This new volume of the SAGE Social Thinkers series provides a concise introduction to the work, life, and influences of Emile Durkheim.

Most students of sociology know that Durkheim is one of the informal ‘holy trinity’ of founding thinkers in the discipline, along with Max Weber and Karl Marx. In this book, the author shows that Durkheim’s perspective is quite arguably the most properly sociological one among the discipline’s founders and, further, that many of the criticisms invoked to reduce his stature in comparison to other founding thinkers are weak and unfounded.

He thought through the nature of society, culture, and the complex relationship of the individual to the collective in a manner more concentrated and thorough than any other thinker alive during the period (roughly 1880-1920) of the emergence of the discipline of sociology.