The attempt to write a history of the Année sociologique and its authors invites one to take up the journal’s methods, seeing it as a social phenomenon rather than as a collection of people and events. Like any school or movement, the Année sociologique was a product of social interaction, collective work, and its own socio-historical context. This is particularly the case with the Année sociologique circle, whose members self-consciously portrayed themselves as engaging in collective scholarship in a particular historical conjuncture. An important aspect of this conjuncture is political, which I deal with in the next section. In the present section, I deal more with the ways in which the emergence of the school was not simply the work of Durkheim or Mauss, but depended rather on the alliance of a large number of scholars with compatible, but not identical, interests. These scholars recognized that their work could only be done in a group. In Mauss’s words:
It is impossible to detach me from the work of a school. If there is any individuality here, it is immersed within a voluntary anonymity. Perhaps what characterizes my scientific career, perhaps even more today than formerly, is the sense of working as a member of a team, and the conviction that collaboration with others is a force that stands opposed both to isolation and to the pretentious quest for originality. (1998 [1930]:29)
Mauss even suggested that all works bearing only his name or that of his closest collaborator, Henri Hubert, should in fact be regarded as collaborative (Nandan, 1977:xxxiii). Similarly, according to Durkheim, "science, because it is objective, is something essentially impersonal and cannot progress except through collective work." Through collective and objective methods, sociology will "emerge from its philosophical phase and finally take its place among the sciences" (Durkheim, AS 1:vii). Whereas philosophy tends to reflect the subjective opinions of a philosopher, objective sciences must rely on facts gathered by many people in order to overcome subjective biases. In addition to objectivity, group work also allows the "vast knowledge of the facts" required to construct sound theories, which "is only possible through the collaboration of numerous specialists" (Mauss, 1998 [1930]:30).
Thus, Durkheim’s interest in "division of labor" and "organic solidarity" (1984 [1893]) yields not only a description of modern society but a prescription for scientific progress. The Année, as a collective endeavor from start to finish, lends itself particularly well to sociologically oriented historical approaches, such as those of Terry Clark (1968, 1972). The appearance of the school, the incorporation of many of its ideas into French universities, and its subsequent influence on other fields all depend both on the collective endeavors of all those directly involved and on historical conditions in which the school arose. On the other hand, care must also be taken to avoid the assumption, because the journal was a collective endeavor and professed unified goals, that these scholars dogmatic followed a charismatic leader or that they shared a unified outlook and goals. On the contrary, while the scholars who mobilized themselves around the Année sociologique proclaimed a common goal of founding sociology as a social science, all had their own objectives and their own vision of what that science should entail.
The members of Année sociologique circle did not form a group prior to their collaboration on the journal. And even during their collaboration, they only twice met together, as most had academic careers dispersed throughout the country. Most of these young scholars had known very few of their future collaborators and did not necessarily agree on theoretical or methodological issues. Some had been friends prior to their association with the group. Henri Hubert (1872-1927), Mauss’s "work twin" up until Hubert’s early death, was Mauss’s close friend from school. Similarly, Bouglé, Lapie, and Parodi were friends who continued to work closely throughout the journal’s history. Yet even as of July, 1986, the year in which writing was to begin, it appears that few collaborators had been positively identified, and Mauss was expected to take the first step, as a letter from Durkheim to Mauss suggests:
You told be before that you would scope out the terrain for prospective collaborations for the Année sociologique, if there is to be one. You haven’t said a word about it. Haven’t you thought about it any more? Answer as soon as possible on the subject; for I have been awaiting the results of these first attempts in order to begin myself.
By 1897, when work on the Année had already begun, Durkheim still was not acquainted with some of the major collaborators (Durkheim to Mauss, February, 1897: "Give me the exact name and address of Cimmian or Simmian [François Simiand] so I can write him").
