SF the Canonical Limits of Durkheim's First Classic

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The Canonical Limits of Durkheim's First ClassicAuthor(s): Charles LemertSource: Sociological Forum, Vol. 9, No. 1, Special Issue: The 100th Anniversary of Sociology'sFirst Classic: Durkheim's "Division of Labor in Society." (Mar., 1994), pp. 87-92Published by: SpringerStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/684941 .

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Sociological Forum, Vol. 9, No. 1, 1994

The Canonical Limits Of Durkheim's FirstClassic

Charles Lemert1

A classic text is not always canonized. Canonical texts are frequently anythingbut classics. Durkheim's Division of Labor in Society is an instance of the

former; his Rules of Sociological Method of the latter. Both books are basedon errors of fact and method. Division of Labor was so intentionally theclassical theory of modem divided societies that Durkheim, son of generationsof rabbis, totallymisrepresented hefacts of Ancient Israel. In Rules, Durkheimwas so intent on writing the canonical text of sociology's methods that he

stipulated rules that even he (in Suicide) could not use. Durkheim was thusa giant of the sociological past because, not in spite of, his errors. He erredbecause he dared to think seriouslyabout the moral issues of his time. Hence,

the ironicfate of Durkheim'ssociology-it led in two differentdirections. FromRules and Suicide came modern empirical sociology. From ElementaryForms came all the antimodemists-beginning with Levi-Strauss, and fromhim, Derrida and the others-who became, among other things, the mostarticulate critics of the sociology Durkheim helped invent. Such is the geniusof classic, if not canonical, authors like Durkheim.

KEY WORDS: Durkheim; classic; canon; theory; morality.

Division of Labor may have been sociology's first classic, or, perhaps,not. That it is a classic in some sense is beyond question. Otherwise, wecould not account for the evident fact that, a 100 years later, the book still

inspires constructive theoretical work on issues important to our day-ofwhich Dietrich Rueschemeyer's and Edward Tiryakian's contributions tothis symposium are but two of many good instances.

Yet as Hans-Peter Mueller suggests, there is room enough to questionwhether or not Durkheim of Division of Labor lent a shoulder equal to

1Department of Sociology, Wesleyan University, Middletown, Connecticut 06459.

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0884-8971/94/0300-0087$07.00/0 ? 1994 Plenum Publishing Corporation



those of other acknowledged giants in our field. Some would propose that

even the youngish Marx of German Ideology bore an earlier and heavier

weight amongthe classics of

sociological thinkingthan did the

comparablyyoung Durkheim of 1893. Others would press the question of a first socio-

logical classic even farther back in the lineage of those on whose shoulders

we still stand. Robert Alun Jones makes a good case for Montesquieu'sDe l'espritdes lois, as others would for other Enlightenment or 19th-centurytexts. And, reversing the direction of our vision, it is even possible to won-

der how the most salient concept in Durkheim's first book might have fared,over the long time, had it not been for the shoulders of a much later giant,Robert K. Merton, without whose 1938 essay, "Social Structure on Ano-

mie," Durkheim's term might not be nearly so well served in memory.Then, as a quite separate matter, there is the troubling question of

yet-to-be-canonized classics such as Anna Julia Cooper's A Voice From the

South which appeared in 1892, the year before Durkheim's book. And, as

a not quite so separate issue, there is the question to be asked of the very

phrase "sociology'sfirst classic." What is to be made of those assuredly clas-

sic texts that, just the same, were excluded from sociology's canon because

they were not, and still are not, considered properly "sociological." Still

today, few consider William James' Principles of Psychology a sociologicalclassic even though, today, James's 1890 book is at least as important a

resource as Durkheim's 1893 thesis. In fact, it would be hard to accountfor much of contemporary American social psychology without reference

to James's first definition of the social self in Principles of Psychology.Just the same-however one might reply to queries such as

these-consideration of the 100th anniversary of Durkheim's Division ofLabor challenges us to confront the intellectual and moral questions of our

day. Even if it is held that the book was not sociology's first classic, it was

certainly the first of Durkheim's several classic writings. As such, the book

is good enough reason to reflect on the broader questions of sociology's

original and current relations to the more vast academic field in which wedesire, as did Durkheim, to enjoy a distinguished and unique place.

Today, in sociology especially, the celebration of a classic demands

special scholarly care. Not only is our attachment to classics a predictable

complaint made against sociology by those who find it a weak science, but

everywhere else in the world of liberal arts-even where classic texts are

held in respect-classics are being read in and out of the various canons,almost on a daily basis. Thus we are reminded that the attribution "classic"

does not assure canonical status. Texts that might have been on an official

list of old, great books were excluded from the start, some to be includedlater. Others may lose their rights of canonical inclusion as time goes by.

