Émile Durkheim
April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917
Life and Influences
• Born April 15, 1858 in France.
• Father, Grandfather, and Great-Grandfather
were all rabbis.
• He believed religion could be explained from
social rather than divine factors.
• Entered the École Normale Supérieure in
1879.
• Read and studied with classicists with a
social scientific outlook while in school.
• The French academic system had no social
science curriculum at the time, and he
finished second to last in this graduating class
in 1882.
• Spent a year studying sociology in Germany.
Life and Influences
• 1887 - went to Bordeaux to
teach pedagogy and social science to new teachers.
• Through his new position, he reformed the French
school system and introduced social science into its
curriculum.
• 1893 - published The Division of Labor in Society.
• 1895 - published Rules of the Sociological Method, and
founded the European Department of Sociologique at
the University of Bordeaux.
• 1896 - founded the journal L'Année Sociologique, the
first journal of sociology in France.
Life and Influences
• 1897 - published Suicide
• 1902 - awarded a prominent position in
Paris as the chair of education at the
Sorbonne.
• 1912 - published Elementary Forms of
the Religious Life. His position became
permanent and he renamed it the chair
of education and sociology.
• His son died in World War I, and he
never recovered emotionally.
• Suffered a stroke in Paris in 1917,
briefly recovered and resumed work
but later that year, on November 15, he
died at age 59 from exhaustion.
Contributions and Theories
• He sought to construct one of the first scientific
approaches to social phenomena.
• Said that traditional societies were held
together by the fact that everyone was more or
less the same.
• Along with Herbert Spencer, he was one of the
first to conceptualize the idea of social
functionalism:
– Functionalism views society as a system of
interdependent parts whose functions contribute
to the stability and survival of the system as a
whole.
• Thought that society was more than the sum of
its parts, and coined the term social facts:
– Social Facts have an existence all their own,
and are not bound to the action of individuals.
Contributions and Theories
•
Durkheim’s Anomie:
– Anomie is the breakdown of social norms regulating behavior.
– Durkheim and other sociological theorists coined the term anomie as
‘a reaction against, or retreat from, the social controls of society.’
– All deviant behavior stems from a state of anomie, including suicide.
•
Durkheim on Crime:
– Crime serves a social function, meaning that it has a purpose in society.
– He saw crime as being able to release certain social tensions and so have
a cleansing or purging effect in society.
– His views on crime were unconventional at the time.
Contributions and Theories
Durkheim on Education:
Believed that education served many functions:
 To reinforce social solidarity
Pledging allegiance: makes individuals feel part of a group and therefore
less likely to break rules.
 To maintain social roles
School is a society in miniature: it has a similar hierarchy, rules, expectations to
the “outside world,” and trains people to fulfill roles.
 To maintain division of labor
School sorts students into skill groups, encouraging students to take up
employment in fields best suited to their abilities.
He was professionally employed to
train teachers, so he used his ability to
shape France’s curriculum to spread
the instruction of sociology.
1893
1893
The Division of Labor
•
In The Division of Labor in Society Durkheim examined how social order was
maintained in different types of societies.
•
Traditional societies were held together by the fact that everyone was mostly
similar to one another. The collective consciousness is highly isomorphic with
individual consciousness.
•
In modern societies, the highly complex division of labor resulted in people with
different occupational specializations. This created dependencies that tied people to
one another since no one person could fill all of his/her needs by themselves.
•
Increasing division of labor leads
to rapid change in a society. This
can produce a state of confusion
regarding norms and a growing
impersonality in social life. This,
in turn, may lead to a breakdown
in the norms regulating behavior
and a sense of anomie.
