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 mile Durkheim and the Birth of the Gods written by Alexandra Maryanski and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2018-06-13 with total page 368 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 Durkheim on Religion written by Emile Durkheim and published by James Clarke & Company. This book was released on 2011-01-27 with total page 373 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The famous French sociologist Emile Durkheim is universally recognised as one of the founding fathers of sociology as an academic discipline. He wrote on the division of labour, methodology, suicide and education, but his most prolific and influential works were his writings on religion, which culminated in his controversial book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. Although his influence continued long after his death in 1917, this is the first book to provide a detailed look at the whole of his work in the field of religion. Durkheim on Religion is a selection of readings from Durkheim's writings on religion, presented in order of original publication, ranging from early reviews to articles and extracts from his books. Also included are detailed bibliographies and abstracts together with contributions by such writers as Van Gennep, Goldenweiser and Stanner. This book will be invaluable to those studying sociology and anthropology, but will also be of interest to those studying the history or philosophy of religion, as well as to anyone with an interest in Durkheim.
Download or read book Big Gods written by Ara Norenzayan and published by Princeton University Press. This book was released on 2015-08-25 with total page 264 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Examines how the belief in gods has lead to cooperation and sometimes conflict between groups. The author also looks at how some cooperative societies have developed without belief in gods.
Download or read book The Division of Labor in Society written by Émile Durkheim and published by Digireads.com. This book was released on 2013 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: mile Durkheim is often referred to as the father of sociology. Along with Karl Marx and Max Weber he was a principal architect of modern social science and whose contribution helped established it as an academic discipline. "The Division of Labor in Society," published in 1893, was his first major contribution to the field and arguably one his most important. In this work Durkheim discusses the construction of social order in modern societies, which he argues arises out of two essential forms of solidarity, mechanical and organic. Durkheim further examines how this social order has changed over time from more primitive societies to advanced industrial ones. Unlike Marx, Durkheim does not argue that class conflict is inherent to the modern Capitalistic society. The division of labor is an essential component to the practice of the modern capitalistic system due to the increased economic efficiency that can arise out of specialization; however Durkheim acknowledges that increased specialization does not serve all interests equally well. This important and foundational work is a must read for all students of sociology and economic philosophy.
Download or read book The Sociology of Religion written by Malcolm B. Hamilton and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-06-12 with total page 256 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This expanded second edition combines a discussion of the main theorists with a wide range of material illustrating the diversity of religious beliefs and practices.
Download or read book Gods in the Global Village written by Lester R. Kurtz and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2015-04-01 with total page 417 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a world plagued by religious conflict, how can the various religious and secular traditions coexist peacefully on the planet? And, what role does sociology play in helping us understand the state of religious life in a globalizing world? In the Fourth Edition ofGods in the Global Village, author Lester Kurtz continues to address these questions. This text is an engaging, thought-provoking examination of the relationships among the major faith traditions that inform the thinking and ethical standards of most people in the emerging global social order. Thoroughly updated to reflect recent events, the book discusses the role of religion in our daily lives and global politics, and the ways in which religion is both an agent of, and barrier to, social change.
Download or read book Defining Magic written by Bernd-Christian Otto and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2014-09-11 with total page 296 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Magic has been an important term in Western history and continues to be an essential topic in the modern academic study of religion, anthropology, sociology, and cultural history. Defining Magic is the first volume to assemble key texts that aim at determining the nature of magic, establish its boundaries and key features, and explain its working. The reader brings together seminal writings from antiquity to today. The texts have been selected on the strength of their success in defining magic as a category, their impact on future scholarship, and their originality. The writings are divided into chronological sections and each essay is separately introduced for student readers. Together, these texts - from Philosophy, Theology, Religious Studies, and Anthropology - reveal the breadth of critical approaches and responses to defining what is magic. CONTRIBUTORS: Aquinas, Augustine, Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, Dennis Diderot, Emile Durkheim, Edward Evans-Pritchard, James Frazer, Susan Greenwood, Robin Horton, Edmund Leach, Gerardus van der Leeuw, Christopher Lehrich, Bronislaw Malinowski, Marcel Mauss, Agrippa von Nettesheim, Plato, Pliny, Plotin, Isidore of Sevilla, Jesper Sorensen, Kimberley Stratton, Randall Styers, Edward Tylor
Download or read book Emile Durkheim written by Emile Durkheim and published by . This book was released on 1972 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This is the only collection of Durkheim's writings to draw upon the whole body of his work. Many of the texts in the book are here translated for the first time. Dr. Giddens takes his selections from a wide variety of sources and includes a number of items from untranslated writings in the Revue Philosophique, Année Sociologique and from L'évolution pedagogue en France. Selections from previously translated writings have been checked against the originals and amended or re-translated where necessary. Dr. Giddens arranges his selections thematically rather than chronologically. However, extracts from all phases of Durkheim's intellectual career are represented, giving the date of their first publication, which makes the evolution of his thought easily traceable. In his introduction Dr. Giddens discusses phases in the interpretation of Durkheim's thought, as well as the main themes in his work, with an analysis of the effects of his thinking on modern sociology. The book is for students at any level taking courses in sociology, social anthropology and social theory, for whom Durkheim is one of the major writers studied.
