Abstract
Émile Durkheim envisioned a new discipline of Sociology: a new science that would explain the possibility of orderly and peaceful modern social life. It was a positive vision of a society in which autonomous social individuals would cooperate in a context of freedom and justice to create meaningful and fulfilling social coherence. The new science was to teach us about the social requirements of this new society, which Durkheim argued were moral and included justice. The idea was so far ahead of its time and challenged so many deeply taken for granted conceptions that it was read almost entirely backwards; as a conservative, positivist, structural functionalist position in which freedom and creativity play only a negative role. It has taken more than a century for social thinkers to begin to appreciate how sophisticated and even contemporary his position actually was. 1 In Paris where Durkheim lived, wrote and taught, Philosophers and Sociologists have begun over the past decade to take up the challenge to reassess the importance and originality of his work. The reassessment reclaims a more interesting and original Durkheim, connecting his ideas with innovative modern bodies of work descended from Ludwig Wittgenstein, Harold Garfinkel and William James. Durkheim emerges as the original French theorist of modernity – whose work marks an epistemological break with the past. My own association with these French scholars began at a conference in Paris in 2003. Questions of justice and democracy, rules and practices, freedom and personhood, Pragmatism and Ethnomethodology were being discussed together in an eclectic international context: one of the strengths and joys of Paris. My own work during the 1990’s had argued for a reassessment of Durkheim’s work and I was invited a number of times to talk about this in Paris. The message was that Durkheim’s most important arguments had been almost entirely neglected and that he still had an important role to play in crafting an adequate approach toward a sociological and philosophical understanding of modern social life. The ensuing French discussion directly engages and draws from the reassessment of Durkheim in English.
The articles in this Special Issue represent both the major themes and central players in the current French reassessment of Durkheim: Cyril Lemieux, Bruno Karsenti, Melanie Plouviez and Francesco Callegaro (articles by Albert Ogien and Emmanuel Desveaux will appear in the Second Volume). Their articles are presented along with those of English speaking participants in the discussion: Steven Lukes, Devanyi Prabhat and Anne Warfield Rawls. This international collaboration in its French version is important to English speakers for several reasons: it is a joint effort by philosophers and sociologists, it goes in new directions, it is truly international, and it is informed by a deep understanding of the original texts. The scholars involved have met together, and read, discussed and been influenced by one another’s work. Furthermore, these important new discussions of Durkheim’s work are not widely known outside of France. It is my pleasure to introduce this important new iteration of French social theory to readers of English.
The papers each in a different way, challenge conventional interpretations of Durkheim: The well-established “reproductive interpretation” of his position (that social stability prohibits change) and the identification of his work with the “disintegration thesis” (that freedom, or deviance, causes social disintegration) are challenged; Innovative conceptions of rules, practices and grammars, are related to these arguments through analysis of Durkheim’s writings; The importance of Durkheim as a sociologist of mind and thought is considered and confrontations between Durkheim and pragmatist philosophy are examined in detail. Durkheim is revealed as an early champion of new ideas and the author of a more viable vision of sociology than we have yet achieved. Some of the contributors argue that the brilliant and original ideas were there from the beginning in Durkheim’s first book (1893) de la Division du Travail Sociale (The Division). 2 Others maintain that they only emerged clearly in his later work.
While all of the papers challenge conventional thinking about Durkheim in some way they represent at least two different lines of engagement: one emphasizing the importance of constitutive rules, practices or “grammars of action” in creating and sustaining the coherence and integration of modern society, the other focusing on the importance of Durkheim’s argument with regard to collective ideas – which in modernity resolve into the cult of the individual and individual freedom as a sustaining collective idea, or religion. Both approaches accept Durkheim’s proposal that a traditional consensus and/or constraint based form of social order is not viable in modernity and articulate alternatives. The difference turns on two things: 1) whether or not constitutive practices, or grammars of action, are treated as inherently instrumental, or are recognized as a necessary foundation for mutual intelligibility and therefore inherently moral; and, 2) whether the idea that practices and rules are concrete and empirical is interpreted to mean that they rule out thought, ideas and interpretation. If constitutive practices are treated as instrumental then they are considered to have no moral implications. In that case, the source of social cohesion in modernity is sought in the new cult of individualism and its novel idea of the person. If, however, they are treated as methods used by persons to make meaning together – with the understanding that speech, like thought, must be organized along social lines, according to social distinctions and with socially organized preferences in view – in order for persons to share ideas then constitutive practices have moral implications because they are constitutive of sense, thought, and ultimately personhood. The grammars of action involved, however, comprise a level of order that is distinct from the original collective creation of ideas. Both are important aspects of Durkheim’s position. If constitutive practices are treated as instrumental then Durkheim’s arguments about the reliance of modern societies on constitutive practices, social contract and justice are found to be less satisfying and collective thought and morality are sought in the collective ideal of individualism (individual freedom and autonomous personhood). In either case the articles take up these questions in the context of a general reassessment of how Durkheim addressed the problem of social integration and coherence in modern society.
