Though Durkheim was a contemporary of Weber, his work could not be more different. Both Marx and Weber are usually referred to as "conflict" theorists. They understood that any social order involved the regulation of opposing interests, and that, as a result, conflict between individuals and among groups was an essential part of every society. Durkheim begins with a very different premise. His approach is usually called "functionalism."
The functionalist view focuses on the role of social objects or actors, on what they do. Durkheim believed that harmony, rather than conflict, defined society. He examines social phenomena with regard to their function in producing or facilitating social cohesion. He studied the division of labor, religion and suicide from this perspective.
Whereas Weber was preoccupied with rationality, Durkheim is primarily concerned with solidarity: what holds individuals together in social institutions? Durkheim believed that solidarity was the normal condition of society, and even though he recognized the turmoil associated with industrialization, he considered conflict pathological. Durkheim, like Weber, felt that sociology, as a science, should be value free, but his analysis is filled with such normative assumptions.
Before we consider two important topics of Durkheim’s research, we need to examine his methodological prescriptions. Durkheim’s importance in the development of the discipline of sociology cannot be overlooked. Durkheim believed that he was establishing a school of sociological thought, to compete with Marxism, and felt it necessary to elaborate its method. His insights into the practice of sociology remain influential today.
The most important legacy of Durkheim’s writing on methods is the concept of the social fact. According to Durkheim, a social fact "consists of ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with power of coercion, by which they control [the individual]." In other words, there are phenomena that cannot be reduced to economic or psychological objects or events. Some things can be explained only as social entities. This is the subject matter of sociology.
Social facts are external to the individuals who make up a society. Individuals are born into already established social systems—patterns of belief, values and norms, as well as ways of behaving—and these exert influence on the individual. Every member of a society is, then, shaped by these forces. We recognize, to some extent, that these forces are outside of ourselves and control us.
Even when actors actively participate in the production of social life, their products tend to take on an independent existence. This independence is also perceived as being external. We recognize, for example, that our actions have effects that we cannot control.
Though we are aware that these constraints are external, and coercive, we come to accept them as part of who we are. We recognize that we are shaped by society. Durkheim observes: "Institutions may impose themselves upon us, but we cling to them; they compel us, and we love them."
Durkheim formulated several rules for the study of social facts: (1) Personal biases must be separated from sociological research; (2) the phenomena being studied must be clearly defined; (3) empirical indicators must be found for all sociological phenomena; and, (4) social facts must be considered things, in the sense of being objects available to scientific examination, and in the sense of having a distinctive metaphysical reality. His prescriptions are somewhat similar to Weber’s thoughts on method. The resulting work, though, is quite different.
Durkheim is interested in the morphology of social systems; classification has a prominent place in his work. Durkheim makes a distinction between the causal analysis of a phenomenon and a functional analysis of it. Causal analysis involves looking for antecedent conditions, things that bring it about. Functional analysis looks at the consequences of social facts.
Durkheim first mentions the concept of anomie in The Division of Labor in Society, but he develops the idea more completely in Suicide. The concept has been widely used by sociologists since. To understand the term, it is necessary to start with its context. Durkheim attempts to explain the function of the division of labor, and makes the observation that it creates social cohesion. The industrial revolution, of course, produced great tension and turmoil, and Durkheim recognized this. He resolved the contradiction by developing the notion of anomie.
Anomie is usually translated as "normlessness," but it best understood as insufficient normative regulation. During periods of rapid social change, individuals sometimes experience alienation from group goals and values. They feel distanced from the collectivity. In this condition, they are less constrained by group norms. Normative values become generalized, rather than personally embraced.
The developments in the division of labor associated with industrialization facilitated anomie. As work became routinized, broken down into dull, repetitive tasks, workers lose the sense of their role in production, and are less committed to the process and the organization. As a result, the norms of the workplace exert less influence on their activity.
Not all asocial behavior is anomic, however. Durkheim identified another form, which he called egoism. When the coercive influence of the social values and norms is lessened, excessive individualism can be the result. When individuals disregard norms in favor of their own interests, cohesion is impossible. The individuals themselves, Durkheim noted, often suffer too. Such self-centeredness is highly destructive to the individual's well being.
Durkheim’s analysis of religion also centers on social integration. In fact, he sees this as the primary function of religion. He recognized that modern societies were becoming less formally religious (i.e., more secular) and this was a cause of concern. He believed that modern societies need to develop a civic religion to replace the traditional forms.
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, Durkheim attempts to understand the effects of religion on social solidarity by studying religion in primitive society. This is an opportunity to see how religion functions to bind individuals to groups, regulate their behavior, and connect them to the symbolic order and social structure. An examination of the function of religion in primitive society, then, reveals the manner by which religion produces integration.
Durkheim identified three essential elements of religion: (1) belief in the sacred; (2) religious groups, or cults; and (3) ritual. Religion emerged, he says, when humans began to assemble into larger groups. One effect of this new interaction was a collective sense of a larger force which controlled their lives. This perception was the beginning of the notion of the sacred. According to Durkheim, the distinction between the sacred and the secular, or routine, is one of the first sets of mental categories acquired by humans.
This sense of the sacred becomes formalized in some concrete symbol, or "totem." Social practices are organized around it, so as to make it a part of individual’s experience on a regular basis. Cults develop out of the organization of people centered on the totem. Ritual is the organization of behavior directed toward the sacred. Ritual serves to emphasize the cult identity and energize its normative structure.
Durkheim believed that religious belief represents the original form of scientific knowledge. The basic categories of experience and rational thought, such as causation, time and space, emerged after religion. As societies become more secular, knowledge takes the form of science, and these basic categories are grounded in its distinctive idiom.
Because religion provides—or, rather, provided—a means of understanding the world, it plays a key role in the creation of social solidarity. Religious beliefs are internalized; they are accepted as a part of one’s own knowledge. In this way, social norms are also internalized. Cohesion is facilitated because control over behavior becomes a matter of self-regulation.
In Durkheim’s view, religion originated as a form of social self-worship. Religious feeling emerged as a result of social interaction outside the clan, and the symbols and practices of religion function to enhance attachment to the group. The totem is a symbolic representation of the group, even if it appears to stand for the "higher powers" that control the group. Ritual reinforces collective identity through affinity to the sacred.