CompleteMartialArts.com - The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (Oxford World's Classics)
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Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 306.6
EAN: 9780199540129
ISBN: 0199540128
Label: Oxford University Press, USA
Manufacturer: Oxford University Press, USA
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 416
Publication Date: 2008-06-15
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
Studio: Oxford University Press, USA
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Editorial Reviews:
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In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Emile Durkheim sets himself the task of discovering the enduring source of human social identity. He investigates what he considered to be the simplest form of documented religion - totemism among the Aborigines of Australia. For Durkheim, studying Aboriginal religion was a way 'to yield an understanding of the religious nature of man, by showing us an essential and permanent aspect of humanity'. The need and capacity of men and women to relate to one another socially lies at the heart of Durkheim's exploration, in which religion embodies the beliefs that shape our moral universe. The Elementary Forms has been applauded and debated by sociologists, anthropologists, ethnographers, philosophers, and theologians, and continues to speak to new generations about the intriguing origin and nature of religion and society. This new, lightly abridged edition provides an excellent introduction to Durkheim's ideas.
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Thought Provoking
Comment: This book is more than an explanation of the origins of religious belief; Durkheim was ultimately trying to show how religious thought lay the foundation for scientific thought, and how a priori knowledge was based on social norms rather than being "innate". I wouldn't say that Durkheim successfully proved all these notions, but there is enough good material in this book to furnish a reader with starting points for explorations in a number of different directions.
The most important concept in the book, from my perspective, is that of "collective consciousness", meaning the ideas, instincts, and general world-views that are formed by social cohesion. Social conventions are not external to people, they are internalized and appropriated emotionally, taking on the guise of "supernatural" or "divine" truth. Even outside of the religious sphere, one can begin to observe that much that is assumed as "truth" is a function of social convention. The process is organic, with individuals contributing to the process to create a greater whole--the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. It opens up the question of what it means to be an individual in society, how much individuality of thought is truly possible, how resistance to collective "groupthink" is possible, and how much of individual identity is shaped by collective forces.
Related to this are ethical questions: are good and evil just products of social convention? Is the idea that there is an absolute measure of good and evil just a result of a social group's elevation of its social norms to divine/sacred status (which is the usual process, according to Durkheim)?
The book also raises interesting questions about process of human symbol-making: how can people unite themselves around a seemingly arbitrary symbol (e.g. an animal totem like a snake), then take individual identity from that symbol, make the symbol sacred, and create an entire ritual and mythic world around that symbol?
And there are a number of implicit and explicit questions about human knowledge. Durkheim says that scientific knowledge is based on the "generalizing" process inherent in a social setting: each individual has specific, particular perceptions and visceral responses, but when they become generalized beyond the purely individual, in order to allow communication between members of the group, they become universal; hence the beginning of universal principles, the foundation of scientific thought. But this tends to beg the question of what there is in the individual that allows him/her to have perceptions at all, rather than formless sense impressions; and it also tends to mean that science is nothing more than an explication of the social norms which give rise to the general principles in question, since they're supposedly derived from social conventions for group communication. In other words, does science say anything about the outside world, or is it just describing in detail the social processes which created universal principles?
Anyway, the book is straightforward (moreso than this review of mine), well-reasoned, and logically structured. It's one of the more compelling books I've read in years, and I'm not even particularly interested in religious things. Highly recommended.
Customer Rating:
Summary: WARNING: THIS EDITION IS ABRIDGED
Comment: Durkheim's "Elementary Forms of the Religious Life" is one of the deepest books I've ever read, but I will leave others to speak of that.
I would like to complain about this particular edition, the "Oxford's World Classics" edition.
I have long been looking to replace my worn-out edition, and thought this offering (published 2001) would answer nicely. (Is it just me, or has this book been plagued with editions that have flimsy binding?)
Unfortunately, Amazon buries an important piece of information in its "Editorial Reviews" section: this edition is abridged.
Now, it's lightly abridged. The original, which I have a hand, is only slightly longer than what you're getting here.
Which is what puzzles me: why did they bother to abridge this at all? Printing the entire text would only have added about 30 pages to the thing. The lines they have disincluded seem, at least upon my examination, no more irrelevant or abstruse than what they've decided to include.
Puzzling.
There are some good things about this edition, though. There are explanatory footnotes at the end of the text: useful glosses, not those "textual comparison" kind. (The footnotes on the bottom of each page are Durkheim's own.) There is a 29-page introduction. There is also an ethnographic map of Australia. But the biggest plus for me is that the (paperback) binding is super-sturdy and promises to last through many reads.
This is the translation by Carol Cosman, done in 2001 specifically for this edition.
Customer Rating:
Summary: To understand religion
Comment: Like Emile Durkheim, I was raised with a religious upbringing that didn't fit - I wanted to understand why we create religions in the first place and this book has answers.
In the early 1900's Durkheim looked for religious patterns among tribal cultures of Australia and North America. He saw how religion was used to organize tribal society. He saw how religions combine and evolve when tribes merge, which reveals a lot about their purpose.
Durkheim describes religious components of Gods, Sacred/Profane Objects and Rituals:
-Gods provide an identity for the tribe and are chosen to represent significant concepts in tribal life.
-Sacred or profane objects are artifacts given special importance by the tribe. Religious leaders control access to them.
-Rituals reinforce social cohesion through group activity and they provide a stage to interact with sacred/profane objects.
These components are used in religious life to differentiate between people and their roles. It can be hard to read at times, since there is a lot of conjecture over the evidence presented but the practicality of religion and its role within society is an important case well introduced.
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Summary: a classic text.
Comment: A book of this kind needs no review; everybody intrerested in sociology of religion needs this text as one of the fundamental views of sociological reflection on the meaning of religion.
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Summary: Surprisingly Modern
Comment: I've read Suicide and Division of Labor and was interested in a historical sort of way. Elementary Forms is positively shocking. Pages 8-18 and 433-48 will change your life. In those 25 or so pages he outlines a sociology of knowledge that presages the works of Mead, Berger, and the phenomenologists. He's 50 years ahead of Merleau-Ponty's great Phenomenology of Perception which treads over much of the same material. The rest of EFRL is interesting as well but if you read nothing else of Durkheim's read those pages. They completely reinvigorated the stuffy "father of sociology" I had known.
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