First Article, by Steven Lukes and Devyani Prabhat
Steven Lukes and Devyani Prabhat open the forum with a discussion that touches on both the issue of rules and the question of whether or not Durkheim maintains the disintegration thesis. Focusing on a classic paper by H.L.A. Hart (1967) in which Hart took up the problem of individual freedom in the context of a discussion of rules and law, they examine Durkheim’s position with reference to the question raised by Hart of whether freedom to deviate leads to social disintegration or not. In defending the rights of the individual to choose sexual orientation against the claims of Lord Devlin that all threats to accepted morality lead to social disintegration, Hart took the position that individualism does not necessarily conflict with social integration. In making the argument, Hart equated Durkheim’s position with that of Devlin. Lukes and Prabhat argue that although it is popular it is a mistake to interpret Durkheim as maintaining the “disintegration thesis”, and that his position is actually much more interesting and liberal than this interpretation allows. They argue that Durkheim took a position similar to Hart’s that in a modern society individualism and social solidarity support one another.
Their discussion of this paper by Hart is important for several reasons: it raises an important connection between Durkheim and philosophy: involving moral philosophy and philosophy of law; The argument connects the ideas of social solidarity and individualism which are usually treated as conflicting with one another; The important question of whether or not moral pluralism leads to social (moral) disintegration is addressed. In addressing these questions, Lukes and Prabhat introduce three ideas fundamental to Durkheim’s conception of morality: 1) moral behavior must be disinterested; 2) moral disinterestedness always has a social origin; and, 3) this social origin is a moving target – always changing – as different types of society require different types of moral relationship. At some point what all people would have in common would be “the constitutive attributes of the human person” which is of course social – constituted social fact. In an advanced differentiated state of society they say (371) the cult of the individual is the only collective idea left binding people together.
One of the strengths of Durkheim’s position in their view is (373) that his argument can be empirically tested. On this point they challenge Hart (who said it could not be empirically tested) introducing what they call the “prophylaxis thesis”. Some things, they argue, give protection (like marriage to men), but their loss doesn’t automatically lead to disintegration. Those things are more vulnerable/less protected without the prophylaxis, but remain viable social entities.
Hart’s attribution of the disintegration thesis to Durkheim, they argue, involves an essential misunderstanding of his position that is widespread. They (379) maintain that Durkheim’s position is “less sweeping, more complex and more interesting” than Hart represented. In their alternative account Durkheim would have sided with Hart and not Devlin as a defender not only of the right to choose sexual orientation – but of gay marriage. Durkheim’s arguments about the importance of individual freedom ground their view. Their interpretation relies heavily on later work (after The Division) – including the 1898 article on “Individualism”. The idea being that Durkheim changed, improved, and strengthened his view in his later work.
Second Article, by Cyril Lemieux
Cyril Lemieux argues that from where they currently stand the social sciences find it hard to take their power of social change seriously and consequently a reexamination of the social sciences is in order. The current theoretical vacuum and dominance of positivist method in social sciences generally underscores his point. Durkheim made a similar argument in The Division as a rationale for founding a new discipline of sociology. Lemieux takes up the relationship between Durkheim’s proposal and the idea that social coherence is achieved through what he calls “grammars of action” that are used to give order and coherence to speech and action. The focus in Lemieux’s argument turns away from shared ideas toward shared rules or grammars as constitutive of social coherences, and involves a close analysis of the book Primitive Classification which Durkheim co-authored with Marcel Mauss in 1902. This book has not received the attention it deserves and the analysis, which reads Durkheim against the lens of pragmatism, is insightful.
