Durkheim: from the Rules of Method to unruly methods

Abstract

The Sociology which Durkheim helped to create struggled with the need to secure a scientific method based on a set of rules that would establish it as an independent and respected field of knowledge. The autonomy of Sociology was possible thanks to an aggravated climate of disciplinary anomie, which Durkheim helped to encourage to improve the chances of creating an exclusively sociological zone. It was in this context that, one hundred years ago, the Rules of Method appeared. The sociology which we practise today is characterised by increasing conflictuality - not only in relation to other fields of knowledge (external confiictuality) but also at the level of its own discourse (internal conflictuality). The hyper-textuality of things social has the result that Sociology exists within a multi-method system. The interdisciplinary interstices are filled by interdisciplinary specialisms which rub against each other, generating a veritable explosion of paradigms and theoretical registers. The uniform (pro)positions of the Rules of Method have given way to multifarious (dis)positions of disorderly methods. It is in this lawless situation that voices are raised, alarmed at the methodological transgressions and anarchy which is invading the field of Sociology and demanding a realpolitik to bring together and give order to sociological discourse. It remains to be seen if this aspiration - faithful to the Rules of Method - compatible with the growing de-institutionalisation, fragmentation and individualisation of social life. Does it make sense today to have an ordered understanding to deal better with an order which has become disordered? The Rules of Method are rules of a hyper-socialised sociology. By contrast, contemporary sociology bases itself on a hypo-socialised conception of the individual which recognises the defiance of what is (eidos) in the face of what ought to be (ethos). Perhaps, however, we can find in the Rules inspiring and reunifying spirit-children which, without impeding us from taking a fresh look at the subjective dimensions of social existence, allow us to demystify the sacred and ritualised dimensions of the commonplace and all of its coercive, forbidden and supra-individual force (exteriorised) with which the Rules of Method always sought to characterise social reality.