Frenchman, Jew, Positivist
Reading the Rules and Mapping Émile Durkheim in Germany
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Abstract
This article investigates German-speaking scholarship's reception of the programme of scientific sociology that Durkheim presented in The Rules of Sociological Method. It highlights intra-European historical dynamics and academic hierarchies. References to national, cultural, disciplinary and theoretical frames of reference are clearly discernible in the ways the Rules have been read and Durkheim has been mapped. First, his reception was embedded in a complex geometry of power between two nation states during a historical period of competitive nationalism. Second, it was affected by the way he was perceived within networks of academics who occupied unequal geo-cultural positions inside and across nation states. At times, the special location assigned to him as a Jewish intellectual played an important role. Third, his positioning as a positivist within the specific epistemological structuring of sociology is key to understanding how he was perceived east of the Rhine.
Contributor Notes
Wiebke Keim is a Researcher at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique. Her works relate to the sociology of science, and focus especially on the internationalisation of the social sciences. She has published articles in several journals in different countries such as the Canadian Journal of Sociology and the African Sociological Review. E-mail: wiebke.keim@misha.fr