In undertaking this reexamination Lemieux asks what the benefit is of considering Durkheim and Pragmatism together. After all there are important differences. He elaborates three important dimensions of difference that give Durkheim an advantage over pragmatism and make his position relevant to grammars of action: 1) immanentism (not idealism); 2) pluralism (not relativism – but multiple obligations); and, 3) relative indeterminacy. In his view Durkheim comes out ahead on all three. The conception of grammars of action is central to the argument. According to Lemieux (395) “grammars of action” are “immanent to human activity” and “emerge from praxis itself and cannot be described outside of praxis”. Therefore, a stronger position on immanentism can be taken. This is consequential for reconceptualizing both theory and method; it means that situated contexts and their details are intrinsic to the order and meaning of social action, a focus on detail over abstraction and generalization that Durkheim emphasized.
Realizing that pragmatism and Durkheim both recognize these issues is an incentive to reread Durkheim according to Lemieux. If it turns out that Durkheim provides a better foundation than previously thought for the new kind of sociology that is needed then we gain greatly from this rereading. Certainly, Lemieux argues, the Durkheimian approach is no more deterministic than any other social theory; Rule transgression and a tolerance for rule breaking is inherent in it. Leaving aside the structural functionalist reading and going right back to the source makes a new reading possible. According to Lemieux (386), the rereading discovers a striking reversal: “Parsonian and Structuralist interpretations of Durkheim’s work actually reversed the immanentist principle, presenting praxis as the result of the normative systems or social structure rather than the other way round”. Recognizing normative systems as the result of praxis and its requirements reclaims Durkheim.
Lemieux makes his point through a careful rereading of Primitive Classification. This has not been an important source for social constructivist theory, which he says has underestimated Durkheim’s immanentism. According to Lemieux (387) Durkheim considered that “differentiation practices were what made classification of operations possible, not the other way round”. Durkheim put practices first and classifications second even in this early work. He (390) summarizes the three main points of the Durkheim and Mauss article: 1) the first logical categories (created by social practices) are social; 2) there is no absolute break between the first categories and scientific categories; and, 3) there is a question whether science escapes the sociocentricism of the second point and if so how. The answer is complex. It involves the role of rules and the moral authority of rules in creating social facts – because of which science is never wholly objective – but the world is nevertheless real and pushes back. To the extent that scientific practices deal directly and pragmatically with the world (and as Durkheim said “run ahead of beliefs”) they create new ideas, and things, etc. With regard to the second point, to the extent that we organize modern society differently (the emphasis shifts to grammars of action or constitutive practices) how scientific ideas relate to practices can be different. Lemieux argues, however, that this is not an absolute difference, because there are always constitutive practices and only the relative reliance on them changes.
Having elaborated points of difference, Lemieux goes on to say that there are many more points of resemblance between Durkheim and Pragmatism than generally recognized. He elaborates two of these points: 1) truth (because practice engages reality/nature it is not disengaged from truth); and, 2) historical progress. These connections between sociology and pragmatism he (394) says shed light on “the place and the political role of the social sciences”. Sociology is special he says (394) because it recognizes and “is the only scientific discipline to be able to do so – that sociocentricism is also at work in the highly objective and impersonal categories produced by modern science. That recognition enables it to engage a struggle against the tendency toward objectivism in modern scientific thought”. In other words, Durkheim’s position is fundamentally anti-positivist. To move forward we need to struggle against the tendency toward objectivism, and, as Durkheim envisioned it, social science should aid us in this struggle. Lemieux finds a parallel in this between Garfinkel and Durkheim and argues that Garfinkel’s perspective reaffirms Durkheim’s position.
Sociology and social sciences conceived in this way can help to free us from our own mental frameworks. But, they are he says “also the sciences that enable us to understand that the emancipation they make possible is not and never can amount to mere rejection or scrapping of the mental frameworks we inherited”. As Garfinkel argued, research on constitutive practices does not offer a remedy or critique. What it offers is an understanding of how we make a mutually intelligible world together – what rules (or methods) we use and what background conditions are required to do that together.
