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The Année Sociologique as Training Ground for Sociology: Durkheim, Mauss, and the Art of Book Reviewing in Fin de Siècle France

This chapter focuses on a specific aspect of the efforts of Durkheim and his colleagues to institutionalize sociology as a scientific research discipline in France in the late nineteenth century: the graduate training of emerging sociologists. This training posed several challenges at its inception, such as the lack of a formal program of education and of dedicated faculty or facilities. One way that Durkheim and his associates worked around their relative lack of resources was through the foundation of the Année sociologique. This journal was a discipline building enterprise: it was a collective undertaking, it discussed a wide variety of material, and it organized the intellectual division of labor in a number of subfields, effectively defining the discipline of sociology by its choices of authors and books for review. Durkheim, as the hub of the enterprise, and Mauss, as his closest collaborator and ‘alter ego’, reviewed all submissions, suggested revisions and insisted on examining everything in the smallest detail. This extensive work of editing formed the style of professional reviews of their collaborators. Durkheim encouraged and directed the research work of his younger teammates, providing them with guidance in producing original articles in the field of sociology, offering models of scientific research in the field, and helping them obtain academic appointments. A large part of this work of training was conducted via correspondence, due to the geographical distance between the members of the group. This chapter examines the practices of training in writing, their transfer across generations, and their significance to the success of the group.