Émile Durkheim's Theory of Social Integration and Its Historical Background


Émile Durkheim was not primarily concerned with the question of how structural social change affects individuals. Rather, he focused on how social integration could be maintained in the midst of social differentiation in modern society. His central concern was therefore how to preserve social order and social solidarity in an increasingly modern and complex society, and his primary unit of analysis was society as a whole.

Durkheim emerged during a period of profound social transformation following the French Revolution. Over the course of roughly a century, France experienced extraordinary political instability, beginning with the collapse of the absolute monarchy and followed by the First French Empire under Napoleon Bonaparte, the Bourbon Restoration, the Second Republic, the Second French Empire, the Paris Commune, and finally the Third Republic. This succession of revolutions and regime changes plunged French society into prolonged political and social turmoil.



This political turmoil undermined the traditional social order and intensified conflicts between social classes and rival political groups. As a result, social relationships weakened, and the bonds of social solidarity began to break down.

Meanwhile, modernization brought remarkable advances in the economy and science. People increasingly placed their trust in science and gradually came to accept industrialization as a natural process of social development. At the same time, however, France suffered a humiliating national defeat at the hands of Germany in the Franco-Prussian War.



Following this defeat, many French intellectuals, including Durkheim, came to believe that science offered the only means by which France could recover and rebuild itself. Above all, Durkheim argued that the Third Republic had to be defended against irrational forms of authority, particularly those associated with the Catholic Church.

Steven Lukes (1985) explains the intellectual background of Durkheim’s emphasis on scientific inquiry and rational analysis as follows:

“The experience of France’s defeat may have instilled in Durkheim a strong sense of patriotism and an acute awareness of national decline, while also inspiring in him a desire to contribute to the reconstruction of France. Such sentiments, although expressed in different forms, were widely shared among the intellectuals of his generation” (Lukes, 1985, p. 41).



Lukes also argues that Durkheim was deeply critical of mysticism and irrationalism.

“The charge of mysticism was one that Durkheim applied to almost every thinker whom he regarded as a threat to clear scientific reasoning, and there were many such thinkers at the end of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century.”

Lukes further describes the intellectual climate of the period as follows:

“It was the age of the Symbolist poets, with their cult of mystery, and also of the spread of anti-positivist thought, which frequently opposed positivism and often defended Catholicism” (Lukes, 1985, p. 75).

In short, Durkheim was a sociologist who sought to restore social order and social solidarity through scientific reasoning and rationalism during a period of political turmoil and national crisis. His sociology was therefore concerned primarily with the integration and stability of society as a whole rather than with the experiences or actions of individual actors.



References

Durkheim, E. (1984). The division of labor in society (W. D. Halls, Trans.). Free Press. (Original work published 1893)

Lukes, S. (1985). Émile Durkheim: His life and work: A historical and critical study. Stanford University Press.

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