Emile Durkheim

Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917) was concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such as shared religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed.
Along with Herbert Spencer, Durkheim was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in keeping the society healthy and balanced-a position that would come to be known as functionalism.
Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts.He argued that social facts had an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that composed society and could only be explained by other social facts rather than, say, by society's adaptation to a particular climate or ecological niche.
Division of labour
social fact
suicide
religion and society