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Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Born and raised in eastern France, educated in France and Germany. He received the first academic appointment in sociology in France in 1877 at the University of Bordeaux and in 1906 moved to the Sorbonne. Durkheim rejected reductionist arguments that tried to explain social behavior in biological or psychological terms, instead emphasizing the social-structural determinants of human behavior.

LANDMARK STUDY OF SUICIDE

Compared the suicide rates in several European countries and found different rates for each country highly stable from year to year.

Found that Protestants, wealthy, males, and unmarried kill themselves more often than Catholics, Jews, poor, females, and married.

He concluded that suicide is NOT JUST A HIGHLY PERSONAL INDIVIDUAL ACT, BUT IS INFLUENCED BY SOCIAL FACTORS, with altruistic suicide occurring with very strong social bonds and anomic suicide occurring when people have low social integration and experience anomie.

He believed the division of labor in industrial societies replacing mechanical solidarity with organic solidarity increased anomic suicide.

An excellent example of quantitative sociological research identifying social facts--regular patterns of behavior characterizing groups.

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