Durkheim and Criminology: Reconstructing the Legacy
| Author | Philip Smith |
| Published date | 01 December 2008 |
| Date | 01 December 2008 |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1375/acri.41.3.333 |
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THE AUSTRALIAN AND NEW ZEALAND JOURNAL OF CRIMINOLOGY
VOLUME 41 NUMBER 3 2008 PP. 333–344
Address for correspondence: Philip Smith, Department of Sociology, Yale University, 140
Prospect Street, New Haven, CT 06516, USA. E-mail: philip.smith@yale.edu
Durkheim and Criminology:
Reconstructing the Legacy
Philip Smith
Yale University, United States of America
The article offers an overview of Emile Durkheim’s substantial and
surprisingly diverse legacy for criminology. This is shown to run the
gamut from positivism through to social constructivism. Further, it
includes insights into deviance, social control and the law. Although broad
in scope and often brilliant, his contribution is perhaps insufficiently
acknowledged. Reasons for this oversight are given, as are some indica-
tions of future directions for Durkheimian criminology.
Around 100 years ago Durkheim was at the height of his powers and prestige. His
three major works of the 1890s, The Division of Labor in Society, The Rules of
Sociological Method, and Suicide lay behind him (Durkheim, 1964, 1966a, 1966b). He
had recently moved back to the capital from Bordeaux to take up a Chair in the
Science of Education at the Sorbonne. Now he had access to the best salons and was
understood as a major intellectual figure of the Third Republic. Still to come lay his
final, path-breaking masterwork, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Durkheim,
1912) the outbreak of World War I, heartbreak following the loss of his son André in
that conflict, and eventual death in 1917. The centennial of his apogee would seem
a moment as appropriate as any for an evaluation of his legacy.
Durkheim’s pivotal status for social and cultural theory is widely recognised. Even
if he remains a hotly contested figure (see Alexander and Smith, 2005), this is a field
where centrality in the collective memory and institutional culture would appear to
be well established. Few doubt Durkheim’s canonical status as a so-called ‘founding
father’ in sociology. Even those who disagree with his theoretical logic feel compelled
to acknowledge his pervasive influence. In the field of criminology this is not so
much the case. It would be difficult to call Durkheim a marginal figure. But by the
same token the depth and significance of his influence has only rarely been gener-
ously recognised. The works of Steven Lukes (1973; also Lukes & Scull, 1983) and
David Garland (1991) stand out, not because they are the best representatives of a
dense intellectual field but because they are the exceptional moments where
Durkheim’s contribution to thinking about law, punishment and deviance is
showcased as both pivotal and profound. By contrast, in a textbook entitled
Criminological Theory (Lilly, Cullen & Ball, 2007) plucked at random from my shelf
I find Durkheim indexed on just two pages as the creator of ‘anomie theory’. He is
given about the same amount of space as more or less discredited figures like
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