Download or read book Confronting the Sacred Durkheim vindicated through philosophical analysis ethnography archaeology long range linguistics and comparative mythology written by Wim van Binsbergen and published by Lulu.com. This book was released on 2018-10-09 with total page 582 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: With Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) the soci0logist ?mile Durkheim formulated the most influential social-science theory of religion to date. Pivotal are the paired concepts ?sacred / profane?, the notion of ?collective representations?, and the hypothesis that through such religious symbols, society compels its members to venerate herself i.e. to submit to the social as an irreducible instance in its own right. Having grappled with this Durkheimian inheritance for half a century, the anthropologist of religion and intercultural philosopher Wim van Binsbergen in this book traces his own steps in confront_ing Durkheim's sacred, through theoretical criticism, through ethnographic application (to popular Islam in the segmentary social organisation of the highlands of Northwestern Tunisia), and by state-of-the-art long-range methods of linguistic and comparative mythological analysis. Thus, much to his surprise, he demonstrates the continued validity of Durkheim's insights in religion.
Download or read book Durkheim in Dialogue written by Sondra L. Hausner and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2013-11-30 with total page 280 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: One hundred years after the publication of the great sociological treatise, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, this new volume shows how aptly Durkheim1s theories still resonate with the study of contemporary and historical religious societies. The volume applies the Durkheimian model to multiple cases, probing its resilience, wondering where it might be tweaked, and asking which aspects have best stood the test of time. A dialogue between theory and ethnography, this book shows how Durkheimian sociology has become a mainstay of social thought and theory, pointing to multiple ways in which Durkheim1s work on religion remains relevant to our thinking about culture.
Download or read book Epistemology and Practice written by Anne Warfield Rawls and published by . This book was released on 2005-05-12 with total page 371 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In this original and controversial book Professor Rawls argues that Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life is the crowning achievement of his sociological endeavour and that since its publication in English in 1915 it has been consistently misunderstood. Rather than a work on primitive religion or the sociology of knowledge, Rawls asserts that it is an attempt by Durkheim to establish a unique epistemological basis for the study of sociology and moral relations. By privileging social practice over beliefs and ideas, it avoids the dilemmas inherent in philosophical approaches to knowledge and morality that are based on individualism and the tendency to privilege beliefs and ideas over practices, both tendencies that dominate western thought. Based on detailed textual analysis of the primary text, this book will be an important and original contribution to contemporary debates on social theory and philosophy.
Download or read book Durkheim and Representations written by W. S. F. Pickering and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2002-03-11 with total page 240 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Durkheim's sociological thought is based on the premise that the world cannot be known as a thing in itself, but only through representations, rough approximations of the world created either individually or collectively. This set of papers by leading Durkheimians from Britain, America and continental Europe is the first concentrated attempt to understand what he meant by representations, how his understanding of the term was influenced by Kant and by neo-Kantians like Charles Renouvier and how his use of the concept in his work developed over time. By arguing that his use of representations at the the core of Durkheim's sociological thought, this book makes a unique contribution to Durkheimian studies which have recently been dominated by positivist and functionalist interpretations, and reveals a thinker very much in tune with contemporary developments in philosophy, linguistics and sociology.
Download or read book Rethinking Durkheim and his Tradition written by Warren Schmaus and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2004-06-21 with total page 209 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a reassessment of the work of Emile Durkheim in the context of a French philosophical tradition that had seriously misinterpreted Kant by interpreting his theory of the categories as psychological faculties. Durkheim's sociological theory of the categories, as revealed by Warren Schmaus, is an attempt to provide an alternative way of understanding Kant. For Durkheim the categories are necessary conditions for human society. The concepts of causality, space and time underpin the moral rules and obligations that make society possible. A particularly interesting feature of this book is its transcendence of the distinction between intellectual and social history by placing Durkheim's work in the context of the French educational establishment of the Third Republic. It does this by subjecting student notes and philosophy textbooks to the same sort of critical analysis typically applied only to the classics of philosophy.