THE EMERGENCE OF ORGANIC SOLIDARITY
….and the changing character of the COLLECTIVE CONSCIENCE
TYPES OF SOCIETIES
GEMEINSCHAFT
GESELLSCHAFT
•Small
•Large
•Isolated
•Interconnected
•Rural
•Urban
•Agrarian
•Industrial
•Homogeneous
•Heterogeneous
•Religious
•Secular
•Self-Sufficient
•Interdependent
•Stable
•Mobile
•Changing
•Static
MECHANICAL SOLIDARITY
ORGANIC SOLIDARITY
Holistic
Segmented
Similarity predominant
Differentiation predominant
Individuals related to Collective
Individuals related to Collective
Conscience w/o intermediary
Conscience thru intermediary
Joined by common beliefs and sentiments
Joined thru relationships among
(moralistic)
different functions (utilitarian)
Collective ideas and behaviors stronger Individual ideas and behaviors stronger
than individual
than collective
Social horizon limited
Social horizon unlimited
Strong attachment to family
and tradition
Repressive law; ritual punishment to
uphold moral values
Weak attachment to family
and tradition
Restitutive law; rehabilitative restorative
action to restore status quo
SOCIETY = RELIGION
MECHANICAL
SOLIDARITY
(NORMATIVE ORDER)
UNCONTRACTED
CONTRACT
SOCIAL
FACTS
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
SOCIAL
FACTS
UNCONTRACTED
CONTRACT
NOMOS
MECHANICAL
SOLIDARITY
(NORMATIVE ORDER)
NOMOS
RELIGION = SOCIETY
SOCIAL COOPERATION
SOCIAL/CULTURAL PRACTICES
(COMMON SENSE)
(MORES)
NORMS
CONTRACTS
LAW
MORALITY
[THE UNCONTRACTED CONTRACT]
Human Dualism
“There are in each of us…two consciences:
one which is common to our group in its entirety…the other, on the
contrary, represents that in us which is personal and distinct, that which
makes us an individual”
- Division of Labor in Society (1893)
“Because society surpasses us, it obliges us to surpass ourselves, and to
surpass itself, a being must, to some degree, depart from its nature—a
departure that does not take place without causing more or less painful
tensions.”
- Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1914).
Human Dualism
“It is not without reason, therefore, that man feels himself to be
double: he actually is double….In brief, this duality corresponds to
the double existence that we lead concurrently; the one purely
individual and rooted in our organisms, the other social and nothing
but an extension of society.” - Elementary Forms of Religious Life
(1914)
Our purely individual side seeks satisfaction of all wants and desires.
It knows no boundaries. Without being constrained by the collective
conscience, this side of human beings may lead to the condition that
Durkheim labels as “anomie.”
1895
Social Facts
According to Durkheim, social facts are the subject matter of
sociology. Social facts are “sui generis” (meaning of its own kind;
unique) and must be studied as distinct from biological and
psychological phenomenon.
Social facts can be defined as patterns of behavior that are capable of
exercising some coercive power upon individuals.
They are guides and controls of conduct and are external to the
individual in the form of norms, mores, and folkways.
Social Facts
“A social fact is identifiable through the power of external coercion
which it exerts or is capable of exerting upon individuals”
- Rules of Sociological Method (1895)
Through socialization and education these rules become internalized
in the consciousness of the individual. These constraints and guides
become moral obligations to obey social rules.
TWO ESSENTIAL FEATURES OF A SOCIAL FACT:
• EXISTS ONLY AT THE SOCIETAL LEVEL
(characteristic of the group, not the individual)
• EXPLICABLE ONLY BY ANOTHER SOCIAL FACT
(can be accounted for only at the same level)
CHARACTERISTICS OF A SOCIAL FACT:
• EXTERIORITY
• CONSTRAINING
• HISTORICAL (WEIGHTY)
• OBJECTIVE (OBJECTIVATED)
• MORAL/VALUE-LADEN
CHARACTERISTICS
of SOCIAL FACTS
(Material and Non-Material)
EMILE DURKHEIM:
• EXTERIOR
• CONSTRAINING
• (HISTORICAL, WEIGHTY)
+
PETER BERGER:
• OBJECTIVE
• MORAL/VALUATIONAL
EXAMPLES OF SOCIAL FACTS:
●Collectivities
●Social Structures
●Institutions
●Crowd Behavior
●Social Pressure
●Fashion
●Fad
●Public Opinion
●Marriage
●Rules of the Game
>tic-tac-toe
>chess
●Language
●Money
>inflation in Germany
>J.G. Boogs
●Time
Languages are Social Facts
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пожалуйста надоьте корову
veuillez traire la vache
ordeñe por favor la vaca
Social
Facts…
Four workers were each observed going through the
same motions: picking up heavy little hard brown
clay rectangles, slathering gooey grey mush onto the
upper edge and the ends of each one with a trowel and
then, one by one, layering them one on top of the
other.
