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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

Elaborate the views of Durkheim on ‘The Elementary Forms of Religious Life’.

  • UPSC 2015
  • Sociological Thinkers

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.

You are reading the opening of the model answer. The full answer is part of Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions.

What the full answer covers

  • Method and critique of earlier theories
  • Definition: sacred and profane
  • Totemism and its source
  • Classification of rites
  • Religion and knowledge
  • Future of religion
  • …and 2 more sections, with a conclusion

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