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Canonical Limits

We might not be obliged to ponder so fine a distinction were it notfor the fact that Durkheim's Division of Labor, like his other canonicalworks of the 1890s, cannot be understood without consideration of theirauthor's desire to establish sociology as an academic science. Of this, thebook that followed by one year, The Rules of Sociological Method, is themost striking example. Rules began, we should remember, with a classic

scriptural pronouncement: "Up to now," said Durkheim (1894/1982:48),"sociologists have scarcely occupied themselves with the task of charac-

terizing and defining the methods that they apply to the study of socialfacts." In this one, first sentence is combined two audacious intentions.

Durkheim, obviously, wrote his second book, Rules, the year after his thesis,in order that it might be both classic and canonical. The short, biblical

locution "Up to now" is, of course, the language of the classic prophets hemust have heard in his orthodox childhood. The sentence itself promisesto define the unique and enduring methods by which he would organizehis new science. It could said, therefore, that Rules used classic rhetoric to

certify a canonical text.Durkheim was, of course, brilliantly successful. Rules was, in fact, can-

onized. Today it is assigned, and occasionally read, in spite of the fact thatthe rules themselves make so little sense that Durkheim's attempt to dem-onstrate them in Suicide demonstrated only that he too must have foundthem incoherent. The rules so

confidentlydescribed

in 1894 have little todo with the evidence and arguments in 1897. Instead, the true prologue toSuicide is not the introduction to empirical work, Rules, but Division of La-

bor, a near purely theoretical essay.One might even say that the canonical successes of Durkheim's books

of the 1890s, and thus of his intent to establish a canon-generating science,were due to his brilliance as an author of texts in which he indulged histaste for the very classic method Rules was written to do away with, thatis: theoretical disquisition.

This is but one of the ironies of Durkheim's success. He was able to

invent sociology in France out of nearly nothing because he wrote two texts,Rules and Suicide, which are canonical to empirical sociologists. Yet the

latter, Suicide, makes sense because it develops not the methods of Rulesbut the general principles of the theoretical work, Division of Labor.

Though the numbers in Suicide are important, they are more illustrativethan explanatory. What explains anomic suicide is the theoretical logic of

modernity developed (though poorly) in Division of Labor, not the empiricalevidence intended, as Durkheim claims in the caption to Book Two of Sui-

cide, "to determine social causes and types." Were it the case, in Suicide,

that evidence had borne its explanatory burden, then he would have actuallybeen able to demonstrate the existence of the four types of suicide. Yet

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not even counting the famous footnote on fatalistic suicide (Durkheim,1897/1951:276), it is evident that Durkheim was not able, on the basis of

analysisof data, to

distinguisheven the two dominant

types.Anomic and

egoistic suicides are, in fact, two sides of the same theoretical medita-tion-one that was also the theoretical preoccupation of Division of Labor:

the moral health of individuals in modern society.It is possible, therefore, to say that this book, the centenary of which

we celebrate, has never quite been granted the canonical glory reserved

for other of Durkheim's books because it was so thoroughly classical. It is

a classic because it is so classical and this confounds the fact that, in soci-

ology, Durkheim is very often regarded as a founder of an important line

of modern empirical sociology that very often cherishes the importance of

ignoring the classics. This brings me to my main point.Classic works, whether canonical or not, are taken seriously over time

because they serve some referential value for some group of readers (Al-exander, 1987). So powerful is the force of being held as a classic that the

work endures in spite of itself. In the case of Durkheim, many read and

value Division of Labor in spite of its errors, some of which one simplyoverlooks. Of these, the most remarkable instance might be Durkheim's

one-sided misrepresentation of the laws of Ancient Israel. In Book One of

Division of Labor, where Durkheim develops what he presents as empirical

evidence for the predominance of repressive law in mechanically organizedsocieties, he cites, in exquisite detail, the punitive sanctions detailed in An-

cient Israel's most sacred text, the Pentateuch. Yet nowhere does he make

the least mention of the fact that the priestly codes of Ancient Israel are

always developed against the foundational covenant that binds Israel to its

God. In fact, as Mircea Eliade (1954), among others, has shown, in the

annual cycle of Jewish ritual life, regeneration and restitution are every bit

as salient as are atonement and punishment. If anything, restitution is the

deeper moral value. In other words, Durkheim was somehow constrained

to ignore a powerful set of social facts.Why? Obviously, because acknowledgment of what he must have

known in his youth would have destroyed the tidiness of the cultural theorythat informed the activities of his adult life. If the laws of Ancient Israel

were admitted to have been as deeply restitutive as they were repressive,then the Ancient would have had to have been as much organic as me-

chanical. If this, then the theoretical principles underlying Division of Labor

would have been wrong. If this, his thesis and its sequelae, Rules and Sui-

cide, would have been wrong (or at least very different) and all else that

followed therefrom-his sociology included-might have been at risk. Thus,in spite of his good intentions, Durkheim retreated from his scientific vision

90 Lemert



Canonical Limits

in order to protect his canonical aspirations behind the magnificence of a

theory composed by his gifts in classic reasoning.

