About the method of Sociology

About the method of Sociology

Émile Durkheim

(1919).

Translated by Bayron Pascal

Until now, sociologists have been very concerned about characterizing and defining the method they apply to the study of social facts. Thus, in all Mr Spencer's work, the methodological problem occupies no place; For the Introduction to social Science, the title of which could be an illusion, is devoted to demonstrating the difficulties and the possibility of sociology, not to expose the processes which it must use. Mill, it is true, has dealt quite extensively with the matter [1]; But he only sifted through his dialectic what Count had said, without adding anything really personal. A chapter in the course of positive philosophy, that is, roughly, the only original and important study we had on matter [2]. 

This apparent carelessness, moreover, has nothing to surprise. Indeed, the great sociologists whose names we have just recalled hardly came out of the generalities on the nature of societies, on the relations of the social kingdom and the biological reign, on the general March of Progress; Even Mr. Spencer's voluminous sociology has little other purpose than to show how the law of universal evolution applies to societies. To deal with these philosophical questions, special and complex processes are not necessary. Thus, it was simply to weigh the comparative merits of the deduction and induction and to make a summary survey of the most general resources available to the sociological investigation. But the precautions to be taken in the observation of the facts, the way in which the main problems must be posed, the meaning in which the research should be directed, the special practices which can enable them to succeed, the rules which Must preside over the administration of the evidence remained undetermined.

A happy competition of circumstances, at the forefront of which it is right to put the Act of initiative which created in our favour a regular course of sociology at the faculty of the letters of Bordeaux, allowing us to devote ourselves early to the study of the Social science and to make it even the subject of our professional occupations, we were able to get out of these questions too general and tackle a number of particular problems. We have therefore been led, by the very force of things, to make us a more defined method, we believe, more precisely adapted to the particular nature of social phenomena. It is these results of our practice that we would like to expose here as a whole and submit to the discussion. Undoubtedly, they are implicitly contained in the book we recently published on the Division of social work. But it seems to us that there is some interest in releasing them, in formulating them apart, by accompanying them with their evidence and by illustrating examples borrowed either from this work or from works still unpublished. It will be better to judge the direction that we would like to try to give to sociology studies.