Durkheim

American  

[durk-hahym, dyr-kem] / ˈdɜrk haɪm, dürˈkɛm /

noun

1. Émile 1858–1917, French sociologist and philosopher.

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Durkheim British  

/ ˈdɜːkhaɪm, dyrkɛm /

noun

1. Émile (emil). 1858–1917, French sociologist, whose pioneering works include De la Division du travail social (1893)

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Example Sentences

“For Durkheim, the content of religion was society; for Simmel, the form of religion was society,” Mr. Appiah writes.

From The Wall Street Journal • Oct. 31, 2025

Durkheim suggested that most of us spend the majority of our lives doing menial tasks — hunting and gathering or typing and chattering.

From Los Angeles Times • Sep. 28, 2023

According to Durkheim, collective effervescence — the feeling of losing oneself to a shared identity through ritual action — creates access to phenomena considered sacred, which are reflections of society itself.

From Washington Post • Apr. 6, 2023

The prevalence of such spirit-beings was one reason Emile Durkheim thought — wrongly, in my view — that what he called totemism was the earliest form of religion.

From New York Times • Aug. 17, 2021

While these objections cannot but occur, Durkheim does provide a valid reason for the existence of exogamy.

From Encyclopaedia Britannica, 11th Edition, Volume 10, Slice 2 "Fairbanks, Erastus" to "Fens" by Various