey of English translations by her late husband, Professor William Jeffrey, Jr, of works written by Durkheim and his group, especially Mauss and Fauconnet. Professor Jeffrey was professor of Law at the University of Cincinnati for many years. It was while he was studying law at the University of Chicago that he came under the influence of teachers in sociology.

Oxford 22 February 2003

Halifax, Nova Scotia 3 June 2003

Notes on contributors