Third Article, by Bruno Karsenti
Bruno Karsenti frames his discussion in the context of the confrontation between Durkheim and pragmatism that took place early in the Twentieth Century from which, he argues, we can learn why sociology is so important. He argues that Durkheim’s notion that a cult of the individual develops in modern differentiated contexts can serve as a foundation for the organization of social coherence. The argument draws heavily on Durkheim’s essay on “Individualism and the Intellectuals” (1898) written at the height of the Dreyfus affair during which Durkheim publically defended the rights and freedoms of individuals.
Karsenti proposes that pragmatism posed important challenges to sociology and that Durkheim met these challenges in unique and original ways. Durkheim’s answer to pragmatism has often been misunderstood and as a consequence it has been popular to argue that Durkheim’s position could be improved by bringing it closer to Pragmatism. Karsenti disagrees, arguing that it is not that Sociology should be more like Pragmatism, as some have argued, but rather that we should learn from the confrontation what it is that sociology accomplished in Durkheim’s hands that took it beyond pragmatism. The viability of sociology depends on the success of meeting the pragmatist challenge and that Durkheim understood this and met the challenge successfully.
Contrasting the positions of Hans Joas (that Durkheim is not Pragmatist and this is bad) and Anne Warfield Rawls (that he is not Pragmatist and this is good) Karsenti builds what he refers to as a third view: that Durkheim does something important and positive that goes beyond pragmatism. In contrast with Rawls, however, he argues that the strength of Durkheim’s argument rests on his notion of the social individual and not on constitutive practices (which he treats as instrumental and empirical rather than moral). He agrees with the proposition that Durkheim’s objective is to focus on empirical aspects of practice and the direct experience of the social, but, maintains that this involves a consideration of thought and belief beyond the scope of shared practices. Karsenti maintains that we can either, disagree with Durkheim and argue that “the apparent incompatibility between pragmatism and sociology is misleading” (treating pragmatism as superior), or follow Durkheim in arguing that “reflection on this apparent incompatibility may allow us to provide a genuine foundation for social science”. Karsenti’s third view is based on the idea that the irreducibility of Durkheim to pragmatism can be interpreted in a positive way. Durkheim proposed a unique solution to the positivist challenge.
The idea of “person” that Karsenti develops is the key to this solution. He argues that it is because society thinks within us that we can think and that this is what it means to talk about the person. If ideas come from society, then when we think, society is acting within us. The “person” is the being who thinks with social concepts and ideas. Karsenti also introduces the actor, because it is in acting that a person connects with thinking. This he says is one of Durkheim’s strengths. James cannot connect thought and action. But, according to Karsenti, Durkheim can.
According to Karsenti (401) Pragmatism enables us to regard philosophy as a method and this is why Durkheim considered pragmatism to be “the only serious rival to sociology”. Because pragmatism is a method it cannot be understood only through theory. It is necessary to study it through what it says about religion and practice. In studying religion, he says (404) Durkheim develops an anti-pragmatist comparative historical method. The difference between Durkheim and James is that Durkheim looks for the truth about religion in social organization, treating religion as a social institution. James treats religion as an internal matter and refuses to consider its institutional aspects. James and Durkheim both agree that utility cannot be a measure of religious experience. But, this prompts James to emancipate religious experience from its institutional trappings. For Durkheim by contrast it leads to the distinction between two social institutions; magic (which incorporates utility) and religion which does not involve utility and cannot be approached instrumentally (or gradually like a generalization).
In approaching the problem of thought externally Karsenti maintains that Durkheim did not give up the internal insofar as belief and faith remain internal as experience. While these experiences don’t begin with the internal because they are socially constituted, they nevertheless remain internal as experience. Thus, Karsenti argues that those who say that in focusing on the empirical Durkheim gave up the internal are wrong. Karsenti shows how by explaining the organization of categories of thought and concepts socially the internal and personal experiences of belief and faith can be explained.
Karsenti introduces the idea of an epistemological break (403) which is important. There are illusions of common sense, things we take for granted, and the epistemological break allows us to see things differently. For both pragmatism and Durkheim the import of the epistemological break is not to denounce religious experience, but to reconstruct its truth value on another level (403). Experience can take place only in relation to an external reality; religious experience is embedded in an external institutional framework. James sees that conceptual thought breaks with reality, but according to Karsenti, James cannot account for it whereas Durkheim can. Religion and conceptual thought, he says (409), have the same origin, originate in the same epistemological break, introduced by religion. This is a form of creation that enriches experience: “social things, without ceasing to be things, contain a new reality by the mere fact that they are socially conceived (apprehended)”. What lies at the heart of reality are social distinctions that can change reality.