When asked what they were doing, each worker gave
a different answer.
• The first one said, “I am laying bricks.”
• The second one said, “I am making a living.”
• The third one said, “I am constructing a wall.”
• The fourth one said, “I am helping build a
cathedral.”
• The fifth one said, “I am creating a movie set that
will be used to simulate a cathedral”
• The sixth one said, “I am building a prototype for a
cheap plastic tsotchke - a miniature simulacra of a
simulation of a man painting a man building a
cathedral for a movie set.”
…are not
self-evident
Money exists as a core Social Fact….
Artist J.S.G. Boggs, shown at a New York gallery in 1987, displays
his realistic drawing of a $20 bill, which he bartered for a shipment
of lobsters.
….and here is someone who disturbs its reality
On display at the Spencer Art Museum, Lawrence Kansas. As art critic Lawrence Weschler
noted, “J.S.G. Boggs still makes money the old-fashioned way – he draws it.” Boggs’
performance work challenges the role of official currency by substituting his own
laboriously hand-drawn and photocopied bills for authentic ones. Boggs’ works also
underscore the role of art as commodity when he barters for goods with his artwork, the
hand-drawn bills. Boggs has been arrested for counterfeiting in England and in Australia,
as well as investigated in the United States by the secret service – which could be taken
as evidence of the effectiveness of his critique. Adornment is a full documentation of one
such transaction. Boggs purchased a $400 necklace with a photocopy of one of his handdrawn $500 bills. He received $100 change in authentic currency.
WHEN is it NOON on the SUN?
- Ludwig Wittgenstein
The Year 2016 is:
2012, according to the actual birth of Jesus, circa 4 B.C.
2769, according to the old Roman calendar
2755, according to the ancient Babylonian calendar
6252, according to the first Egyptian calendar
5776, according to the Jewish calendar
1436, according to the Moslem calendar
1394, according to the Persian calendar
1732, according to the Coptic calendar
2560, according to the Buddhist calendar
5135, according to the current Maya great cycle
224, according to the calendar of the French Revolution
the year of the MONKEY
HOW TO GET THERE ON TiME…
...to get the “right” time, we set our
individual watches by The Clock on the Wall…
Collective
Representations
...if the Clock on the Wall is “wrong”
we set it by our individual watches….
Individual
Representations
Brief Thoughts on Exactness
Fish
move exactly there and exactly then,
Just as
birds have their inbuilt exact measure of time and place.
A poem
by
Maroslov
Holub
But mankind,
deprived of instinct, is aided
by scientific research, the essence of which
this story shows.
A certain soldier
had to fire a gun every evening exactly at six.
He did it like a soldier. When his exactness
was checked, he stated:
I follow
an absolutely precise chronometer in the shop window
of the clockmaker downtown. Every day at seventeen
forty-five I set my watch by it and
proceed up the hill where the gun stands ready.
At seventeen fifty-nine exactly I reach the gun
and exactly at eighteen hours I fire.
It was found
that this method of firing was absolutely exact.
There was only the chronometer to be checked.
The clockmaker downtown was asked about its exactness.
Oh, said the clockmaker,
this instrument is one of the most exact. Imagine,
for years a gun has been fired here at six exactly.
And every day I look at the chronometer
and it always shows exactly six.
So much for exactness.
And the fish move in the waters and the heavens are filled
with the murmur of wings, while
The chronographs tick and the guns thunder.
EMILE DURKHEIM’S MODEL
BEING DOMINATED BY
THE FORCES OF ONE’S OWN CREATION
REPRESENTATIONS
THE
INDIVIDUAL
CONSCIENCE
composed of
SOCIAL FACTS
= ISOMORPHIC =
COGNITIVE
&
EMOTIONAL
THE
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
composed of
SOCIAL FACTS
COGNITIVE
&
EMOTIONAL
BEHAVIORS IN CONCERT
RECREATING THE
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
RE-PRESENTATIONS
1897
“Suicide” (1897): Key Concepts
Suicide as a Social Fact
Anomic Division of Labor (leftover from “Division of Labor”)
Integration
Regulation
Four Types of Suicide:
Altruistic
Egoistic
Anomic
Fatalistic
Anomie
Suicide
•
•
•
Suicide may be caused by weak social bonds.
