For a Return to the Early Durkheim. Cultural-sociological Inspirations in The Rules of Sociological Method and The Division of Labor in Society
Abstract
The idea of cultural sociology was started by a new perspective on French sociological classic Émile Durkheim that was presented in a book Durkheimian Sociology: Cultural Studies edited by Jeffrey Alexander (1988). It rejected the view of Durkheim as a positivist, materialist, forerunner of structural functionalism and the systems theory and discovered Durkheim as a teoretician of religion, culture, a subjectivistic Durkheim.
Along with this interpretation Alexander connected distinctive periodization of Durkheim’s work, that is based on radical discrepancy between the early and the late Durkheim. The inspiration for cultural sociology was gained almost exclusively form the late period around the book Elementary Forms of the Religious Life.
This article on the contrary explores also early Durkheim’s works – The Rules of Sociological Method and The Division of Labor in Society in which it seeks new inspirations for the cultural sociology. Regarding the former book, it wants to rehabilitate Durkheim’s positivism which, as I think, need not to be understood as contradictory to the cultural sociology.
It could contribute to the discussions about autonomy of the culture. Regarding the latter, I want to distinguish the economical and the cultural sphere and discuss how could the cultural sociology understand the concepts of division of labour and solidarity.
I put special emphasis on the two general types of interpersonal mutuality (mutual resemblance and complementary disimilarity), that for Durkheim were the basis for the concepts of mechanical and organical solidarity. I assume that these two types can be useful for the culturalsociological notion of identity.