Karsenti introduces the idea that because thought adds something created to our experience of reality it is a form of delirium. Durkheim is often criticized, he says, for not being able to deal with ordinary action and for focusing on the extraordinary. But he argues that all even ordinary thought is delirium. The social adds things to natural reality and creates a social reality in its place. The argument he says (413), is not just about special states of effervescence. The sacred he says (413), “is indicative of the common nature inherent in all collective representations. Karsenti maintains that (413) the act of thinking transcends the data of sense experience and therefore is a kind of delirium/creation.
Thus, Durkheim comes up with a new dualism. Whereas it is popular to argue that freedom is the freedom of the individual from society, the new dualism is a process of emancipation of the social person from the body and its sensations. Spiritualism is a split in the body into two levels. Thought is something social that becomes embedded in the body. There is much to be gained, he (420) argues, by taking Durkheim’s side in this. Creation and innovation are explained and mind body dualism resolved. The rational approaches (including James) focus too much, he argues, on the “steering” function of action. But, the primary relationship between thought and action is not one of steering or directing. The Pragmatists and Cartesians, he says, through their very opposition have made the same mistake. It is necessary to change the conception of the link to action. It is because of Durkheim’s success with regard to this issue that it is not when he is closer to pragmatism that Durkheim is right; it is when he moves away from pragmatism that Durkheim puts himself in a position to account for the creativity of action. We live on two levels. Rather than becoming free from society Karsenti argues that we become all the more free the more strange we become to ourselves (as pre-social). Ironically, he says (423) our uniqueness as persons depends on our de-individuation (our social character); The presence of society in ourselves. Therefore, even when the sociology of religion is fully developed, religious experience and beliefs must continue to exist. It is Durkheim’s radical originality that Kant can be overcome by a renewal of idealism that only sociology can achieve.
Fourth Article, by Melanie Plouviez
Melanie Plouviez argues that far from being the conservative thinker he is usually represented as Durkheim gives the concept of action new meaning. While the other authors in this volume are primarily focused on arguments about Durkheim’s position on modernity, Plouviez argues that even with regard to Durkheim’s treatment of traditional (mechanical) society it has been a mistake to interpret his argument as involving the simple reproduction of existing social structures. Durkheim’s sociology, she (428) says, “has repeatedly been the target of a particular criticism: that it seeks to freeze society in a rigid, instituted form, doomed to self-repetition, untouchable by any form of change”. She argues that this “reproductive interpretation”, founded on the interpretations of Paul Bureau, Albert Boyet, Georges Sorel, Georges Gurvitch, Talcott Parsons, Robert Nisbet and Raymond Boudon, is based on a partial reading of Durkheim’s work that focuses on Chapter three of The Rules of the Sociological Method (1895) and ignores his later work. Even in traditional societies, she argues, creating social coherence requires constant change and Durkheim’s position provides for this necessity. In her view this makes Durkheim’s position and Sociology in general a radical enterprise: Durkheim’s position not only allows for individual freedom of action and social change, but actually grounds the possibility of subversive activity. It treats the activity of innovation (like crime) as normal activity. In her (443) view Durkheim’s sociology was meant to be an agent of transformation in modern societies.
Having identified chapter three of The Rules as the source of misinterpretation, Plouviez analyzes this chapter in detail. She argues that Durkheim’s approach in Chapter three involves deriving values from facts, “ought” from “is”. When he treats generality as the mark of normality as he does in this third chapter there is a problem: Ought cannot be derived from contingencies. However, in other chapters Durkheim makes the argument differently – in a way that is not problematic. This second definition of a normal social fact, she says (431), is “based on its constitutive role in the conditions of existence of the social type in question”. This “ought/is” argument is constitutive like that of John Rawls (1955) and John Searle (1964). 3 This form of the argument does not have the problems of the argument from generalities. Insofar as Durkheim’s arguments with regard to the “general” lay the groundwork for a statistical sociology of the Bell Curve – treating such contingencies as defining “normal” – this interpretation of his argument has been problematic. As Plouviez points out “a social fact is not social because it is general, but general because it is social”. The argument is important. In modern societies contract comes to be the dominant form of relationship. Durkheim argues that there are essential “tacit” and unwritten conditions for contract; many of them specified in Book III of The Division. These are constitutive requirements. Contracts are nullified when persons are coerced into compliance.
