Editing Sociology of knowledge (section)

===Émile Durkheim===
{{main|Émile Durkheim}}
[[Émile Durkheim]] (1858–1917) is credited as having been the first professor to successfully establish the field of sociology, institutionalizing a department of sociology at the University de Bordeaux in the 1890s.<ref>Calhoun, Craig, Joseph Gerteis, James Moody, Steven Pfaff, Kathryn Schmidt, and Intermohan Virk. (2002). ''Classical sociological theory.'' Malden, Mass: Blackwell</ref> While his works deal with several subjects, including suicide, the family, social structures, and social [[institution]]s, a large part of his work deals with the sociology of knowledge.

While publishing short articles on the subject early in his career (for example, the essay ''De quelques formes primitives de classification'' written in 1902 with [[Marcel Mauss]]), Durkheim worked mainly out of a Kantian framework and sought to understand how logical thought concepts and categories could arise out of social life. He argued, for example, that the types of space and time were not [[A priori knowledge|''a priori'']]. Instead, the category of space depends on a society's social grouping and geographical use of space, and a group's social rhythm determines our understanding of time.<ref>Durkheim, "Conclusion", ''Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse'', Presses Universitaires de France, 5e édition, 2003 {{p.|628}}</ref> Durkheim sought to combine elements of [[rationalism]] and [[empiricism]], arguing that certain aspects of logical thought common to all humans did exist, but that they were products of collective life (thus contradicting the ''[[tabula rasa]]'' empiricist understanding whereby categories are acquired by individual experience alone), and that they were not universal ''a priori'' truths (as [[Kant]] argued) since the content of the categories differed from society to society.<ref>Durkheim, "Introduction", ''Les Formes,'' {{p.|14-17}}, and {{p.|19-22}}.</ref>

Another key element to Durkheim's theory of knowledge is his concept of {{lang | fr | représentations collectives}} ([[collective representations]]), which he outlined in 1912 in ''[[The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life]]''. {{lang | fr | Représentations collectives}} are the [[symbol]]s and images that come to represent the ideas, beliefs, and values elaborated by a [[social collectivity | collectivity]] and are not reducible to individual constituents. They can include words, slogans, ideas, or any number of material items that can serve as a symbol, such as a cross, a rock, a temple, a feather, etc. As Durkheim elaborates, {{lang | fr | représentations collectives}} are created through intense social interaction and are products of collective activity. As such, these representations have the particular, and somewhat contradictory, aspect that they exist externally to the individual (since they are created and controlled not by the individual but by society as a whole), and yet simultaneously within each individual of the society (by virtue of that individual's participation within society).<ref>Durkheim, Emile. (1964). ''The elementary forms of the religious life''. London: Allen & Unwin.</ref>  [[Language]] is an important {{lang | fr | représentation collective}}, which, according to Durkheim, is a product of collective action. And because language is a collective action, language contains within it a history of accumulated knowledge and experience that no individual would be capable of creating alone. As Durkheim says, {{lang | fr | représentations collectives}}, and language in particular:<blockquote>"Add to that which we can learn by our own personal experience all that wisdom and science which the group has accumulated in the course of centuries. Thinking by concepts is not merely seeing reality on its most general side, but it is projecting a light upon the sensation which illuminates it, penetrates it, and transforms it."<ref>Emile Durkheim, Conclusion, Section III, [https://web.archive.org/web/20130312023652/http://www.gutenberg.org/files/41360/41360-h/41360-h.htm#Page_427 ''Elementary Forms of Religious Life''] trans. Joseph Ward Swain, p. 435.</ref></blockquote>As such, language, as a social product, literally structures and shapes our experience of reality, an idea developed by later French philosophers, such as [[Michel Foucault]].