Why,then, is Division

ofLabor still a classic, its errors notwithstand-

ing? Among the reasons, surely one is that this book was powerfully suc-cessful in defining and solving the foremost moral dilemma of his day. Nearthe end of the book Durkheim (1893/1964:408-409) proposes that thetrouble felt as a loss of faith and the disappearance of traditional life isresolved by the progressive freedom modern society encourages in indi-viduals while binding them in organically organized societies. The state-

ment, like the book, and much of his career, including his sociology, wasas much moral advice as scientific theory.

Thus, in 1893, Durkheim defined modern culture in order to defend

it. Very little of what he did in the 24 years that remained for him wasunrelated to this concern. If, therefore, we are to honor him well 100 yearslater, we should at least take him seriously at his moral, as well as intel-

lectual, best.

We, however, in 1993, face a different set of moral concerns. Manyhold the view that the world to which Durkheim preached his sociology is,if not at its end, at least is deeply different. Not many today would arguethat the current division of social labor is capable of resolving the socialconflicts Durkheim so hated.

One further irony of Durkheim's Division of Labor and all that fol-lowed from it is that its power as a classic today owes as much to its in-fluence outside sociology as within. In fact, as Levi-Strauss (1967) pointsout in his 1960 Inaugural Lecture to the College de France, Durkheim washis (L6vi-Strauss's) intellectual inspiration in spite of his sociology, not be-cause of it. One of the terrible consequences of Durkheim's parallel con-cerns with building an academic science was that he invented a falsescience. Because he defined sociology so exclusively in relation to its own

facts, Durkheim cut it off from the other sciences of man. Levi-Strauss thus

acknowledges that Durkheim's importance to him was assured only when

Marcel Mauss (1899/1967), in his Essay on the Gift, demonstrated that aDurkheimian sociology could also be a science of the "down-to-earthman"-in Mauss's words, sociology could also be a science only to the ex-tent that "body, soul, society-everything merges" (quoted by Levi-Strauss

[1967:13], though not from The Gift). Durkheim, without Mauss, pulled thesocial out of this fully concrete human reality and thus could not accountfor what his nephew could-the daily contribution of simple restitutive giftsto the building of the moral community.

Thus, the final irony-that outside sociology the Durkheim that came

to be in Primitive Classifications and ElementaryForms, was the Durkheimwho explains Levi-Strauss, and thus structuralism and, from it, poststruc-

91



turalism and, from this, all the theories that predominate outside our fieldunder the cover of different names (Lemert, 1990). What these theorieshave in common is the attitude that we must now face the end of the moralworld Durkheim sought to protect.

In the end, this too is why Division of Labor is among those texts

considered a classic today. Its errors notwithstanding, it began an intellec-

tual labor that, in addition to producing sociology itself, gave rise in duecourse to another body of thought and moral concern that aims today,rightly or wrongly, to rethink the world Durkheim and his sociology helpedinvent.

The question we might ask, if we are to honor Durkheim, is this: Can

sociology be as courageous now, as he was then, and face the moral ques-

tion of the day?

REFERENCES

Alexander, Jeffrey1987 "The Centralityof the Classics." In An-

thony Giddens and Jonathan Turner

(eds.), Social Theory Today. Stanford,CA: Stanford University Press.

Durkheim, Emile

1964 The Division of Labor in Society.(1893') George Simpson, tr. The Free

Press.1982 The Rules of Sociological Method.

(1894') In Steven Lukes (ed.) The

Rules of Sociological Method and Se-

lected Texts on Sociology and its

Method, W. D. Halls, tr.: The Free

Press.1951 Suicide: A Study of Sociology. (1897')

John A. Spaulding and George Simp-

son,trs. The Free Press.

Eliade, Mircea1954 The Myth of the Eternal Return; or,

Cosmos and History. Princeton, NJ:Princeton University Press.

Lemert, Charles1990 "The Uses of French Structuralisms in

Sociology." In George Ritzer (ed.),Frontiers of Social Theory: The New

Synthesis. Columbia University Press.

Levi-Strauss, Claude1967 The Scope of Anthropology. Sherry

Ortner Paul and Robert A. Paul, trs.Jonathan Cape.

Mauss, Marcel1967 [1899] The Gift: Forms and Functions

of Exchange in Archaic Societies.

(1899*) Ian Cunnison, tr. New York:W. W. Norton.

*Original publication date.

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