In making the argument that Durkheim’s theory provides for constant change Plouviez analyzes his position on criminal law in detail. Her point: “societies, even when governed by the goal of homeostatic self-maintenance, do not perpetuate themselves in repetitive immobility but instead are transformed through an evolving dynamic.” Even with regard to traditional societies Durkheim’s argument does not produce the stasis that has been attributed to it.
Fifth Article, by Francesco Callegaro
Francesco Callegaro takes up Durkheim’s notion of the social individual as person, arguing that appreciating this idea requires not only a reappraisal of Durkheim, but also of the relationship between his position and the history of social thought. On Callegaro’s reading Durkheim emerges as a champion of the autonomous person. He argues that there is a prevalent Myth about the development of social science that gets in the way of appreciating Durkheim’s position. Contrasting the Myth of Durkheim’s relationship to the social science tradition to what he maintains is the actuality of that relationship, he argues that Durkheim’s idea of social persons (as social facts) is an ontological novelty, just as modern society is an historical novelty. The theoretical explanation of this novelty therefore cannot be continuous with the history of social thought presented as a continuous and cumulative development. We need to overcome the prejudices of the Myth and think differently in order to understand Durkheim.
Callegaro (453) maintains that “the discovery of society by sociology” as Durkheim elaborates it in The Division “presupposes already the historical break of modern societies”. The new reflexive reasoning created by the breakdown of religion is both the object and the subject of the new science. The idea of the person, he says, has a double meaning in Durkheim. It is first the most basic social fact. But, it is also the highest ideal insofar as the achievement of the autonomous thinking person is the highest ideal of modern society.
In reconstructing Durkheim’s relationship to the sociological tradition Callegaro argues that he is not just a part of this tradition, he radically changes it: reversing the relationship between method and reality. He (454) explains how prejudging Durkheim’s position according to the Myth directs the misreading. Starting with Montesquieu and Saint-Simon and working through to Durkheim, he shows that at each next stage Durkheim performs a transformation. Rather than treating society as an organism, as Spencer had, for instance Durkheim thought of societies as consciousnesses – as sets of collective ideas that people think with. Therefore, even in his notion of “organic” Durkheim performs a transformation. Society is for Durkheim, according to Callegaro (457) “a conscious being and it exists as a system of conceptual representations.” This does not move Durkheim into psychology, as Gabriel Tarde maintained. For Durkheim the abstract individual – the individual as such – is an entity that no one ever has real contact with. The real human being is the actual social individual embedded in time, place and society. His argument presupposes the creation of new social object: society (and the social person who thinks it).
While the Myth supports the idea of a progressive liberation of the individual from society, what Durkheim argues for, according to Callegaro, is the progressive development of a free individual who becomes more and more a person – a social thing – by incorporating the social inside themselves. It is the liberation of social spheres from dogmatism, he says (463), not the liberation of the individual from society, that makes individual personhood possible.
The modern task of sociology, for Durkheim (464), is “to show that modern moral order springs out of ordinary practice”: To show (464–465) that there is no diminishing of the individual in being solidary and interdependent with others in the modern way. This is difficult to convey Callegaro (459) says, because “Logically last but ontologically first the social world appears as what is immediately given to us: if society is difficult to conceive, that is because it is so obvious that it goes unseen, hidden as it is in the socially structured perceptions that guide our actions”. In Callegaro’s view, while the idea was there from the beginning, Durkheim progressively enriched his conception of sociology from The Division to The Elementary Forms.
Sixth Article, by Anne Warfield Rawls
My own paper addresses the relationship between Durkheim’s argument with regard to constitutive (self-regulating) practices and his theory of modernity. Constitutive practices, or rules are different from traditional, inductive or summary rules; they create the social objects that depend on them, rather than just representing (or reenacting) them. They are therefore necessary moment by moment in a new way. The article makes the point that constitutive practices which can create mutually intelligible social objects when coordinated cooperatively are the lynchpin of Durkheim’s argument for modernity from the beginning.
