Full Description
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.
Contents
Introduction 1 Spencer and Gillen in Durkheim: the theoretical construction of ethnography 2 Did Lucien Lèvy-Bruhl answer the objections made in Les Formes èlèmentaires? 3 Religion and science in The Elementary Forms 4 The concept of belief in The Elementary Forms 5 Durkheim, Kant, the immortal soul and God 6 The cult of images: reading chapter VII, book II, of The Elementary Forms. 7 Durkheim and sacred identity 8 Rescuing Durkheim's 'rites' from the symbolizing anthropologists 9 Durkheim's bourgeois theory of sacrifice 10 Memory and the sacred: the cult of anniversaries and commemorative rituals in the light of The Elementary Forms 11 Effervescence, differentiation and representation in The Elementary Forms 12 Effervescence and the origins of human society 13 Change, innovation, creation: Durkheim's ambivalence 14 Durkheim on the causes and functions of the categories 15 Durkheim and a priori truth: conformity as a philosophical problem
