SA 322 Chapter Notes - Chapter 2: Potlatch, Mechanical And Organic Solidarity, General Order
25 May 2018
School
Department
Course
Professor
SA 322 – Week 2 Reading
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by: (Durkheim)
- Emile Durkheim was a Jewish sociologist
- Made three arguments
1) that religion is a natural expression of society, reflecting on its own transcendent
2) functionalist notion: religion provides a form of social cohesion, mechanical solidarity
- Infamous argument: all religions can be understood as true once it is seen that what
they represent is actually society
- Religion and economy are conceptual tools emerging from the social experience of
western societies (organic solidarity)
- Chiefs taking part in potlach were understood as incarnations of the gods and ancestors
(ethnographically and historically) (rumored)
- Religions are held to be unequal value and standing, it is commonly said that not all
contain the same measure of truth.
- Christianity stems from the same superstitions and rests on similar errors
- Some religions are superior to others, higher mental faculties into play, richer in ideas
and feelings, systematized.
- First system was man made the world, all religions have some time of cosmology and
speculation about how we came to earth.
- Religion was science and philosophy
- Religion has helped people form their intellect.
- Religion is eminently social thing, religious representations are collective
representations that express collective realities. Born in assembled groups, where they
purpose, maintain or re-create certain mental states of the groups.
- Time is abstract and impersonal framework, endless canvas on which all duration is
spread out efore the id’s eye.
- Organization is collective and taken from social life
- They way they divide weeks, months, years etc correspond to festivals and ceremonies
at regular intervals.
- Hamelin; space is not vague and indeterminate medium.
- All men of the same civilization conceive space in the same manner, their colors and
distinctions would also be similar. This means they are of social origin
- Societies in North America and Australia, also form immense circles, where they spatial
divide the circle in the same way as the tribal circle.
o Each place gets assigned a totem
- Each pueblo has its distinctive color, which symbolizes it and each region has its own
color, corresponding to the section.
- Mythologies deal with beings that have the most contradictory attributes → influenced
by social factors
- Religious phenomena falls into beliefs and rites.
o Beliefs; opinions and consist of representations; the second are particular modes
of action.
find more resources at oneclass.com
find more resources at oneclass.com
