Émile Durkheim (1858–1917) - religion: society’s mirror [or ‘why would anyone worship a cock?’] L.O: to examine the origin of Sociological engagement with the study of religion

Taking his cue from Comte, Durkheim was not satisfied with previous theories of religion because they focused attention only on individuals, paid no attention to the social factors of religion, and failed to account for religious behaviour. He addressed this concern in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (based on ethnographic material about aboriginal tribes in Australia ). He noted that in religious situations, people acted in specific ways with regard to their community and ritual objects. Previous definitions of religion as the belief in supernatural powers, or the belief in detached spirits (animism) did not adequately explain the observed behaviour.

TOTEMISM (I) Many of the objects of totemic religions, such as cockatoos or certain plants, were not frightening or even hunted as game. This contradicted the theory that the first impulse for religious reflection was the human encounter with the ‘terrors of nature’. That type of theory presented religion as ‘bad science’ that gave false knowledge and could not account for the power and durability of religion. Durkheim noted that religious behaviour was first of all a social behaviour and so must have a social (not ‘spiritual’) basis.

Sacred Vs Profane He identified the basis of religion as a way of looking at reality that dichotomized it into the sacred and the profane. The “sacred” was a quality found in things that represented the values and motivations of society in toto. The “profane” elicited behaviours that were directed at purely private ends, with no reference to the values and needs of society. The two constituted a radical dichotomy: if something was sacred, then it was not profane, and vice versa.

TOTEMISM (II) Durkheim’s procedure was to find out how “the sacred” operated in the simplest form of religion known in his day: totemism. Totemism referred to both a form of religion and a form of social organization. Within large tribes, one found smaller subdivisions. Each tribe had its own totem animal or plant that gave the tribe its identity and served as an idol. Individuals were known by their clan (e.g., the cockatoo clan members were ‘cockatoos’). The clan totem formed the focal point of worship.

TOTEMISM (III) Totem plants and animals lacked majesty or utility, yet they were treated as sacred. Fieldworkers noted that totems, with their own unique taboos, demanded respect and avoidance in specific ways and served as focal points in religious rituals. Durkheim sought to explain that this quality of the sacred could not be found in any particular thing in the world. If a cockatoo was sacred to the cockatoo clan, no individual cockatoo contained this quality. No depiction of a cockatoo was sacred in and of itself, it only became sacred in rituals – which were social. Durkheim described the sacredness of things in specific situations as the “totemic principle”

This analysis led Durkheim to search elsewhere for the source of the totemic principle and its sacred power. He came to identify the totemic principle with society itself – i.e. ‘a thing’ became sacred when the social group came together and ‘that thing’ represented them. He saw the totem as a symbol of society itself, serving as a unifying symbol by which the clan could think of and worship itself. Even the soul was nothing more than the sum of social identity and values injected into the individual (this idea is comparable to Freud’s idea of the superego). Relatedly, Feuerbach (1804-72) had argued that God is a projection of a society’s notion of ‘ideal humanity’.

SUMMARY: Durkheim saw society as an actor in its own right, producing effects that could not be explained solely in reference to individuals. He claimed that society is the primary actor in human life, and much of what individuals do and believe is derived from the life of society as a whole (note: this is the roots of structuralism). Using materials describing life among Australian tribal cultures, he believed he found the most basic form of religion: the worship of totems during tribal gatherings. He believed that the totem was a symbol for society itself, and the means by which society envisioned itself and imposed its exigencies on its individual members.