Download or read book Living with the Gods written by Neil MacGregor and published by Penguin UK. This book was released on 2018-09-17 with total page 414 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the award-winning BBC Radio 4 series, a panoramic exploration of peoples, objects and beliefs from the celebrated author of A History of the World in 100 Objects and Germany 'Riveting, extraordinary ... tells the sweeping story of religious belief in all its inventive variety. The emphasis is not on our differences, but on shared spiritual yearnings' Rachel Campbell-Johnston, The Times, Books of the Year One of the central facts of human existence is that every society shares a set of beliefs and assumptions - a faith, an ideology, a religion - that goes far beyond the life of the individual. These beliefs are an essential part of a shared identity. They have a unique power to define - and to divide - us, and are a driving force in the politics of much of the world today. Throughout history they have most often been, in the widest sense, religious. Yet this book is not a history of religion, nor an argument in favour of faith. It is about the stories which give shape to our lives, and the different ways in which societies imagine their place in the world. Looking across history and around the globe, it interrogates objects, places and human activities to try to understand what shared beliefs can mean in the public life of a community or a nation, how they shape the relationship between the individual and the state, and how they help give us our sense of who we are. For in deciding how we live with our gods, we also decide how to live with each other. 'The new blockbuster by the museums maestro Neil MacGregor ... The man who chronicles world history through objects is back ... examining a new set of objects to explore the theme of faith in society' Sunday Times
Download or read book God written by Reza Aslan and published by Random House. This book was released on 2017-11-07 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • The author of Zealot explores humanity’s quest to make sense of the divine in this concise and fascinating history of our understanding of God. In Zealot, Reza Aslan replaced the staid, well-worn portrayal of Jesus of Nazareth with a startling new image of the man in all his contradictions. In his new book, Aslan takes on a subject even more immense: God, writ large. In layered prose and with thoughtful, accessible scholarship, Aslan narrates the history of religion as a remarkably cohesive attempt to understand the divine by giving it human traits and emotions. According to Aslan, this innate desire to humanize God is hardwired in our brains, making it a central feature of nearly every religious tradition. As Aslan writes, “Whether we are aware of it or not, and regardless of whether we’re believers or not, what the vast majority of us think about when we think about God is a divine version of ourselves.” But this projection is not without consequences. We bestow upon God not just all that is good in human nature—our compassion, our thirst for justice—but all that is bad in it: our greed, our bigotry, our penchant for violence. All these qualities inform our religions, cultures, and governments. More than just a history of our understanding of God, this book is an attempt to get to the root of this humanizing impulse in order to develop a more universal spirituality. Whether you believe in one God, many gods, or no god at all, God: A Human History will challenge the way you think about the divine and its role in our everyday lives. Praise for God “Timely, riveting, enlightening and necessary.”—HuffPost “Tantalizing . . . Driven by [Reza] Aslan’s grace and curiosity, God . . . helps us pan out from our troubled times, while asking us to consider a more expansive view of the divine in contemporary life.”—The Seattle Times “A fascinating exploration of the interaction of our humanity and God.”—Pittsburgh Post-Gazette “[Aslan’s] slim, yet ambitious book [is] the story of how humans have created God with a capital G, and it’s thoroughly mind-blowing.”—Los Angeles Review of Books “Aslan is a born storyteller, and there is much to enjoy in this intelligent survey.”—San Francisco Chronicle
Download or read book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written by Emile Durkheim and published by Createspace Independent Publishing Platform. This book was released on 2017-12-12 with total page 366 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
Download or read book Sociology Science and the End of Philosophy written by Sal Restivo and published by Springer. This book was released on 2017-07-06 with total page 377 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book offers a unique analysis of how ideas about science and technology in the public and scientific imaginations (in particular about maths, logic, the gene, the brain, god, and robots) perpetuate the false reality that values and politics are separate from scientific knowledge and its applications. These ideas are reinforced by cultural myths about free will and individualism. Restivo makes a compelling case for a synchronistic approach in the study of these notoriously 'hard' cases, arguing that their significance reaches far beyond the realms of science and technology, and that their sociological and political ramifications are of paramount importance in our global society. This innovative work deals with perennial problems in the social sciences, philosophy, and the history of science and religion, and will be of special interest to professionals in these fields, as well as scholars of science and technology studies.
