1st Edition

Émile Durkheim Justice, Morality and Politics

Edited By Roger Cotterrell Copyright 2010

    This volume focuses on three closely-connected aspects of Émile Durkheim's work: his sociology of justice, his sociology of morality and his political sociology. These areas of his thought are the most relevant and practical today in considering fundamental problems of contemporary societies and they provide many of the richest and most important insights of his social theory. Yet they are also relatively neglected and this volume collects together the most incisive recent periodical commentary on them. Within the justice-morality-politics triangle, Durkheim examines moral pluralism and the possibility of identifying a unifying value system for complex societies; the nature and conditions of democracy; the relations of the citizen, the state and corporate groups; criteria of justice and of effective economic regulation; and modern individualism with its associated ideas of human dignity and human rights. This tightly-integrated volume presents Durkheim's thought in an unusual and revealing light, showing him as a key social and political thinker for the twenty-first century.

    Contents: Introduction: Durkheim on justice, morals and politics; Part I Solidarity in Modern Society: Continuity and change in Durkheim's theory of social solidarity, M.J. Hawkins; Inside organic solidarity, Whitney Pope and Barclay D. Johnson; Status and solidarity: a reformulation of early Durkheimian theory, Stephen Adair; Transnational solidarities, Carol C. Gould. Part II Durkheim's Sociology of Morals: Two main problems in the sociology of morality, Gabriel Abend; Conscience collective or false consciousness? Adorno's critique of Durkheim's sociology of morals, Tobias Garde Hagens; Communitarian ethics and the sociology of morals: Alasdair MacIntyre and Émile Durkheim, Robert T. Hall; Durkheim, morality and modernity: collective effervescence, homo duplex and the sources of moral action, Chris Shilling and Philip A. Mellor. Part III Justice in Sociological Perspective: Justice and the division of labour: a reconsideration of Durkheim's Division of Labour in Society, Carmen J. Sirianni; Conflict as a foundation for consensus: contradictions of industrial capitalism in Book III of Durkheim's Division of Labor, Anne Rawls; Émile Durkheim on human talents and 2 traditions of social justice, S.J.D. Green; A fellow-traveller's dilemma: sociology and socialism in the writings of Durkheim, Dick Pels. Part IV Individualism as a Modern Value System: Durkheim's individual in society: a sacred marriage?, Mark S. Cladis; The 'individual' in the writings of Émile Durkheim, Anthony Giddens; Durkheim and individualism, W. Watts Miller; Individuality and the intellectuals: an imaginary conversation between W.E. Du Bois and Émile Durkheim, Karen E. Fields. Part V Political Theory: Citizens, Social Groups and the State: Durkheim on occupational corporations: an exegesis and interpretation, M.J. Hawkins; Durkheim's political sociology: corporatism, state autonomy, and democracy, Frank Hearn; Émile Durkheim and the science of corporatism, Timothy V. Kaufman-Osborn; Reorganization and stabilization: social mechanisms in Émile Durkheim's Professional Ethics and Civic Morals: a contribution to the explanation of social processes, Jürgen Mackert; Index.

    Biography

    Roger Cotterrell, Professor, Department of Law, Queen Mary, University of London, UK