The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

The crux of Durkheim’s theorization of religion lies in his metaphysical breakthrough in identifying social reality as the ground of all religions, shattering the presumed dichotomies of the material vs. the imaginary and the body vs. the mind. Releasing studies of religion from the confine of pure ideas and the imaginations, Durkheim (echoing Marxist theory of practice and nodding to Kant's synthesis of Rationalism and Empiricism: "Concepts without percepts are empty; percepts without concepts are blind") brought us onto a new path of understanding religion by investigating how ideas connect to practices, how rites and rituals give rise to symbols, and how symbols structure human behaviors. Admittedly, Durkheim didn’t have the final words on the questions he raised one century ago. And yet, no scholars of religion after Durkheim can evade these questions. This is why Durkheim still matters today.To understand the formation and disintegration of social reality and the idealized social reality, Durkheim drew our attention to rites and rituals through his readings of totemism, concluding that social forces behind rites and rituals (in other words purposefully organized collective actions) engender the sacred and its symbolism in a society. Again, Durkheim, though hopeless wrong about many of the details, correctly identified crucial questions in understanding religion: the performative aspect of ritual (in the sense that rituals generate meaning instead of merely communicating information), the affective power of religious techniques, and the emotional labor inherent in religious practices. Today we continue to ask these questions with contemporary twists such as the role of media in forging religiosity, the cultural capital of religious symbols, and so on.Indeed, Durkheim’s theorization of religion is like Dürer's Rhinoceros: many of the details are dead wrong (seen from the vantage point of the present); and yet, no one can deny the brilliance shone through—thanks to Durkheim’s armchair anthropology (or thought experiments), social reality has become the “natural” category of analysis and one of the most powerful tools in investigating questions related to religions and religiosities.

This is a most read book to anyone interested in understanding the social roots of religion. Durkheim's definition of religion is not philosophical, but constructed through the massive ethnological and anthropological evidence of the most elemental forms of religious life found among Australia's indigenous tribes. I had struggle with the definition and the origin of religion for many years, until I read this wonderful book. Regardless of Durkheims' claims about the role of religion in society, which may be functional inside a group but dis-functional with respect to a larger globalized community, his theory for understanding the religious fact from a scientific perspective has more explanatory power than any other I have read.

Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life is a seminal work by a sociologist of genius, who was one of the first men to attempt a naturalistic account of religion, the essence of which he locates in tribal ritual with respect to objects deemed sacred. The totemic religion of Australian aborigines, which Durkheim's book describes in detail, provides his test case. Since there is a better explanation of the function of religion--viz., it promotes social cohesion for common ends--I cannot endorse Durkheim's conviction that even the fantastic myths of primitive religion must be true; but he was surely correct in presuming that so universal a form of social life must have some adaptive benefit.

An original (written in 1912) and exceptionally well thought out sociological concept on the origin of religious practices. It fits in well with current research into the origins of religion with respect to mind-body duality, evolution, symbolic thinking, and neurophysiology. I would have given it 5 stars except I think the 1995 translation by Karen Fields enhances the readability. Highly recommended.

Thought provoking sociological analysis of the source of the religious experience. In Durkheim's view all religions share the experience of religiosity, and he examines the simplest expression of it that he can find: that of the Australian Aborigines. The text, written in 1920 is archaic and the literal translation from French makes for awkward and often misleading reading.

The typography is not good! It’s like an 8 point font that fills the entire page and the book is pretty large.

this book has no publisher (thus uncitable); it has no notes; it has no refs to original page numbers. It is a rip off, total piece of crap, reprint without any of the necessary info needed for scholarship. This kind of product has become a hazard in the business with more "publishers" scanning public domain material and repackaging them in the cheapest way possible. Utterly useless. We need to have a law against this kind of scam.

Durkheim- classic. Thought provoking. Ground breaking for its time.

It may be worth buying a more expensive version of this excellent book. I can read this CreateSpace version okay , but miniscule print does demand dividing attention between the reading and the understanding. Tip: Use a generous sized bookmark under the line you are reading.

I am studying Anthropology A level and I was introduced to Durkheim when we studied cosmologies. I got this book to get more insight to his thinkings on Totemism and it was very interesting. The read is slightly challenging as it was written some time ago and you may have to skim read or skip some sections to get to relavent topics to your interest, otherwise the sections of interest to me were great.

Brilliant, classic text and unlike many similar texts, very readable. Unfortunately this version has no publication details so is useless for any academic purposes

A good read

This edition of Durkheim's book is a disrespectful reprint without notes, without a table of contents and printed in a font size which makes it unreadable. It was printed by "Amazon Distribution GmbH."