Durkheim’s idea of society backlit

Abstract

In the ninety-eigth decade the sociology faced the rising of growing resistances and critics to the ideas of Émile Durkheim according to which the society was a total unity. This critics, developed by Eric Wolf, Frederic Barth and, in the recent years, Bruno Latour, empathizes that it is necessary to abandon the organic and systemic conceptions of society in order to think the social considering it relational aspects. This article will summarize those critic arguments and, while doing so, as a counterbalance, we will propose a critic regard of some possible problems of this new anti-durkheimnianism.