Individual and Society: Understanding the Sociology of Émile Durkheim

N. Jayaram retired as Professor of Sociology from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, Mumbai. He was Visiting Professor of Indian Studies at The University of the West Indies, Trinidad. The areas of his interest include the Study of Indian Diaspora and Theory and Methods in Sociology. He was the Managing Editor of Sociological Bulletin (2000–2015), the journal of the Indian Sociological Society, and a recipient of ET Now Education Leadership Award (2013) and Lifetime Achievement Award (2020–21) of the Indian Sociological Society.

• List of Tables and Diagrams.- Preface.- Introduction.- The Impetus.- The Misconceptions.- The Perspective.- The Resources.- Organisation and Conventions.- Émile Durkheim: The Man, His Milieu and Work.- The Academic Career.- Political Activism: The Dreyfus Affair.- Intellectual Antecedents and Milieu.- The Durkheimian School.- Conception of Sociology: An Autonomous Positive Social Science.- Continuum of Social Facts.- Independence of Sociology from Philosophy.- The Emphasis on Methodology.- The Reliance on Objective Data.- The Logic of Functionalism.- The Comparative Nature of Social Science.- Sociologism or Anti-Reductionism.- The Conservative Streak.- Applied Sociology vs. Application of Sociological Knowledge.- Sociology: Its Subject Matter and Method of Study.- Characteristics of a Social Fact.- Methodology for the Study of Social Facts.- The Moral Basis of Social Order: The Sociology of Law and Morality.- The Function of the Division of Labour.- The Causes and Conditions of the Division of Labour.- Abnormal Forms of the Division of Labour.- Suicide: The Aetiology of Social Health.- Sociological Definition of Suicide.- Extra-Social Explanations of Suicide.- Social Causes and the Typology of Suicides.- Suicide and Social Policy.- Religion and Society: Sociology of Religion.- The Choice of Aboriginal Religion.- Definition of Religion and of Religious Phenomena.- The Essential Social Nature of Religion.- Politics and Society: Political Sociology.- Professional Ethics and Civic Morals.- Socialism.- Secular Morality, Education, and Society: Sociology of Education.- Education and Sociology.- Moral Education.- The Evolution of Educational Thought.- Conclusion.- Social–Individual: The Dichotomy.- Individual and Society: The Dialectics.- Recapitulating the Observations on Individual–Society Relations.- Coda: Why Read Durkheim Now.- Durkheimian Vocabulary: An Annotated Glossary.- References.