The argument treats mutual intelligibility as requiring a constant grounding in constitutive practices – as Durkheim elaborated them in The Division – to explain the mutual coordination of practices (and mutually intelligible concepts). One barrier the argument faces is the perception that constitutive practices as practical empirical activity are personal and/or instrumental and do not involve the conceptual. This would rule out their moral relevance and make the argument that the order of modern society is often based on contract problematic. More importantly, this way of interpreting constitutive practices would nullify Durkheim’s moral argument in The Division and make his early work look like a weak shadow of his later work. But, it is fundamental to Durkheim’s view that constitutive practices are shared by groups and are used to create meaning, ideas and interpretations. Unlike rituals, however, they comprise sets of informal rules independent of authority and belief. In a modern context in which work and science specialize they become an important foundation for mutual intelligibility.
Constitutive practices become necessary for the coordination of language and action in contexts that are not or cannot be organized by belief. Their being concrete and empirical is a necessary part of how they are used to produce concepts and ideas. Without them in these contexts no meaning can be achieved and hence no human person can be accomplished. This approach proposes that for concepts as for movements, it is necessary for participants to have a shared framework for interpretation. This framework can either consist of a ritual (tradition), or of constitutive practices. Both are constitutive of collective meaning, ideas and the possibility of personhood: both are morally implicative. But in modern society the second must become predominant.
What Durkheim argued changes the way we need to look at the formal institutional structures on which modern societies appear to depend. Instead of treating formal institutions and the law as creating the order from which everything else follows, Durkheim refocuses attention on informal levels of constitutive practice and grammars of use and action in occupations and sciences in particular, as the foundation of order and coherence in modern society. In a sufficiently differentiated social context in which the self-organizing practices of “public civility” are sufficiently developed, the job of political, legal and moral institutions will be to “translate” the constitutive orders that have developed below them while maintaining background conditions of justice and equality. If they try to impose an order that is not found in the self-organizing practices below them they will fail. A failure to achieve a match between formal law and constitutive rule combined with a failure to achieve justice is what causes anomie in modern society according to Durkheim – not a failure of formal rules – as the conventional interpretation proposes. Many contemporary studies of institutional practices show that institutional workers often try to improve this translation process by deviating from formal rules. Only if institutions accurately translate constitutive orders and support the efforts of the institution’s members to improve the translation process, while at the same time maintaining justice and equality, can solidarity and coherence in modern society succeed.
Conclusion
The question of what role Sociology is to play in the improvement of modern society is an important one in France. There is no counterpart in the US. Durkheim was from the beginning in The Division arguing that in order to develop a better society it is necessary to understand what the constitutive needs of social action and mutual intelligibility are for the social type in question. Because all social facts and mutual understandings are social creations it is necessary to maintain whatever social requirements, constitutive rules, or background expectations are necessary to create social coherence as changes are made. If we believe in the myth of individualism and the functionalist (economic) argument that says that social systems (economic systems) can balance themselves best when they are free from society – we make an error. Unless we both understand and support the reflexive relationship between social systems, social persons, self-organizing social practices, and social facts, things will fall apart. But this will not be because of any inherent weakness in modern society, but rather will be due to our own failure to understand it.
While certain aspects of the relevance of Durkheim’s position to these important questions of law, politics and formal social structures have long been acknowledged, because they have generally been taken out of context and often reversed, the implications of his position have not seemed appealing. As other authors in this volume point out Durkheim’s position is better than the Myth: It involves elements of pragmatism, although it goes beyond pragmatism; It anticipates important developments in modern philosophy and social thought (including Wittgenstein’s “meaning as use”, Speech Act Theory, Goffman’s working consensus, Garfinkel’s Trust argument and Robert Brandom’s work on practices of justification); Important innovations in the conception of rules, language and interaction (particularly by Wittgenstein, J. Rawls, Searle and Garfinkel) are consistent with the properties, implications and requirements of the constitutive rules that Durkheim offered as the foundation of modernity and his argument regarding the conditions of moral reciprocity they require (Rawls 2009, 2011).