Compare Durkheim's Views On Totemism And Mana

Durkheim defines religion as “a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things”. He says all societies

Emily Durkheim and Kai Erickson had similar views about regulating delinquency or maintaining delinquency to the desired condition, level, or frequency. Both of the sociologists were correct with their theories that the best we can hope to accomplish is to keep delinquency under control. Interestingly, Durkheim believed that crime is expected and that it is impossible to stop crime from occurring, so the people in society should come together and make attempts to manage it. In addition, Erickson strategically researched the crime rates in Massachusetts Bay Colony and speculated that the number of delinquent behaviors or delinquency will reflect a standard and acceptable rate that represents societal awareness of how much delinquency is

Mircea Eliade’s The Sacred and the Profane analyzes a wide variety of components that are found within various world religions. Eliade uses the history of religion to support his ideas as the the book itself is a brief introduction to religion as a whole, particulary the religions of primitive societies. Nonetheless, when looking to the past one can see that mankind’s desire to associate itself with the sacred has been occuring for thousands of years. From temples to passages of intiation, religious man is a unique microcosm that follows and repeats the structure of the religious macrocosm, the creation of the cosmos. One can conclude that Eliade views religion as the “paradigmatic solution for every existential crisis.” (p210) and

As I read Émile Durkheim’s classic piece, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, I experienced a whirlwind of thoughts, expressing agreement, disagreement, and complete puzzlement over the details of his logic and conclusions. As far as my essay goes, I will attempt to put these thoughts in a neat, coherent order like the one mentioned above.

Please describe the impact Marx, Durkheim, & Weber had on sociology as prominent contributors of the discipline.

Again, in EFRL, Durkheim shows religiosity from a sociological standpoint in which “individual consciousness” is combined with “common consciousness.” To look at it another way, individuals use signs and symbols to interpret and/or explain their feelings. If the group all uses the same signs and symbols, it then becomes the symbol or representation of the group’s sacredness. Even if the individual is no longer part of the collective society, he still holds the sacredness of the signs/symbols to the same high standard, and he does this by way of festivals, ceremonies, etc.

The rituals of a society must be analyzed as well to further understand the actions of the society and its people. Huxley writes about two religious ceremonies, one celebrated by the `civilized' society and the other by the `savage' society. The `civilized' people hold a Solidarity Service where twelve people get together and chant and shout out songs about topics such as the promiscuous idea of "orgy porgy" (84) and the idea that "I am you and you are I." (82) In order to continue ingraining the ideas of a stability and community as an adult, these services are held to continue conditioning the people. In this case, religion is used more as a tool than as a way to grow spiritually. For this society, we can understand that stability and community are very important to them and this ceremony shows this aspect.

Émile Durkheim and Mircea Eliade have dissimilar understandings of religion. Emile Durkheim did not have an interest in a belief system or the cognitive approach. He dismissed the study of how particular beliefs lead to certain practices and adopted a functionalist approach. He does not acknowledge the belief in God, rather focuses on what religion does within society. He believed that individuals encompassed a more pure form and focused on the essential structure of religion. His theory of totemism developed, which centers around the idea that the subject of religion is to bring people together, and to ultimately result in social cohesion. He metaphorically relates this to when people in a community rally around the totem. Furthermore, making the totem represent the sacred. Durkheim then understands that the totem will eventually develop into a spirit, and ultimately into a ‘God’ or spiritual form. Moreover, connecting a society on a metaphysical level. This concept does not center around a belief system, rather on social cohesion.

