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...
... middle of paper ...
...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.
no references
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
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,
Emile Durkheim As An Idealist In "Elementary Forms Of The Religion Life" Durkheim's most important rationale in The Elementary Forms was to explain and clarify the generally primordial religious conviction identified by man. However, his focus as a consequence irk a number of outside connection for historians as his fundamental rationale went distinctly ahead of the modernization of an old culture for its own accord; quite the opposite, Durkheim's interest in The Division of Labor and Suicide, was eventually both contemporary as well as workable as he asserts that if prehistoric religion were taken as the topics of investigations, then it is for the reason that it apparently appears “to us better adapted than any other to lead to an understanding of the religious nature of man, that is to say, to show us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity”. Durkheim's doctrine studies that the society must abstain from reductionism and think about social phenomena- sui generis, disqualifying biologist or psychologist explanations; he focused concentration on the social-structural elements of mankind's social problems. Even though in his previous work Durkheim defined social facts by their constraint, massing his main part on the execution of the legal system, he was afterward moved to shift his views considerably. He then emphasized that those social facts and moral codes become potent guides and controls of behavior only to the extent that they become internalized in the cognizance of individuals, while persisting to subsist exclusively of individuals. This, compulsion is not a customary restraint of distant controls on individual will, but rather a moral commitment to conform to a rule. Durkheim attempted to study social facts not onl...
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.
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.
Much like the later structural functionalists that he would inspire, such as Radcliffe-Brown, Durkheim’s grounding in science led to a methodological strength. By focusing on understanding a single aspect of society, such as division of labor or suicide rates, Durkheim could focus on empirical data to create a testable hypothesis based on statistics. This makes it easy to refute and/or refine statements he made, but also made them easier to compare cross-culturally to see if variation exists.
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.
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.
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...
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
Parsons claims that religion is our primary source of meaning; it answers the eternal questions and help to understand things like suffering and pain. It also produces, sacralises and legitimises the core values of society e.g. Protestantism in the USA encouraged individualism, democracy and equality of opportunity. Bellah claims that there is a civil religion and gives the example of America and its faith in Americanism, he says that civil religion unites society. However the functionalist view can be criticised: It focuses on the positive aspects of religion and ignores that it is the cause of conflict in much of the world e.g. Northern Ireland and conflict between protestants and Catholics, It does not explain the origins of religion, explaining what functions religion performs does not help us to know where it came from. Durkheim did his studies I small scale non-literate societies, it is difficult to see how religion performs its functions in out large complex religiously plural society.
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
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
Durkheim claimed that these rituals helped to unite people together as collective worship was valued. The implication of this is that, it helps the community to understand the norms and values set within the religion and thus, creates social solidarity. This further leads to creating ‘social identity’ as they feel they belong to a society and are committed to these norms and values which Durkheim would term it as ‘social conscience’. This therefore means that these norms and values and moral attitudes set by the society function as a combining force within the society. An criticism of this theory is that, although Durkheim’s ideology may apply to a society which only consists of one religion, it is quite hard to apply it to a society which consists of many different religion as they do not all follow the same norms and values. What may be socially accepted in one religion may not be accepted in another which could create conflict. This also means that increase in diversity has led to destruction of collective conscience as there is no shared beliefs and values within one society which could be reinforced by
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.