SOC250Y1 Lecture Notes - Lecture 6: Anomie, Gerda Lerner, Collective Effervescence
Document Summary
Emile durkheim: founder of modern sociology, concern with the moral order. Deeply anxious over the pathologies of modern societies. Crime and deviance, political strife, normlessness or anomie . Felt were rooted in the insufficient integration of the individual into the collective: sociology of religion. Durkheim emphasizes the functional role of religion in providing normative integration, a moral binding, a basis for social solidarity: but the gods are growing old or already dead and secularism is on the rise. The elementary forms of religious life (1916: religion is an interdependent system of beliefs and practices regarding things which are sacred . Profane distinction is the basis for religion. The sacred is that which is hallowed, set apart, extraordinary: the profane is the world of the everyday. Where does it come from: method: to study the earliest or most elementary forms of religion known for these contain the foundations for later, more developed religions.
