After teaching in Saint-Brieuc, Montpellier, and Toulouse he took a position at the Sorbonne in 1908, the same year that Essay on the Caste System appeared. In 1922, Bouglé published The Evolution of Values, which is sometimes considered to be his magnum opus. He was the vice-president of Human Rights League (France) from 1911 to 1924 and played an important role in the organization's establishment in 1898. He founded and directed the first sociology research center in France, Centre de documentation sociale (1920–1940). He became the director of the École normale supérieure (Paris) in 1935 until 1940. He died in Paris in 1940.
Influence
Bouglé was one of French anthropologist Louis Dumont's foremost inspirations when it came to seeing Indian castes (in the spirit of the Année Sociologique) not just as elements making up a whole, but forming an ideological system (that of the Varnas, not the numerous Jatis) that in meaning and scope surpasses the sum of the elements.
Works
Essais sur le régime des castes in 1908 (Essays on the caste system; published in English as "Essays on the Caste System by Celestin Bougle" with a translation by D. F. Pocock in 1971 by Cambridge University Press).
Leçons de sociologie sur l’évolution des valeurs in 1922 (Sociological lessons on the evolution of values; published in English as The Evolution of Values: Studies in Sociology with Special Applications to Teaching in 1926 by Henry Holt and Company).
Socialismes français. Du « socialisme utopique » à la « démocratie industrielle » in 1932; (published in English as French Socialisms: From 'Utopian Socialism' to 'Industrial Democracy' in 2024 by little big eye publishing.)