Durkheim: via Fournier, via Lukes

Abstract

Lukes’s great biography came out when Durkheim’s reputation was at its nadir. Fournier’s even bigger biography appears as neo-Durkheimian influence animates many branches of today’s sociology. We now have an almost day-to-day account of Durkheim building a network of scholars and researchers, simultaneously being shaped by and reshaping its milieu. The result was a sophisticated intellectual movement that could jocularly refer to Durkheim as its sacred object, a symbol of itself. In effect, we have the collective production of the biography of a collective movement making new discoveries, which is what the intellectual world at its best is about.