Download or read book On Durkheim s Elementary Forms of Religious Life written by N.J. Allen and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-10-12 with total page 266 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the first collection of essays to be published on Durkheim's masterpiece The Elementary Forms of Religious Life. It represents the work of the most important international Durkheim scholars from the fields of anthropology, philosophy and sociology. The essays focus on key topics including: * the method Durkheim adopted in his study * the role of ritual and belief in society * the nature of contemporary religion The contributors also explore cutting-edge debates about the notion of the soul and collective rituals.
Download or read book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written by Émile Durkheim and published by DigiCat. This book was released on 2022-06-13 with total page 556 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The Elementary Forms of Religious Life" is a book that analyzes religion as a social phenomenon. The author, the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, attributes the development of religion to the emotional security attained through communal living. He drives his conclusions from the study of totemic societies in Australia, which led him to a conclusion that the animal or plant that each clan worshipped as a sacred power was, in fact, that society itself.
Download or read book A Durkheimian Quest written by William Watts Miller and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012-08-15 with total page 279 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Durkheim, in his very role as a "founding father" of a new social science has become like a figure in an old religious painting, enshrouded in myth and encrusted in layers of thick, impenetrable varnish. This book undertakes detailed, up-to-date investigations of Durkheim's work in an effort to restore its freshness and reveal it as originally created. These investigations explore his particular ideas, within an overall narrative of his initial problematic search for solidarity, how it became a quest for the sacred, and how, at the end of his life, he embarked on a project for a new great work on ethics. A theme running through this is his concern with a modern world in crisis and a hope in social and moral reform. Accordingly, the book concludes with a set of essays on modern times and on a crisis that Durkheim thought would pass but which now seems here to stay.
Download or read book mile Durkheim and the Birth of the Gods written by Alexandra Maryanski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-18 with total page 319 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Birth of the Gods is dedicated to Durkheim's effort to understand the basis of social integration. Unlike most social scientists, then and now, Durkheim concluded that humans are naturally more individualistic than collectivistic, that the primal social unit for humans is the macro-level unit ('the horde'), rather than the family, and that social cohesion is easily disrupted by human self-interest. Hence, for Durkheim, one of the "gravest" problems facing sociology is how to mold these human proclivities to serve the collective good. The analysis of elementary religions, Durkheim believed, would allow social scientists to see the fundamental basis of solidarity in human societies, built around collective representations, totems marking sacred forces, and emotion-arousing rituals directed at these totems. The first half of the book traces the key influences and events that led Durkheim to embrace such novel generalizations. The second part makes a significant contribution to sociological theory with an analysis that essentially "tests" Durkheim's core assumptions using cladistic analysis, social network tools and theory, and data on humans closest living relatives—the great apes. Maryanski marshals hard data from primatology, paleontology, archaeology, genetics, and neuroscience that enlightens and, surprisingly, confirms many of Durkheim’s speculations. These data show that integration among both humans and great apes is not so much group or kin oriented, per se, but orientation to a community standing outside each individual that includes a sense of self, but also encompassing a cognitive awareness of a "sense of community" or a connectedness that transcends sensory reality and concrete social relations. This "community complex," as Maryanski terms it, is what Durkheim was beginning to see, although he did not have the data to buttress his arguments as Maryanski is able to do.
Download or read book Suffering and Evil written by W. S. F. Pickering and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2012 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Until recently the subject of suffering and evil was neglected in the sociological world and was almost absent in Durkheimian studies as well. This book aims to fill the gap, with particular reference to the Durkheimian tradition, by exploring the different meanings that the concepts of evil and suffering have in Durkheim's works, together with the general role they play in his sociology. It also examines the meanings and roles of these concepts in relation to suffering and evil in the work of other authors within the group of the Année sociologique up until the beginning of World War II. Finally, the Durkheimian legacy in its wider aspects is assessed, with particular reference to the importance of the Durkheimian categories in understanding and conceptualizing contemporary forms of evil and suffering.
Download or read book Sacred Revolutions written by Michèle H. Richman and published by . This book was released on 2002 with total page 260 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: It seems improbable, but the most radical cultural iconoclasts of the interwar yearsOCoGeorges Bataille, Roger Caillois, and Michel LeirisOCoresponded to the rise of fascism by taking refuge in a sacred sociology. Mich le H. Richman examines this seemingly paradoxical development in this book which traces the overall implications for French social thought of the ethnographic detour that began with DurkheimOCOs interest in Australian aboriginal religionOCoimplications that reach back to the Revolution of 1789 and forward to the student protests of May 1968."
