What sociology can learn from altruism

10.10.2026

Autor: Tobias O. R. Alke · mit Claude (Anthropic)

A standpoint, not an encyclopedia entry. This article is an expressly subjective statement, dated 2026. The neutral background knowledge is in the encyclopedia entry The prosocial nature of human beings.

Quotations from Steffen Sigmund are given in the original German, those from Émile Durkheim and Marcel Mauss in the original French, each followed by our own translation (“our translation”); Stephen Turner is quoted in the original English.

The word altruism was coined by a sociologist – Auguste Comte, around 1851 – and Émile Durkheim called altruism a foundation of every society. Sociology can win the topic back if it takes the individual seriously as a source of development, distinguishes free from enforced reciprocity and reads its classics together with psychology, biology and economics. We understand this as an invitation – to our own work as well.

Why does altruism belong to sociology?

Comte coined the word in his Système de politique positive (see Altruism in Comte). Durkheim called altruism the “base fondamentale” (our translation: “fundamental basis”), the foundation that carries social life (1893: 249; see Solidarity through the division of labour (Durkheim)).

Today sociology publishes comparatively little under the keyword altruism. Our own extrapolation from a catalogue sample arrives at around 1.7 per cent of titles – under the conditions stated there; the derivation is in the standpoint The Development of the Altruism Discourse. Many sociological studies run under other names: volunteering, solidarity, cooperation. And since the mid-2000s the discipline has been opening up to biological questions again.

What role does the individual play for the community?

First suggestion: see the individual as a source of development. Whoever departs from the customary opens up new possibilities of acting and thinking. Steffen Sigmund shows this with the founder of a foundation: endowing combines „Bewahren und Gründen, Institution und Innovation“ (2008: 94; our translation: “preserving and founding, institution and innovation”). In his account the founder is a boundary crosser (Grenzgänger) who mediates between areas of society (2001: 215) – more on this in the standpoint Dying rich – a disgrace?.

Marcel Mauss, too, thought of the individual and the community together: human beings should defend their interests “personnellement et en groupe” (our translation: “personally and as a group”) (1925: 166). The one carries the other. More on this in the standpoint The Significance of the Individual.

When does reciprocity connect – and when does it coerce?

Second suggestion: distinguish free from enforced reciprocity. Reciprocity that rests on freely adopted values connects. Reciprocity that is maintained only by coercion can hollow out the very cohesion it is supposed to secure.

The French sociology of the gift following Mauss describes the gift as disinterested, „nicht weil es keine Gegengabe gibt, sondern weil diese nicht kalkulierbar ist“ (Sigmund 2010: 137; our translation: “not because there is no return gift, but because it cannot be calculated”). And whoever gives must be able to receive a return: Mauss called the author and inventor “ce bienfaiteur humain” (our translation: “this benefactor of humanity”) and welcomed the French resale right of artists; at the same time he conceded that works are as much a product of the collective as of the individual mind (1925: 162 f.). For us it follows that the protection of intellectual property is not a commercialisation of the mind but the return that keeps giving alive (see The Gift (Mauss)).

Does cooperation need punishment?

Third suggestion: measure instead of principle. In the well-known experiment by Ernst Fehr and Simon Gächter, 84.3 per cent of participants punish at least once, 15.7 per cent never and 9.3 per cent more than ten times; there, punishment supports cooperation (2002: 137; see Altruistic punishment (Fehr/Gächter)).

Our line: punishment as a last resort and in due measure. Explaining, setting an example and awakening insight carry further. Punishment that is experienced as self-serving can even reduce altruistic behaviour (Fehr & Rockenbach 2003). Where punishment becomes the principle of order, it destroys what it is meant to protect.

Why is it worth looking beyond the borders of the discipline?

Fourth suggestion: read the classics together with the neighbouring disciplines. Jane Allyn Piliavin, herself a sociologist, invited research on social movements and on helping to work together in her Cooley-Mead lecture of 2008 (Piliavin 2009: 209). Stephen Turner describes how discussion within American sociology became “constrained both by ‘professional’ expectations and political taboos” (2012: 346). Limits on what may be said cost any discipline its audience.

That applies to us as well. Every discipline, our own work included, tends towards overspecialisation. Mauss recommended putting back together into a whole what had been taken apart (1925: 182). Psychology, biology, economics and sociology describe the same human being.

What does this mean for volunteering and civil society?

Fifth suggestion: apply the same standard to all orders. Where coercion crowds out self-help, the need for compensation grows; where freedom exists, associations grow of their own accord. This is our juxtaposition of two images of order, not a measured finding. Market, state and civil society are all imperfect; Fernando Leal also speaks of the failure of organised citizenship (2006: 569).

Volunteering takes place predominantly outside church structures: in a Finnish survey, 7.1 per cent were active wholly or partly in church organisations, 30.8 per cent exclusively in other organisations (Yeung 2004: 409). The figure says nothing about the value of the one or the other commitment; both stand side by side.

More background: The prosocial nature of human beings · Collectivism & individualism · Altruism