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Emile Durkheim’s life

Emile Durkheim (1858-1916) was born in Epinal in Lorraine, France. He was a contemporary of Weber (1864-1920), but probably never met Weber, and lived his adult life after Karl Marx died. Durkheim came from a Jewish background. He taught for a number of years, and then received an appointment to a position in philosophy at the University of Bordeaux in 1887. There he taught the subject of moral education and later taught the first course in sociology at a French university. In 1902 he was appointed to a professorship at the Sorbonne, in Paris, where he remained until he died. Durkheim's most famous works are The Division of Labour in Society (1893), The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), Suicide (1897) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912). Durkheim is often considered a conservative within the field of sociology, being concerned primarily with order, consensus, solidarity, social morality, and systems of religion. His theoretical analysis helped provide a basis for relatively conservative structural functional models of society. In contemporary terms, he might be considered a social democrat, in that he favoured social reforms, while opposing the development of a socialist society. In his theoretical model, he advocated the development of “professional groupings” or “occupational groups” as the means by which the interests of special groups could be promoted and furthered. Durkheim was not generally involved in politics, and can be considered a more academic sociologist than either Weber or Marx. In terms of the development of the field of sociology, Durkheim is especially important. He was the first to offer courses in sociology in French universities, at a time when sociology was not well known or favoured. His writings are important within the field of sociology, in that several of them are basic works that sociology students today are expected to read and understand. Much of the manner in which sociology as an academic discipline is carried on follows Durkheim's suggestions and approach. French sociology, in particular, follows Durkheim, and some of Durkheim's books are likely to serve as texts in French sociology. Much American sociology is also heavily influenced by Durkheim. In recent years, there has again been much attention paid to his writings. Durkheim became interested in a scientific approach to society very early on in his career, which meant the first of many conflicts with the French academic system, which had no social science curriculum at the time. Durkheim found humanistic studies uninteresting, turning his attention from psychology and philosophy to ethics and eventually, sociology.