Célestin Bouglé (1870-1940), on the other hand, had met with Durkheim in Paris in April of 1896, when he may have suggested to Durkheim the idea of having a journal and possibly even provided the name (Besnard, 1983:12). At the time, Bouglé was a close friend of Elie Halévy, co-founder of the journal Revue de métaphysique et de morale, which from 1895 to 1898 included a yearly section entitled "L’Année sociologique." This name followed several other Années x: artistique, médicale, archéologique, épigraphique, cartographique, biologique, philosophique, psychologique, etc. (Besnard, 1983:14) The addition of this section in the Revue de métaphysique et de morale also appears to have been in response to Bouglé, who then arranged for his friend Paul Lapie (who would soon join the Année sociologique) to edit it (Besnard, 1983:12-13). Thus, Bouglé is probably at least partly responsible for both the name and for the idea of this journal.
Once collaborators had been identified, Durkheim assigned each one to research specific sociological sub-fields in teams. Mauss and Hubert were responsible for religion, the "keystone" of sociology according to Durkheim; Simiand led a group including Georges and Hubert Bourgin in economic sociology; Gaston Richard (1860-1945) conducted mostly independent research in criminology until he left the group in 1907; Bouglé led his friends Lapie and Parodi in editing the "General Sociology" section (Besnard and Fournier, 1998:54); and so on. Each subgroup contributed a section to each year’s journal, which normally included only two featured studies (click here for a list of studies) followed by dozens of literature reviews from each subgroup. For example, the first edition featured a study by Durkheim on the incest prohibition, a study by Georg Simmel on the maintenance of social forms, and hundreds of book reviews on "general, religious, moral, legal, criminal, economic, and divers sociology" (AS 1898: Table of contents).
According to Durkheim, the goal of the journal was not to present "the state of properly sociological literature" but to keep sociologists "regularly informed of research" in other fields that provide "the materials with which sociology must build" (AS 1:i). Therefore, the work to be done was largely bibliographic and synthetic, involving almost no primary research but instead scouring the literature for anything that might profit sociology. The goal was not to express sociology, which as of yet barely existed, but to build it.
Mauss also played a central role in getting the journal started. As Durkheim was in Bordeaux at the time, Mauss was his intermediary with other members of the group, the publisher, and prospective audience. Mauss’s centrality to the journal’s success is obvious in Durkheim’s (1998) frequent and emphatic letters to Mauss from the time of the journal’s conception to its temporary end in 1913. Almost all these letters concern work on the journal, and the tone of the letters becomes more urgent and often exasperated approaching the deadline for publication. Many letters are detailed instructions on how Mauss is to approach potential allies to the cause, how he is to allocate his time to editing and writing various articles, and who is to do what task in preparing the journal; the remainder of the letters tend to be severe chastisements for not following the directions of or not promptly responding to the previous letter (click here for some letters).
In addition to being Durkheim’s go-between and the principal recruiter for the group, Mauss was responsible, along with his friend Henri Hubert, for the section of the journal that was to become the "keystone" (cheville ouvrière) of sociology: religion. "From the Année sociologique," Durkheim explained in a letter to Mauss, "will emerge a theory that, diametrically opposed to historical materialism, so vulgar and simplistic despite its objectivist leanings, will make of religion, rather than economy, the matrix of social facts" (Letter to Mauss [June 1897]). This theory would never materialize, but it would set the course of Mauss’s and Hubert’s work for the rest of their lives.
Of the initial 12 collaborators (excluding Simmel, who published in the first Année without collaborating in the group’s research), eight (Durkheim, Richard, Lapie, Bouglé, Parodi, Mauss, Simiand, and Fauconnet) were agrégés in philosophy (meaning that they had a university degree in philosophy and had passed the state exam to teach the subject in secondary schools), while two were agrégés in history (Hubert and Milhaud), one in grammar (Muffang), and one was a doctor of law (Emmanuel Lévy). The preponderance of philosophy degrees reflects the fact that at the time, sociological studies were usually subsumed under philosophy. In fact, Durkheim stated as the primary goal of the journal to help sociology "escape from its philosophical phase and take its place among the sciences" (AS 1898:vii).