In the study of religion, one can quickly discern that there are two major differentiations between the anthropological definition of religion, and that of religion in the context of belief systems. Religion, in the context of anthropology, can often be related to social institutions. On the other hand, religion in the context of belief systems indicate faith in something or someone...such as oneself, a god, or object. As identified by scholar Clifford Geertz, the anthropological definition of religion is “a system of symbols which acts to (1) establish powerful, pervasive, and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by (2) formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and (3) clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality

All aboriginals are linked to the Dreamtime through their totemic creation ancestors, whose stories are passed on through generations. Just as they would care for their family or tribe, they are obliged to care for their ancestral spirits existing in their land. It is important to remember that ancestral spirits are not necessarily ‘Gods’, but instead they are natural features of the land. As the Ancestor Spirits travelled the land, they taught the Law. When Aboriginals say they have a spiritual connection to the land, this relationship exists through the Law developed at the period of formation that includes a system of totemism. A totemic being represents the original form of an animal, plant or other object as it was in the Creation Period. The Kumbumerri Yugambeh people’s totem is the Eagle. ‘What is meant by totemism in Aboriginal Australia is always a mystical connection, expressed by symbolic devices and maintained by rules, between living persons, whether as individuals or as groups or as stocks, and other existents—their ‘totems’ —within an ontology of life that in Aboriginal understanding depends for order and continuity on maintaining the identities and associations which exemplify the connection.’ (5.3) Totems not only create a sense of belonging and spiritual connectedness to the land and others in the tribe, but they also offer hints to the person's

“Treat social facts as things” is an expression that epitomises the works of Emile Durkheim. This essay focuses on four main sociological concepts proposed by the functionalist Emile Durkheim; the division of labour; mechanical and organic solidarity; anomie and suicide, and examines their relevance in contemporary society.

Conversely, according to (Turner 23-109), Durkheim points out that religion is part and parcel of the society and that each society has religion. Emile Durkheim’s purpose was to assess the connection between particular religions in various cultures, and finding a common cause. Basically, he wanted to comprehend the three major aspects of religion; that is the empirical together with the social and the spirituality components. His definition of religion is that; it is a joining arrangement of beliefs together with practices in relation to sacred things. According to him, it is religion that establishes the contemporary society as

He believed adamantly in the autonomy of religion.  When discussing religion eliade believed religion consisted of the profane and the sacred.  The profane consisted everyday business, things ordinary, random, and largely unimportant, whereas the sacred consisted of the supernatural, of things extraordinary, memorable, and momentous.  Although the terms of the profane and the sacred are familiar in the works of Durkheim there is a subtle difference in the way they both apply the terms to religion.  Durkheim considers the talk of the profane and sacred in the way it makes people aware of their social duties whereas eliade considers the talk of profane and sacred firmly entrenched in the supernatural.  Eliade based all his observations of religion on the archaic man.  He believes to truly understand and study religion we need to study the archaic man or people in today’s societies who live like the archaic man, those who hunted, fished, and lived off nature as their primary way of life.  Archaic man, as eliade suggests, looked to the sacred to provide the very framework within which they think, the values which they admire, an models or ‘archetypes’ they choose to follow whenever they act.  Eliade supposes that the archaic man chooses to live life in the model of the divine because they have a deep nostalgia for paradise, a longing to be brought close to the gods, a desire to return to the realm of the

He describes the totem emblem as a symbol both for a society and its sacredness. This is because, he states in his fundamental hypothesis, "god and society are one and the same," though not necessarily on a conscious level. For Durkheim, religion is what brings people together by reinforcing social relations and moral norms through a "collective effervescence" or group energy. This energy, when felt by the individual, is not recognized as the result of communal energies, but is attributed to the sacred.

In this essay I will be looking at the theories of Edward Burnett Tylor and Émile Durkheim, and comparing them to see which theory I think gives a better explanation about what religion is, or whether religion is actually definable. On the one hand we have Tylor’s theory that tells us that religion is belief in spiritual beings and that religion is just a step on the way to reaching full evolutionary potential. Durkheim’s theory, however, says that religion is very much a social aspect of life, and something can only be religious or “sacred” if it is something public (Durkheim 1965:52). Ultimately these theories do not give us an outright explanation about what ‘religion’ is, but there are aspects of the theory that can be used to gain an understanding or idea.