“Elaborate the views of Durkheim on ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’.” (2015)
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) was Émile Durkheim‘s last and most ambitious book. It explained religion through its simplest form and traced the social origins of human thought. Its central thesis is that religion is the symbolic expression of society.
Method and critique of earlier theories
- Durkheim chose Australian totemism, especially the Arunta as described by the ethnographers Baldwin Spencer and Francis Gillen. The simplest society, he assumed, reveals religion’s essentials without later accretions.
- He rejected animism (Edward Burnett Tylor: religion from dreams and souls) and naturism (Friedrich Max Müller: religion from awe at nature). An enduring system cannot rest on error; it must express something real.
- Definitions based on gods fail too, since Buddhism has none.
Definition: sacred and profane
- Religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden, which unite into one single moral community called a Church all those who adhere to them.
- The sacred/profane dichotomy is absolute and universal.
- Religion versus magic: magic has clients but no church, no moral community.
Totemism and its source
- Each Arunta clan has a totem, an animal or plant, represented on sacred churinga; the emblem is more sacred than the creature.
- The totem symbolises both the god and the clan. Durkheim concluded that god and society are one.
- The totemic principle is an impersonal, diffuse force, akin to Melanesian mana. Its real origin is the moral authority of the group, felt most intensely when members assemble in ceremonies. Individuals project this felt power onto the emblem.
- The soul is this collective force individualised.
Classification of rites
| Rite | Nature | Social effect |
|---|---|---|
| Negative (ascetic) | Taboos, abstinence | Disciplines the self, marks the sacred off |
| Positive | Communion and offering (the Intichiuma increase ceremony) | Renews the bond between clan and totem |
| Mimetic and commemorative | Imitating the totem, re-enacting myths | Keeps tradition and identity alive |
| Piacular | Mourning, expiation | Restores group confidence after misfortune |
Religion and knowledge
The basic categories of understanding (time, space, class, force, causality) originate in religious and social organisation. Classifications of nature mirrored the clan’s division into phratries.
Future of religion
The old gods are growing old or already dead, and others are not yet born. Creeds fade, but the eternal element, rituals reaffirming shared ideals, persists, as in the cult of the individual.
Assessment
- Alexander Goldenweiser argued that totemism is neither universal nor necessarily religious, and that crowd excitement cannot explain religious sentiment.
- Steven Lukes (Émile Durkheim: His Life and Work, 1973) noted that explaining religion by society, while identifying society through religion, verges on circularity.
- Yet Indian ethnography lends partial support: Sarat Chandra Roy documented Munda and Oraon clans with totemic names and taboos. Their Sarna worship at sacred groves remains a marker of collective identity; Jharkhand’s Assembly passed a resolution in November 2020 seeking a separate Sarna religion code in the Census.
Conclusion
The book’s lasting achievement is the insight that the sacred is society’s way of experiencing its own authority. Its ethnography is dated, but its analysis of ritual, collective representation and the social roots of thought founded both the sociology of religion and the sociology of knowledge.