Emilie Durkheim, a renowned French sociologist, aimed to identify the complex duality between religion and society in his novel The Elementary Forms of a Religious Life. Durkheim believed that religion encompasses a duality because it is composed of self and society, which allows humans through socialization to find a communal spirit. His study of a primitive and simpler form of religion found that all religions do in fact share basic primitive commonalities. These commonalities he believes to be separated into distinct groups such as the profane and the sacred, demonstrated by symbols and rituals. This discovery was made by the comparison of primitive religious societies such as the Aborigines to modern and more complex religious groups, concluding that all religions use a classification system.
Society defines religion because humans not gods classify the profane and sacred. Symbols represent the human consciousness, allowing society to define their own beliefs. These symbols help create order and are socially constructed so that society is able to develop order and meaning through nature. Nature is important because it is the basis for society, which explains why nature also shapes society’s symbols. Durkheim explains the relationship between nature, society, and religion as a sort of a tug of war. He asserts that if humans pushed against the basic laws of nature that it simply would not work and nature would push back. This means that societies must form their beliefs, symbols, and even religious rites around what is already established in the natural world.
Religious rites come from the profane and sacred, which are important to society and religion, because they help determine the actions of t...
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...d religion he almost asserts that religion is not real. Durkheim also does not acknowledge the potential instinctual behavior that humans have without society or religion and that are not learned behaviors. Babies are born with certain innate survival behaviors that are not taught such as facial expressions that express happiness and sadness. Finally, my real issue with Durkheim’s argument is that he seems to believe that all people are rational. But, is this rational mind really universal? Or is the rational mind learned? I believe that all individuals are not rational, and it is not universal so that all individuals are not able to classify like Durkheim believes. Durkheim provides a strong argument for the complex bond between society and religion but maybe the individual and the immaterial world plays a larger role than Durkheim observes.
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Durkheim Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917), believed individuals are determined by the society they live in because they share a moral reality that we have been socialised to internalise through social facts. Social facts according to Drukhiem are the “manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him [or her].” Social facts are external to the individual, they bind societies together because they have an emotional and moral hold on people, and are why we feel shame or guilt when we break societal convention. Durkheim was concerned with maintaining the cohesion of social structures. He was a functionalist, he believed each aspect of society contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole.
... type, for the reason that this is what actual reasoning is. In the end, Durkheim's sociology of wisdom seems at risk to as a minimum as many experiential doubts as his sociology of religion. This may be further elucidated by the following words: “Yet if there is one truth that history has incontrovertibly settled, it is that religion extends over an ever-diminishing area of social life. Originally, it extended to everything; everything social was religious-- the two words were synonymous. ... This [weakening of religion] did not begin at any precise moment in history, but one can follow the phases of its development from the very origins of social evolution…. [Meaning] that the average intensity of the common consciousness is itself weakening" Reference "Elementary Forms of the Religion Life” by Emile Durkheim in High Points in Anthropology Second Edition, page 254
the deities and attempt to explain the psychological necessity of these rituals. An examination will be made of the typical forms of rituals, and cite their effects,
It is common knowledge that in the past religion and myths were just ways for societies to explain events and occurrences that citizens of ancient societies did not have enough advanced knowledge to understand. It was also used as a way to oppress others, as seen in the explanation of class order and royalty as God placing a person where they were meant to be and that there was nothing one could do about it, because who can go against God himself? Religion played an even bigger part than that though, being a large part of every person’s identity and something for a country and its people to unit over. But as society slowly aged, and governments were reorganized and re-structured, one can see a reduction in religion being a part of someone’s identity. It is hard to imagine being without an identity so it came as no surprise when, as the void left by religion was opened, people began to create an identity that had to do with different ideas and ideologies. More specifically, new political movements, ideas of nationalism, and change of social norms brought on by many writers and theorists such as Karl Marx, John Mill, and many others. The spread of such ideas was also helped by the spread of public education and rising literacy rates in western society.
Ordinary religion shows people how to live well within boundaries, and concern themselves with living well in this current world, not in another. Ordinary religion promotes cultures, traditions, values, and common social acts. In contrast, extraordinary religion helps people to transcend beyond their ordinary culture and concerns, crosses the borders of life as we used to know it and seeks to new better place. It is also believed that people have chance to contact God through spiritual ceremonies and get helped by supernatural power. For instance, ceremonies and rituals of baptism and circumcision for infants, and conformations for adolescents, marriage, and funerals for the dead. Through these spiritual ceremonies, people are crossing the physical boundaries and reaching something supernatural that they believe will give them power to encounter challenges and difficulties during stages of life. There are three elements in religious belief developing most religions in America, which are fundamental, ritual, and tradition. The first element is the fundamental structures which are defined with a myth, philosophy, or theology and limited by the boundaries that create the basic ways in which people, cultures and communities imagine, define, and accept how things are and what they mean. A second essential element of religion is ritual. Rituals are a representative set of
Durkheim was concerned with studying and observing the ways in which society functioned. His work began with the idea of the collective conscious, which are the general emotions and opinions that are shared by a society and which shape likeminded ideas as to how the society will operate (Desfor Edles and Appelrouth 2010:100-01). Durkheim thus suggested that the collective ideas shared by a community are what keeps injustices from continuing or what allows them to remain.
