Emile Durkheim: Sociologist of Modernity

[Mustafa Emirbayer]'s purpose is to present a "useful Durkheim" demonstrating both the "expansiveness" and "coherence" of his work, and highlighting some of its key contributions to contemporary sociology, including some which have suffered a relative neglect. Emirbayer organizes these contributions into two broad thematic groups: one concerned with questions of structure and agency, and another with institutions and institutional sectors. With regard to the first, Emirbayer stresses Durkheim's integrative approach to social structure and culture: cultural analyses of symbolic polarities are framed in relation to specific elements of social organization and differentiation. Emirbayer makes the important point that Durkheim never separated emotion and reason (as he is often accused of doing), regarding emotions as transpersonal and relationally grounded: for example, he was profoundly interested in patterns of emotional commitment animating such rationalized social forms as the Jesuit order. Similarly, Emirbayer notes that Durkheim's later emphasis on collective effervescence reveals an interest in the creative, dynamic and agentic aspects of revolution, conflict and contestation. Inevitably, some will find their favourite selections from the Durkheimian and post-Durkheimian corpus missing from this collection. Given my own predilections, I welcome a section on cultural and symbolic classification, but miss some of the excellent recent work on Durkheimian elements in the thought of Georges Bataille and Roger Caillois (e.g., Michèle Richman), on questions of sex and gender in classical theory (Barbara Marshall, Rosalind Sydie, Jennifer Lehmann), on [Emile Durkheim]'s method and politics (Mike Gane, Frank Pearce), and on Durkheimian conceptions of the body and community (Mellor and Shilling). A selection from Mary Parker Follett's The New State would have made a fine addition to Chapter 6, as would a selection from Mauss's The Gift to chapter 7, complementing the emphasis on the moralization of economic bonds apparent there. Part IV, which Emirbayer characterizes as a "normative coda" could benefit from closer attention to the manner in which Durkheim saw sociology itself as a moral project. Given Durkheim's characterization of his work as part of a collective enterprise, attention to colleagues and students such as Mauss, Hertz, Halbwachs and Hubert would have been most welcome. And I lament that Durkheim's essay on incest still does not receive the exposure