Keeping the first series going as long as Durkheim, Mauss, and their collaborators did was quite a feat. Yet it was a fragile project: although the journal had its stated goals, contributors each had their own concerns and interests. As universities, the journal, sociology, and the contributors’ professional situations changed, so did contributors’ and their audience’s level of commitment to the project. The principal contributors, especially Mauss and Hubert, largely surrendered their individual publishing careers for the journal (Mauss never published a monograph), and those who participated in this serious undertaking thus had to decide how best to invest their time and interest. Over the years, the circle transformed from a group of individual scholars concerned with diverse social science issues to a much more unified school with relatively unified theoretical, methodological, and political orientations.
It seems that this was not primarily a process of intentional weeding out of dissenters, but the result of several factors. First, the overall tone of the journal had always been strongly marked by Durkheim’s preferences, and although not all members of the circle agreed with his theoretical positions, there were initially few alternatives for scientific studies in sociological issues. As the journal raised the profile of sociology in academia and as each scholar’s reputation grew as a result of collaboration with the journal and other academic activities, contributors found themselves less dependent on the journal for advancing their own concerns. It therefore became more feasible for those with contrasting perspectives to turn to other alternatives. This was especially the case for the older members of the group who had already begun academic careers when the project began, such as Richard and Lapie. At the same time, the core members over the years were able to train students in their own theories and methods and to recruit them to the journal. As both the alternatives for dissenters and a critical mass of like-minded scholars increased, the journal was able to specialize in its own perspectives. (I explore some of the political differences and their influences on the composition of the group in the political history section.)
As the original members of the group did not have a common training or way of thinking, the group at first was characterized by many conflicting theoretical points of view. The goal at this time was not to advance any single theory (after all, it would have been impossible at the time to assemble a group this size who shared a theoretical outlook) but to create a common front for social scientists and to provide materials with which sociologists could build their science. For example, one of the two featured studies in the first volume came from Georg Simmel, a German social and economic philosopher for whom Durkheim was "far from enthusiastic," although, as Durkheim says, "I did not want to give the impression that I set myself up in too haughty isolation, or that I only publish copies of myself" (letter to Mauss, June 1897). Durkheim therefore admitted scholars with a variety of often conflicting points of view into his circle. As time went on, however, and as the core members both could train new scholars in their theories and methods and be more selective in who participated, the group began to share a more common theoretical (and political) outlook.
Still, even some of the central members of the circle disagreed with what was perhaps Durkheim’s central tenet: that the social sphere exists on a different level from individual (psychological) reality, and that social aspects of reality precedes individual aspects in importance. Simiand, for example, as the first volume of the Année was being prepared, referred to this idea as "sociological metaphysics" (qtd. Lukes, 1972: 314). Bouglé’s conception of social function, perhaps closer to that of Malinowski, held that social laws should be explained in terms of human "ends, aspirations, or desires" (Vogt, 1983:235). His approach therefore privileged the "psychological" over the collective, as did the approaches of his friends Lapie and Parodi. Vogt lists four main disagreements Bouglé has with Durkheim:
He rejected the notion of the methodological unity of the social and natural sciences; he denied that social facts could be understood only by an ‘external’ study of them; he thought that introspection and psychology were fundamental to social science; and he contended that social science was not directly useful for the determination of the ends men ought to pursue. (1983:234)
I deal with the political aspects of these disagreements in my section on politics. According to Vogt, although Bouglé moderated some of these criticisms, "he never abandoned any of them" (1983:233). Although Bouglé remained highly invested in the Année project throughout its first series, his contributions decreased as time went on, and he devoted increasing amounts of time to work in which he could develop his own ideas. One of his friends and collaborators, Lapie, ceased contributing after the eleventh year. Yet despite his disagreements, Bouglé continued throughout his career to include himself as a member of Durkheim’s group - even if he refused the title of "Durkheimian" - and even contributed to the second series.