Download or read book Emile Durkheim written by Stephen Turner and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2003-09-02 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: International scholarship over the last twenty years has produced a new understanding of Emile Durkheim as a thinker. It has contributed to reassembling what, for Durkheim, was always a whole: a sociological selection on morals and moral activism. This volume presents an overview of Durkheim's thought and is representative of the best of contemporary Durkheim scholarship.
Download or read book Sacred Revolutions written by Michèle H. Richman and published by U of Minnesota Press. This book was released on 2002 with total page 272 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Durkheim Today written by W. S. F. Pickering and published by Berghahn Books. This book was released on 2002-10-01 with total page 160 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: There has been a growing interest in Durkheim, founding father of sociology, since the 1970s. This volume takes a look at the current stage of Durkheimian studies, pointing out paths scholars are now following as they examine the various themes of study that Durkheim opened up to the academic world. They clearly demonstrate the continuing importance of Durkheim's works and the benefits to be derived from re-reading them in the light of contemporary social developments.
Download or read book Durkheim Bernard and Epistemology written by Paul Q. Hirst and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2010-11-01 with total page 342 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This title, first published in 1975, contains two complimentary studies by Paul Q. Hirst: the first based on Claude Bernard’s theory of scientific knowledge, and the second concerning Emile Durkheim’s attempt to provide a philosophical foundation for a scientific sociology in The Rules of Sociological Method. The author’s primary concern is to answer the question: is Durkheim’s theory of knowledge logically consistent and philosophically viable? His principal conclusion is that the epistemology developed in the Rules is an impossible one and that its inherent contradictions are proof that sociology as it is commonly understood can never be a scientific discipline.
Download or read book The Cambridge Companion to Durkheim written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 2005-05-26 with total page 446 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Long recognised as a foundational figure in the development of social scientific thought, Emile Durkheim's work has been the subject of intense debate over the years. This authoritative and comprehensive collection of essays re-examines the impact of Durkheim's thought, considering the historical contexts of his work as well as evaluating his ideas in relation to current issues and controversies. Eminent authorities in the field have contributed to this up-to-date overview, giving the reader - both students and academics - a chance to engage directly with leading figures in the field about contemporary trends, ideas and dilemmas. This volume reflects the cross-disciplinary application of Durkheim's theories and will interest scholars of anthropology, political science, cultural studies and philosophy, as well as sociology. This is a landmark volume that redefines the relevance of Durkheim to the human sciences in the twenty-first century.
Download or read book Durkheimian Sociology written by Jeffrey C. Alexander and published by Cambridge University Press. This book was released on 1990-09-13 with total page 248 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The classic works of Emile Durkheim are characterized by a structural approach to the understanding of collective behaviour, and it is this element of his writings that has been most taken up by modern social science. This volume, however, rejects the dominant structural approach, and draws instead on Durkheim's later work, in which he shifted to a symbolic theory of modern industrial societies that emphasized the importance of ritual and placed the tension between the sacred and the profane at the center of society. In so doing, the contributors offer both a radically different approach to Durkheimian sociology and a new way of linking the interpretation of culture and the interpretation of society. In his introduction to the volume, Jeffrey Alexander elaborates the new interpretation of Durkheim that informs the contributions. His arguments form a background for the lively and provacative chapters that follow, which provide broadly cultural interpretations of such topics as popular upheavals and social movements, ranging from the French Revolution to the massive rebellions in Poland and Nicaragua in the 1980s; political crisis, from Watergate to the crisis of legitimation in contemporary capitalism; and the creative and contingent element in symbolic behaviour, including the symbolics of intimate friendship, and the ritual and rhetoric of media events. In addition to re-examining Durkheimian sociology, the essays also demolish the myth that attention to cultural values implies conservatism or the inability to analyze social change, and challenge the common antithesis between normative theory and microsociology. Its exploration of the links between Durkheimian sociology and the most important developments in contemporary sociology, history, anthropology and semiotics will ensure it a broad appeal across the social sciences.
