Emile Durkheim: A Biography by Marcel Fournier.

• Jurisdiction: Derecho Internacional
• Date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Morris, Terry R.
• Published date: 01 September 2014
• Author: Morris, Terry R.

Fournier, Marcel, Emile Durkheim: A Biography. Trans. David Macey. Cambridge: Polity, 2013. viii + 866 pages. Hardcover, $60.00.

The philosopher Roland Barthes once referred to biography as "fiction that dares not speak its name." (1) This accusation cannot fairly be leveled at sociologist Marcel Fournier's biography of Emile Durkheim, which accounts for both its strengths and its weaknesses. Not so much an argument as an explanation, Fournier's work documents how Durkheim created modern sociology in France.

In addition to numerous scholarly articles on Durkheim and his era, Fournier has published two works on Marcel Mauss, Durkheim's nephew and one of his closest disciples. In order to write these works, Fournier consulted private resources from the families connected to his subjects, as well as new resources available because of the recent revival of Durkheimian studies. For this reason, his bibliography in the present volume is exhaustive. Durkheim's only other major biography, published in 1985 by Steven Lukes, before all this new material became available, makes Fournier's work well justified.

Immersing himself in the period of his subject's life with detached objectivity, Fournier's biography, more than Lukes's, follows Durkheim's life in a strictly chronological fashion, which he breaks down into five periods: childhood and education, his teaching career at various lysee, the professorship at Bordeaux, his...