Durkheim: An Introduction

Emile Durkheim was born in France. He is conventionally regarded as the founder who put Sociology on a professional footing in France in particular and paved the way for this professionalisation to occur across the rest of Europe and in North America.
He is now widely regarded as the 'father' of the so-called Structural-Functionalist approach in sociology: an approach developed by the North American sociologists Talcott Parsons and Robert Merton. Durkheim always perceived his objective as establishing the legitimacy of Sociology: as a science with its own protocols and its own domain.
His writings are extensive but he is perhaps best known for his work on suicide and the rules of sociological method.