The Varieties of Sociological Experience. Durkheimian Belief/Knowledge-Compositions

Sociological moderns like Durkheim have been accused, both in his own era and today, of being obtuse to non-rational systems of meaning and devotion, imposing instead their own framework of truth and reasonableness onto such cultures and, as such, producing, at best, interpretative misunderstandings or committing, at worst, forms of epistemic injustice and subjugation. The category of belief, with its strong Western-Christian undertones and explicitly rationalist premises, often played a central role in such accusations of reductionism, its epistemological framework considered to be too restrictive for a proper understanding of such complex phenomena. In this chapter, I aim to further tackle this accusation, by reconstructing Durkheim’s, what I have called throughout these chapters, belief/knowledge-composition. It is my argument that the value of Durkheimian sociology was its self-reflective ideal of social layering: the thick description of the different regimes of truth and belief experienced by the sociologist. It is not necessary, so I argue, to abandon the Durkheimian toolset, even if it would be unwise to read Durkheim’s works in an overly literal fashion. Rather, it is still of value today if approached carefully, especially for when we try to understand the historical process of sociology’s self-formation and -imagination.