The Social Thought of Emile Durkheim

Alexander Riley has written a good deal on Durkheim and from a fundamentally Durkheimian perspective on various topics over the past 15 years. These writings include his doctoral thesis at the University of California, San Diego (“In Pursuit of the Sacred: The Durkheimian Sociologists of Religion and the Modern Intellectual”) and several of his books (Godless Intellectuals? The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented; Impure Play: Sacredness, Transgression, and the Tragic in Popular Culture; and the forthcoming Angel Patriots in the Sky: The Crash of United Flight 93 and the Myth of America). He is spending the academic year 2013 through 2014 in Paris on a Fulbright Research Grant, along with his wife, Esmeralda; their daughter, Valeria; and the family cat.

• Chapter 1. David Emile Durkheim, Life and TimesChapter 2. Moral Solidarity and the New Social Science: Durkheim′s Study of the Individual in Society and Society in the IndividualChapter 3. Morality, Law, the State and PoliticsChapter 4. Establishing a Social ScienceChapter 5. Education as Social Science and Cultural PoliticsChapter 6. The "Revelation" of ReligionChapter 7. Unfinished Business: La Morale, the Family, and the WarChapter 8. Further Readings

An excellent overview to Durkhiem; this text is very strong at highlighting key and difficult elements of Durkheim′s work and does so with clarity and ease for students.