Even though Bouglé disagreed with important aspects of Durkheim’s theory, Durkheim was a rising star in French academia and may have appeared to be the horse to bet on. Even though his theoretical and political orientation is in many ways more similar to other sociological schools of the time, allying himself with Durkheim’s symbolic capital and with the circle provided Bouglé with much more visibility and clout than an alternative association with another school would have provided. Agreement or not, Durkheim was the only sociologist who had both high academic renown and a serious program to institutionalize sociology as a science in universities (Clark, 1972:152) and was therefore the only viable choice for an ambitious young scholar looking for a stable academic career. As Bouglé’s own renown grew, he contributed less to the journal and worked more on his own, producing more politically and psychologically oriented studies.
If one looks at the table of contributors, one sees that several of the original contributors dropped out in the first few years, while most of those who joined later stayed on until the end. At the same time, the number of contributors almost tripled. By this time, the journal had enough dedicated contributors not to need to call on people who were not committed to the particular vision of the project. This trend corresponded to the growing prevalence of the Durkheimian school of thought in the universities and the growing number of young scholars trained in these methods.
Yet this was a project that could not sustain itself for long. Processing and itemizing dozens of books a year in addition to practicing an academic career was a "thankless" (according to Durkheim) and exhausting task diverting precious time and energy from other academic duties. Only those scholars completely invested in the project could be expected to read and report on all the books Durkheim sent them. At the outbreak of war, the project was put on indefinite hold. In the mean time, Durkheim, whose imperious yet charismatic leadership held the whole enterprise together, died in 1917. Mauss, who had sacrificed much of his personal career for the journal, wrote Hubert from the front lines in 1916: "I’ll take the war over the Année sociologique" (qtd. Fournier, 1994:138). Earlier, just before the last volume of the first series was published, Mauss called the Année "a poison worse than influenza" (1912, qtd. Fournier, 1994:137). Despite Mauss’s and Hubert’s remarkable dedication to the journal, it took a heavy toll on them personally and professionally. Asked shortly after the war if it would be worthwhile to revive the project, Hubert responded, "yes, if we don’t kill ourselves in the process. No, if we must again spend years doing nothing but criticism without any positive work" (qtd. Fournier, 1994:482).
Thus, after the journal’s initial discontinuation, over a decade passed before Mauss built up enough momentum and raised enough patronage to start a second series. Mauss writes in the preface to the first volume of this second series: "We take up, after a long and tragic interval, during which our founder, Emile Durkheim, as well as many of our former collaborators, have passed away" (AS 1925:1). After the war, he continues, they had lacked "the material means" and "the strength" to continue publishing, "but we have retained the vital sense of its necessity, and we were spurred on from all directions" (ibid.) And yet the journal will no longer be able to keep up with all the developments, as "sociology has become something extremely vast"; instead of providing an inventory, as before, the goal now is to organize, classify, and elaborate doctrine (ibid., 3). The reincarnation of a bibliographical journal as a theoretical outlet could not hold up for long. Mauss published his masterpiece, "Essay on the gift," in the 1925 edition, and the journal again fizzled after a diminutive second volume. Mauss would publish very little after this (although a few of his important short essays come during his later years), and instead he would devote his time to teaching anthropology. According to his students, he largely left theoretical doctrines behind at this point and focused instead on teaching ethnographic skills and facilitating fieldwork, although he maintained his penchant for bibliographical commentary (reminiscences of Dieterlen).
The disappearance of the second series was not a failure on the part of the Année or of its contributors: they had accomplished what they had set out to accomplish, and survival of the journal at this point may have brought diminishing returns. Durkheimian sociology had been instituted throughout French universities, no longer as a branch of philosophy, and the members of the circle dominated this field, many of them holding teaching and research positions in France’s most prestigious universities. Perhaps the most salient symbol of the journal’s acceptance in the French academy came when in 1930 Mauss was named to the Collège de France, France’s living academic pantheon. By this time, Mauss had co-founded the Institut d’Ethnologie with Lévy-Bruhl and Paul Rivet (see the impact of the circle), where he turned his attention to the aspect of sociology that had always interested him most - ethnology. In so doing, Mauss became the founder of French academic anthropology.