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DURKHEIM’S DIVISION OF LABOUR IN SOCIETY J. A. BARNes The Australian National University Introduction The fitst edition of Emile Durkheim’s The division of labour in society: a study of the organization of the higher societies was published in 1893 while the author was professor of social science at the University of Bordcaux. It constituted the major of the two theses which he presented at the University of Paris for his doctorate. Durkheim had previously published several reviews and articles, but this was his first book, He gained his doctorate and his book made a significant impact, for it so annoyed the orthodox economists that for some time he could not obtain a teaching post in Paris (Mauss 1958: 2). The book went to five French editions, the only work by Durkheim to do so, and was first published in an English translation. in 1933. It has been described by its translator as Durkhcim’s greatest work (Simpson 1933: 4). Yet despite these indications of importance, some critics have seen little value in the book. Thus, in his History of ethnological theory, where he devotes fifteen pages to Durkheim, Lowic has absolutely nothing to say about the Division of labour. Its translation into English was greeted in the pages of the American journal of sociology with the comment: Published when the author was thirty-five years old, the work accepts as acctirate the crude misconceptions of the 1880's concerning the life of primitive man as set forth in the books of those who were no more competent to describe them than a botanist would be to write a treatise in his field without ever having seen a plant... Not to be severe with a writer who, forty-one years ago, accepted what is now known to be untenable, it would at least seem that extended discussion of an argument based on abandoned premises might be considered an unnecessary expenditure of energy (Paris 19343 376). The English translation is poor. The development of social conditions, as well as the findings of scientific rescarch, during the seventy years that have elapsed since the work was first published have cumulatively demonstrated the falsity of many of its substantive propositions. If then we are to understand in what context the Division of labour is still of interest, we have to look elsewhere than at introductory courses on occupational specialisation, or social evolution, or the changing patterns of legal organisation, or any other of the various themes discussed in the book. We need, however, go only to the very first sentence in the book to find the answer: ‘This book is pre-eminently an attempt to treat the facts of the moral life according to the method of the positive scienees’ (DOL" 32). Here we have a clear statement of Durkhcim’s programme, a programme worked out in subsequent publications and which remained not far from the centre of his intellectual goal throughout his life. In this book we can easily see the beginnings from which his later studics on suicide, education, law and religion 