Some flaws exist in Durkheim’s thought. One minor flaw is that Durkheim failed to collect his own data, using outside sources collected by others. Furthermore, Durkheim has been criticized for his failure to take individual into account properly. This can be seen in a flaw in his legendary sociological work, Suicide. Many have criticized Durkheim for trying to explain micro events using macro statistics; however, Van Poppel and Day (1996) state that this isn’t a fallacy, but rather an empirical mistake as how suicides were described by Protestants and Catholics were described differently, which Durkheim failed to account
Religion is a symbolic representation of society. The sociological approach to religious belief looks at how society behaves on a whole, to answer the question, “Why are people religious?” We express our participation in religious events through plays, acts of confession, religious dances, etc. To begin to understand why we have such term, let’s understand the common elements of religion. There are different types in which people believe in or follow and that is: animatism, animism, ancestral spirits, god and goddesses, and minor supernatural beings. Beyond these different elements, such one is to have religious leaders to follow.
The Society Religion as a Social Glue The view in the title is a functionalist’s view. Durkheim claims that religion is to do with the sacred and certain things, people and places are perceived to be sacred for example Jesus Christ, totem and the Tajmahal. He claims that what people perceive to be sacred are actually symbols of a collective consciousness. By worshipping these sacred things etc. they are actually reinforcing the beliefs, values, norms and tradition which make social life possible.
Religion is an ever-growing idea that has no set date of origin. Throughout history religion has served as an answer to the questions that man could not resolve. The word religion is derived from the Latin word “religio” meaning restraint in collaboration with the Greek word “relegere” which means to repeat or to read again. Religion is currently defined as an organized system of beliefs and practices revolving around, or leading to, a transcendent spiritual experience. Throughout time, there has yet to be a culture that lacks a religion of some form, whether it is a branch of paganism, a mythological based religion or mono/polytheistic religion. Many religions have been forgotten due to the fact that they were ethnic religions and globalizing religions were fighting to be recognized, annihilating these ancient and ethnic religions. Some of these faiths include: Finnish Paganism, Atenism, Minoan Religion, Mithraism, Manichaeism, Vedism, Zoroastrianism, Asatru, and the Olmec Religion. Religion is an imperative part of our contemporary world but mod...
The sociology of religion is easiest to define by understanding the core of sociology. According to Ronald Johnstone in Religion and Society, the goal of sociology is to “[understand] the dynamics of group life” and “[understand] the influence of groups on individual and collective behavior” (Johnstone 2). This goal is sought under the assumption that “people become human only in groups” (Johnstone 4). Thus, the sociology of religion is the study of religion from the perspective of humans as communicative and influenceable beings, both on an individual level and more importantly, as religious groups. This means that the sociology of religion is less about specific religious belief systems and more about the implications and influence of religious
Religion is an organized collection of beliefs and cultural systems that entail the worship of a supernatural and metaphysical being. “Religion just like other belief systems, when held onto so much, can stop one from making significant progress in life”. Together with religion come traditions that provide the people with ways to tackle life’s complexities. A subscription to the school of thought of great scholars
Durkheim is a key figure in understanding religion from a functionalist perspective. He believes that social order and stability can only exist if people are integrated into society by value consensus. Religion is seen as an important institution for achieving these functions as it sets a moral code for
Sociologist have highlight various ways society and religion are interconnected, First I discuss Karl Marx’s idea that “religion provides comfort quells dissatisfaction” (Mirola, Emerson & Monahan, 2011 page 5) believed that religion support individual and take people out of oppressive conditions. In other words, religions justify the fact that inequalities, and discrimination, are all something that is not good and we as people should not allow it to come in between us. Religions helps to protect the people from laws that work against people, and it justify the power and rules that against the oppression of the vulnerable people. It also comfort and console those who are in pain and suffering.
Functionalists would argue that religion contributes to social stability. Functionalism is a consensus theory which argues that the structures, systems and institution all serve to maintain vigorous cohesion in society. Durkheim claimed that religion is a way of worshiping the society. He said that religion creates social cohesion through shared beliefs, norms and values which therefore creates social solidarity. According to Durkheim, the society is divided into two, the sacred and profane. Things which are ordinary and normal that exists in our day to day life would be considered as being ‘profane’ according to Durkheim, and anything that inspires awe is considered to be ‘sacred’. Durkheim studied Aboriginal Australian and found out that