Durkheim's enemies

Steven Lukes

Chapter 5 in The Elgar Companion to Émile Durkheim, 2026, pp 82-88 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: Durkheim was a polarizing figure. He inspired disciples, followers, and collaborators. But Durkheim also inspired enemies—not merely critics, of varying degrees of severity and depth, but those seeing him as a thinker whose ideas had to be defeated at all costs—whether for the sake of sociology or for that of society. Some have seen his thought as a serious obstacle to progress in their social scientific discipline, whereas others have seen it as contributing to wider social and political dangers. The enemies here considered are Gabriel Tarde, with whom he engaged on several fronts, Bruno Latour, who took up Tarde's challenge by staging a Durkheim-Tarde debate, Raymond Aron, who viewed Durkheim as an obstacle to taking the measure of rising fascism, Svend Ranulf, who saw him as one of its forerunners, and, in our own time, the historical sociologist Charles Tilly, for whom he is “useless” and the social anthropologist James Laidlaw, who sees him as excluding ethical freedom.

Keywords: Social facts; Imitation; Crime; Fascism; Ethical freedom; Power (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
ISBN: 9781035322923
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