Social bonds are made up of social integration and
social regulation.
Durkheim’s 4 types of suicide:
 Egoistic Suicide: Individual is weakly integrated into a
society so ending their life will have little impact on the
rest of society.
 Altruistic suicide: Individual is extremely attached to
the society and because of this has no real sense of
autonomy. But alternatively, a freely chosen act of selfsacrifice.
 Anomic suicide: a weak social regulation between
society’s norms and the individual, most often brought
on by dramatic economic or social changes.
 Fatalistic suicide: Social regulation is completely
imposed upon the individual. With no hope of
countering the oppressive discipline of the society
the only way to escape is to take one’s own life.
Suicide
• Defined suicide as the act of severing social relationships.
• Goal was to show that an individual act is actually the result of the social
world that he would show the usefulness of sociology.
• He explored the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics.
He explained how socially controlled Catholics had a lower suicide rate.
• Social integration: the integration of a group of people into the mainstream
of society.
• He concluded that abnormally high or low levels or social integration may
result in increased suicide rates.
• Results he found include:
– Suicide rates are higher for widowed, single or divorced people rather than
those who are married.
– Rates are higher for those who have no children rather than those who do .
– Rates are higher among Protestants than Catholics.
– Coroners in a Catholic country are less likely to record a suicide as the reason
of death because in Catholicism it is a sin.
Suicide as a Social Fact
Suicide rate is a social fact–
social cause/social effect
Rates are stable across time
Durkheim found low rates of
suicide:
When religious integration is
high (Catholics < Protestants)
When domestic integration is
high (Married < Unmarried)
When political integration is
high (Rural < Urban)
Example of US suicide rate:
fairly stable over time.
Durkheim’s Argument in “Suicide”
 Unlike animals, human desire is “unlimited,” – there is no internal check on
needs and desires.
 The “passions… must be limited,” but this must be done by some force
exterior to the individual.
 This exterior force must be the common (collective conscience) because it
is the “only moral power superior to the individual, the authority of which
he accepts.”
 Regulation through collective conscience is required to ensure that people
will accept their position in life, because true social equality is impossible.
 Anomie occurs when societies break down or “pass through some abnormal
crisis,” people are “not adjusted to the conditions forced on them,” and
social bonds/collective conscience fail to do work of regulating.
COLLECTIVE
THE ARENA OF
MORAL CONFORMITY
INDIVIDUAL
INSATIABLE
APPETITES
THE
IN-GROUP
CONSCIENCE
OU T
S ID E T HE
LAW
Anomic Division of Labor
• How can we be more bonded to one another when we are
further splintered by division of labor and specialization?
• Rules emerge from the DOL because it sets up definite ways
of acting that are repeated on a daily basis, turning into
regular, stable habit. “Then the habits, as they grow in
strength, are transformed into rules of conduct.”
• This produces a real form of solidarity, interdependence built
on shared, regular expectations (duties, rights, obligations) that
are built up and extended across time.
• “If the division of labor does not produce solidarity, it is
because the relationships between the organs are not regulated;
it is because they are in a state of anomie.”
SUICIDE TYPES, ala Durkheim & Allen (& Berger):
HIGH or
STRONG
LOW or
WEAK
GROUP ATTACHMENT
BEHAVIOR REGULATION
(SOCIAL INTEGRATION)
Shared Social Sentiments
(“society in man”)
(MORAL REGULATION)
External Constraints
(“man in society”)
ALTRUISTIC
(collectivistic)
FATALISTIC
(hopelessness)
EGOISTIC
(individualistic)
ANOMIC
(meaninglessness)
BERGER’S “THREE MOMENTS”
DURKHEIM’S REGULATION
(“Society in man”)
Man is a social product.
