Émile Durkheim

Rules of the Sociological Method

Foundational sociological methodology establishing science as a study of social facts

About the author

Émile Durkheim
Émile Durkheim

French sociologist who founded sociology as a scientific discipline. Suicide demonstrated that even the most individual act has social causes; The Elementary Forms of Religious Life analyzed religion as a social phenomenon. His concepts of anomie and collective consciousness remain central to sociological thought.

More by Émile Durkheim