Emile Durkheim revisited: Les corps intermediaires

The article discusses the relevance of Emile Durkheim for contemporary debates about citizenship and democracy. If the concepts of social bonds and solidarity which have existed from the classical period of the welfare state until today are under revision the question is whether the thoughts of Durkheim have lost relevance too? Parsons's interpretation of Durkheim as a theorist of social order is criticized. He did not look for a functional order of the Parsonian type. More likely Durkheim was preoccupied with the paradoxes and problems of the liberal state, that is the search for a type of authority compatible with modern individual rights. Durkheim's focal interest in intermediary institutions is analysed and related to the neoliberal view of the welfare state as having too much influence over the individual. It tends to forget les corps intermédiaires as important preconditions for the construction of citizenship and modern democracies. The communitarian vision of modern intermediary bodies in the 1990s is criticized for being too local in its perspective.