Download or read book Sociological Theory in the Classical Era written by Laura Desfor Edles and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2020-06-18 with total page 464 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now available for the first time in both print and e-book formats Sociological Theory in the Classical Era, Fourth Edition is an innovative text/reader for courses in classical theory. It introduces students to important original works by sociology′s key classical theorists while providing a thorough framework for understanding these challenging readings. For each theorist, the editors supply a biographical sketch, discuss intellectual influences and core ideas, and offer contemporary applications of those ideas. In addition to the seven major theorists covered, the book also connects their work to "Significant Others"—writers and thinkers who may have derived much of their own perspectives from Marx, Durkheim, Weber, Gilman, Simmel, Du Bois, and Mead. Included with this title: The password-protected Instructor Resource Site (formally known as SAGE Edge) offers access to all text-specific resources, including a test bank and editable, chapter-specific PowerPoint® slides. Learn more.
Download or read book Sacrifice written by Henri Hubert and published by University of Chicago Press. This book was released on 1981-12-15 with total page 175 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Marcel Mauss was the nephew and most distinguished pupil of mile Durkheim, whose review L'Ann e sociologique he helped to found and edit. Henri Hubert was another member of the group of sociologists who developed under the influence of Durkheim. The present book is one of the best-known essays pulbished in L'Ann e sociologique and has been regarded as a model for method and mode of interpretation. Its subject is at the very center of the comparative study of religion. The authors describe a basic sacrifice drawn from Indian sources and show what is fundamental and constant, comparing Indian and Hebrew practices in particular, then Greek and Roman, then additional practices from many eras and cultures.
Download or read book The Sociology of Religion written by George Lundskow and published by SAGE Publications. This book was released on 2008-06-10 with total page 465 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Using a lively narrative, The Sociology of Religion is an insightful text that investigates the facts of religion in all its great diversity, including its practices and beliefs, and then analyzes actual examples of religious developments using relevant conceptual frameworks. As a result, students actively engage in the discovery, learning, and analytical processes as they progress through the text. Organized around essential topics and real-life issues, this unique text examines religion both as an object of sociological analysis as well as a device for seeking personal meaning in life. The book provides sociological perspectives on religion while introducing students to relevant research from interdisciplinary scholarship. Sidebar features and photographs of religious figures bring the text to life for readers. Key Features Uses substantive and truly contemporary real-life religious issues of current interest to engage the reader in a way few other texts do Combines theory with empirical examples drawn from the United States and around the world, emphasizing a critical and analytical perspective that encourages better understanding of the material presented Features discussions of emergent religions, consumerism, and the link between religion, sports, and other forms of popular culture Draws upon interdisciplinary literature, helping students appreciate the contributions of other disciplines while primarily developing an understanding of the sociology of religion Accompanied by High-Quality Ancillaries! Instructor Resources on CD contain chapter outlines, summaries, multiple-choice questions, essay questions, and short answer questions as well as illustrations from the book. C Intended Audience This core text is designed for upper-level undergraduate students of Sociology of Religion or Religion and Politics.
Download or read book The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life written by Emile Durkheim and published by Literary Licensing, LLC. This book was released on 2014-03-30 with total page 470 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This Is A New Release Of The Original 1915 Edition.
