When1: 1893
When2: 1917
Who: Émile Durkheim [Durkheim, Émile]
What: sociologist
Where: Paris, France
works\ Division of Labor in Society [1893]; Rules of Sociological Method [1895]; Suicide: a Study in Sociology [1897]; Primitive Classification [1903]; Elementary Forms of Religious Life [1912]; Professional Ethics and Civic Morals [1917]
Detail: He lived 1858 to 1917.
Suicide happens in individuals dissociated from their groups {anomie, Durkheim}, who lose social rules or have social-rule conflicts. Social cohesion minimizes suicide risk {social cohesion theory}, but communities do not always have values and beliefs adequate to current social problems.
Societies have behavior norms. Social institutions and relations, such as language, law, customs, values, traditions, inventions, family, religion, and work, shape individual behavior and beliefs.
Religion and morals are main society parts, and all change together.
Religion is about the sacred, not magic, supernatural, or spirits. Community shares the sacred. Taboos separate sacred from profane, by special places and days.
However, primitive peoples do separate natural and supernatural, and some do not have sacred things.
Totem is sacred, has totem symbol, and represents clan. Clans have larger groups {phratry, Durkheim}, and their totems have groups. All things in life have categories, and categories have totems, so all things link to form unity. Totemism is thus the first religion.
People feel power in totem {totemic principle}. The power is mana in Melanesia, manitou in North America, orenda, or wakan. The power is not spirit or person. Soul is part of totemic principle and is conscience. Sacrifices are to share in power.
Social events and ceremonies concentrate on totem but actually unify clan in shared excitement and joy. Rituals reinforce idea of community. Rituals can be about death {piacular ritual} and allow society to heal.
Ancestor worship is about past souls and clans and leads to the idea of gods, which are for and about tribes, not clans. Tribes often have supreme god.
Societies have principles not derivable from biology or psychology. Society is a collective of norms and is more than sum of individual effects.
Social Sciences>Sociology>History>Sociological Theory
6-Sociology-History-Sociological Theory
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Date Modified: 2022.0224