Elementary forms of religious life emile durkheim pdf

According to Durkheim, religion only has the power attributed to it by individuals. This power is socially effective, most apparent in the ability of religion to bring a variety of humans together as a moral community that he called church. In this study, often referenced primarily, if not exclusively, with regards to Introduction and Conclusion, Durkheim aimed to make a substantial contribution to questions about the origin of religion or the function and meaning of religious beliefs and practices.

He also strived to present a comprehensive and up-to-date enquiry of a single ethnographic case study that could serve as empirical proof for his theory and explanation. Similarly, key concepts in discourse theory, like those of classification and taxonomy proposed by Michel Foucault, or in practice theory, such as habitus, on which Pierre Bourdieu elaborated, can be seen as historical and anthropological engagements with the work of Durkheim.

In Great Britain, the reception of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life differed considerably, chiefly shaped through engagement by anthropological scholars. Its impact on the functional school in British social anthropology becomes more apparent in the work of Alfred R. Radcliffe-Brown, who utilized its theoretical and method- ological framework to establish what would become known as structural functionalism. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life continued to shape the study of religion in British social anthropology, reflected in the ethnographic and theoretical work of Mary Douglas and Victor W.

Turner on ritual in African societies and in sociological research on ritual in industrial societies, as it became most explicit in work by Robert Bocock. This shift became most apparent in two substantial accounts. Its wider reception beyond the sociology of religion began with its positive review by social psychologist James Leuba.

Bellah and Robert A. Jones and shaped central aspects of the rational choice theory as proposed by William S. Bainbridge and Rodney Stark. The Cambridge companion to Durkheim. Allen, , N. London, UK: Routledge. Hausner, , S. Durkheim in dialogue: A centenary celebration of the elementary forms of reli- gious life.

Idinopulos, , T. Reappraising Durkheim for the study and teaching of religion today. Download all slides.

Sign in Don't already have an Oxford Academic account? You could not be signed in. Sign In Forgot password? Don't have an account? Sign in via your Institution Sign in. Purchase Subscription prices and ordering for this journal Short-term Access To purchase short term access, please sign in to your Oxford Academic account above.

This article is also available for rental through DeepDyve. View Metrics. Email alerts Article activity alert. Advance article alerts. New issue alert. Receive exclusive offers and updates from Oxford Academic. Related articles in Google Scholar. Citing articles via Google Scholar. And since religion is foundational for social life, society is by way of definition mandated to have a conception of a bifurcated world.

The reasoning is circular; it can only lead to the outcome predicted by his definition. After he has presented us with a definition of religion, Durkheim contrasts it with contemporary theories about the origin of religion. Again, he first rejects animism and naturism as viable hypotheses. Both trace religion to ultimately illusory and psychological imaginations, and hence fail to see its social reality which is so important for Durkheim.

The French sociologist also criticizes them for not being able to account for the genesis of the sacred. Totemism for him precedes and explains and, in doing so, conjoins both animism and naturism Durkheim , pp. His preference for totemism is really based on the simplicity of social organization. Durkheim saw the division into two clans as the most primitive form of social organization, and he claimed that the extant group of people closest to practicing this simple form of organization were the Australian Aborigines.

Thus he focused on what he understood as their form of totemism Durkheim , pp. Durkheim analyzed the totem as a shared emblem of the clan, a first form of collective symbolic representation. To be effective at integrating society, all collective representations need to create such symbolic externalization.

The target of the externalization is for the group to represent itself to itself in a commonly recognized symbol which is identified with certain objects. Such objects are sacred and set apart from the profane activities of everyday life. Totems are usually animals or plants. But Durkheim argues that these were not worshiped but seen as kin to the clan member. As the members of the clan partake in the sacredness of the totem to which they are related, the totemic principle extends to include them.

From there the clan members get the idea of an individual soul, which — like said principle — incarnates within them and without Durkheim , pp. Durkheim draws two ideas from this: That totemism allows for subordinate, individual totems, and that the spirits and gods must have emerged from the souls of highly regarded ancestors Durkheim , pp.

The members of the tribe produce it when they come together periodically for grand rites of initiation, during which they experience periods of heightened social excitement which Durkheim calls collective effervescence cf. The participants experience a force independent of them that unites them but is more than the sum of their individual contributions. Durkheim believes that this experience of two separate social worlds generates the belief that the universe itself is segregated into a sacred and a profane part.

Of those parts, the intervals of concentrated social gathering are associated with the sacred Durkheim , pp. At this point, Durkheim turns to ritual practice, since he understands effervescence as a product of participation in ritual.

He divides the ritual cult by its functions into negative and positive aspects. What he terms the negative cult are interdictions and rites of prohibition aimed to prevent contact between sacred and profane things or aspects Durkheim , p. Prohibited things may not be seen, touched, or spoken about, and the breaking of such religious taboos incurs sin and physical punishment.

Durkheim notes that throughout religious life, asceticism has been interpreted as setting individuals apart and bringing them in closer connection with the sacred Durkheim , p. The sacred, moreover, needs guarding because of a paradoxical precariousness: It is highly contagious but would lose its sacred character upon contact with the profane Durkheim , pp.

Restrictions are thus necessary to keep it apart from the profane. The Arunta come together to celebrate the Intichiuma ritual just before the short rainy season in which food is plenty. Before the celebration, ritual interdictions concerning the totem are increased. At the height of the festival, the members of the clan then ritually slaughter and feast upon their totem. After this, life goes back to its normal state. Durkheim observes herein the origins of an elementary aspect of later religions: Sacrifice.

However, such sacrificial feasts enjoin gods and humans of the same totem and serve to actualize the totemic principle in them. Moreover, the Intichiuma illustrates the mutual dependence of gods and worshipers on each other Durkheim , pp.

The remainder of Book Three is dedicated to other forms of positive ritual termed mimetic, representative, and piacular Durkheim , pp.

For Durkheim, mimetic or imitative rites are not an expression of sympathetic magic but collective representations aimed at the reproduction of the totemic animal or plant. The clan members believe in the efficacy of the rites, for if they did not, communal celebrations like the Intichiuma could not have any socially integrative effect and would dissolve.

Representative rites commemorate the clan itself, in that they reiterate its mythical history. Furthermore, Durkheim sees in them the starting point for aesthetics in religious life. Piacular rites, in contrast, deal with the more tragic aspects of life. Insofar as participation is prescribed, they contribute to the solidarity of the group. In his conclusion, Durkheim turns to epistemology.

He argues that all categorization of the world originates in the objective order of things mediated through social experience. It is only later that it emancipates from that part of religious thinking dedicated to the explanation of the world.

Godlove Durkheim seems to have realized the social prominence of religion when he read the work of William Robertson Smith, a Calvinist minister and scholar who had published his influential Lectures on the Religion of the Semites in In this work, Smith had foreshadowed some of the most important hypotheses put forward in The Elementary Forms.

He portrayed religion in social terms as the divinization of the clan and totemism as the earliest form of religion Lukes , p. Durkheim held his first lecture series on religion in 95 in Bordeaux and wrote an essay On the Definition of Religious Phenomena in A further difference is in scale: The Elementary Forms is a dense book full of challenging hypotheses and inspiring ideas.

The earlier essay pales in comparison and is not nearly as well-known. In The Elementary Forms, Durkheim consciously approaches the dominating intellectual trends of his day.

Indeed, in his conclusion he insists that his epistemology would reconcile both doctrines cf. Jones Durkheim was bound by the intellectual climate of his time.