Émile Durkheim and the Collective Consciousness of Society, livre ebook

A detailed engagement with Émile Durkheim’s concept of the collective consciousness of society from a criminological perspective.

‘Émile Durkheim and the Collective Consciousness of Society: A Study in Criminology’ challenges conventional thinking on the use of Durkheim’s key concept of the ‘collective consciousness of society’, and represents the first ever book-length treatment of this underexplored topic. Operating from both a criminological and sociological perspective, Kenneth Smith argues that Durkheim’s original concept must be sensitively revised and updated for its real relevance to come to the fore.

This study puts forward three major adjustments to Durkheim’s concept of the collective consciousness. It complicates the idea that the common and collective consciousness are interchangeable terms for the same phenomenon; it refutes the ‘disciplinary’ function of society as part of the concept of the common or collective consciousness; and it reveals the illusiveness of the supposed universal set of equally held ideas in a society, underlining the importance of geographical and generational variation.

Preface: Erewhon; Introduction; Part I: The Concept of the Collective Consciousness of Society; 1. Durkheim on the Collective Consciousness in ‘Moral Education’; 2. Durkheim’s Other Writings on the Concept of the Collective Consciousness; 3. Collective Consciousness, Common Consciousness, Collective Conscience or Conscience Collective?; Part II: The Form of the Collective Consciousness; 4. The Form that the Collective Consciousness(es) of Society Takes in a Late-Industrial Society: I. Macro-sociological or ‘General’ Characteristics; 5. The State as the ‘Organ’ of the Common Consciousness; 6. ‘The Rule-of-Law’: A Case Study; 7. The Form that the Collective Consciousness Takes in Early Twenty-First Century Britain: II. Micro-sociological, Individual or Small-Scale Factors; Part III: Durkheim on Crime and Punishment; 8. Durkheim on Crime and Punishment in ‘The Division of Labour in Society’; 9. Durkheim on Crime and Punishment in ‘The Rules of Sociological Method’; 10. Interregnum on ‘Suicide’ (1897); 11. Durkheim’s Undeservedly Famous ‘Two Laws of Penal Evolution’ Essay (1901); 12. Durkheim on Crime and Punishment in ‘Moral Education’ (1902–03); Part IV: Social Factor Social Phenomenon? Durkheim’s Concept of the Collective Consciousness as a ‘Social Fact’; 13. What Does Durkheim Mean by the Concept of the ‘Social’ and What Does He Mean by the Concept of a ‘Fact’?; 14. Social Facts or Social Phenomena?; 15. Social Facts and Sociology; 16. Social Facts as Living Things; Part V: Some Problems with Durkheim’s Concept of the Common and Collective Consciousness; 17. Interdependence and the Division of Labour in Society; 18. Durkheim on Socialism; 19. Professional Ethics; 20. Individualism, Durkheim and the Dreyfus Affair; Conclusion; Appendix: On Paying a Debt to Society; Notes; References; Index