Authors: Emile Durkheim
ISBN-13: 9780199540129, ISBN-10: 0199540128
Format: Paperback
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Date Published: June 2008
Edition: (Non-applicable)
Carol Cosman has translated works by Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Balzac and Yasmina Reza Mark Cladis is the author of A Communitarian Defense of Liberalim: Emile Durkheim and Contemporary Social Theory (Stanford, 1992) and editor of Durkheim and Foucault: Perspectives on Education and Punishment (1999).
In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. For Durkheim, studying Aboriginal religion was a way 'to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity'. The need and capacity of men and women to relate to one another socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe.
The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the intriguing origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas.
About the Author:
Carol Cosman has translated works by Sartre, Simone de Beauvoir, Balzac and Yasmina Reza Mark Cladis is the author of A Communitarian Defense of Liberalim: Emile Durkheim and Contemporary Social Theory (Stanford, 1992) and editor of Durkheim and Foucault: Perspectives on Education and Punishment (1999).
Introduction | ||
Note on the Text | ||
Select Bibliography | ||
A Chronology of Emile Durkheim | ||
Map | ||
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life | ||
Introduction | 3 | |
1 | A Definition of the Religious Phenomenon and of Religion | 25 |
2 | The Leading Conceptions of Elementary Religion: I. Animism | 47 |
3 | The Leading Conceptions of Elementary Religion: II. Naturism | 63 |
4 | Totemism as Elementary Religion: Historical Review of the Question, Method of Treating It | 76 |
1 | Central Totemic Beliefs: I. The Totem as Name and Emblem | 87 |
2 | Central Totemic Beliefs: II. The Totemic Animal and Man | 101 |
3 | Central Totemic Beliefs: III. The Cosmological System of Totemism and the Notion of Genus | 109 |
4 | Central Totemic Beliefs: IV. The Individual Totem and the Sexual Totem | 121 |
5 | The Origins of These Beliefs: I. A Critical Examination of the Theories | 126 |
6 | The Origins of These Beliefs: II. The Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana, and the Idea of Force | 140 |
7 | The Origins of These Beliefs: III. The Genesis of the Notion of the Totemic Principle or Mana | 153 |
8 | The Notion of Soul | 183 |
9 | The Notion of Spirits and Gods | 203 |
1 | The Negative Cult and its Functions: Ascetic Rites | 221 |
2 | The Positive Cult: I. The Element of Sacrifice | 243 |
3 | The Positive Cult: II. Mimetic Rites and the Principle of Causality | 261 |
4 | The Positive Cult: III. Representative of Commemorative Rites | 276 |
5 | Piacular Rites and the Ambiguity of the Notion of the Sacred | 289 |
Conclusion | 310 | |
App | Select List of Anthropologists and Ethnologists who Informed Durkheim's Work | 344 |
Explanatory Notes | 345 | |
Index | 351 |