OBJECTIVATION,
SOCIAL FACTICITIES,
SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
REALITY
EXTERNALIZATION,
PUTTING ONE’S SELF
INTO EFFECT
Society is a human product
(“Man in society”)
DURKHEIM’S INTEGRATION
Society is an objective reality
INTERNALIZATION,
SOCIALIZATION,
ENCULTURALIZATION
Altruistic Suicide – Excessive Integration
Jonestown
Massacre, 1978
Kamakazi pilots, 1945
Suicide bombers, 2013
Egoistic Suicide – Low Integration
Fatalistic Suicide – Excessive Regulation
Unnamed slave woman, who on Dec.
19, 1815, jumped out of the garret
window of a three-story brick house
and survived.
1838 issue of American Anti-Slavery Almanac, which illustrated
a passage from Charles Ball’s “Slavery in the United States”
(New York, 1837) that describes Ball’s encounter with the slave
Paul. Paul had “suffered so much in slavery, that he chose to
encounter the hardships and perils of a runaway.”
Anomic Suicide
– Low Regulation
Anomic Suicide –
Low Regulation
COMPARATIVE RATES OF ANOMIC SUICIDE
Durkheim
HIGHER
LOWER
compared across cells
Men
Women
Protestants
Catholics
Catholics
Jews
Urban
Rural
Single
Married
Married w/o
Married c
Children
Children
Officers
Enlisted Personnel
Military in Peace
Military in War
Adolescents
Adults
Native-Americans Euro-Americans
Middle Aged
Elderly
Modern Day
Anomic or Fatalistic Suicide?
We are broke. Last April I was
worth $100,000. Today I am
$24,000 in the red.
ANOMIE
-a lack of regulation occurring with breakdown
of (mostly economic) order in modern life-
• Anomie is a constant feature of modern life
• “Since this disorder is greatest in the economic world, it has
most of its victims there.”
• Industrial and commercial functions have the greatest number
of suicides – and – “the possessors of most comfort suffer
most.”
• Durkheim’s general argument:
When economic order is functional, it “reins in individual
passions” by setting limits on desires and socializing people to
be comfortable in their position
1912
The Elementary Forms of Religious Life
Key Concepts






Definition of Religion
Totemism
Sacred V. Profane
Collective Effervescence ~ Collective Conscience
Collective Representations
Use of the evolutionary metaphor –
and functionalist view of religion
Durkheim’s Definition of Religion
A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices
relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart
and forbidden—beliefs and practices which unite into
one single moral community called a Church, all those
who adhere to them.
This system of conceptions is not purely imaginary and
hallucinatory, for the moral forces that these things
awaken in us are quite real—as real as the ideas that
words recall to us after they have served to form the ideas.
Since religious force is nothing other than the collective and
anonymous force of the clan, and since this can be represented in the
mind only in the form of the totem, the totemic emblem is like the
visible body of the god.
That which science refuses to grant to religion is not its right to exist, but
its right to dogmatize upon the nature of things and the special
competence which it claims for itself for knowing man and the world. As
a matter of fact, it [religion] does not know itself. It does not even know
what it is made of, nor to what need it answers.
…[religions] are grounded in and express the real…. The reasons the
faithful settle for in justifying those rites and myths may be mistaken, and
most often are; but the true reasons exist nonetheless…. Fundamentally,
then, there are no religions that are false.
COMING TO GRIPS
WITH THE SACRED
ABSOLUTE,
THE ULTIMATE,
THE REALLY REAL,
THE WHOLLY OTHER,
THE BEYOND WHICH ONE
CANNOT GO THE
-
MADE PRESENT IN THE FORM(S)
OF THE SACRED
TO WHICH ONE WANTS, NEEDS
TO BE IN THE “RIGHT”
RELATIONSHIP.
The Sacred has been described with the following characteristics:
• experienced emotionally, not intellectually
● beyond rational and ethical conceptions
• ambiguous and paradoxical
• bi-polar (creating both terror & attraction, fear & love, horror & fascination)
• radically other than the profane, the everyday, the ordinary, the prosaic
• non-empirical
• non-utilitarian, non-instrumental
• powerful, even over-powering
• awesome, requiring, even demanding our attention, observance, obeisance,
• demanding and solicitous
• attractive and repugnant
• fearsome and dangerous
• supportive and strength-giving
• spontaneous and creative
• urging humility, humbleness, and simultaneously exaltation
• daunting and fascinating
• outside of space and time
Religion presents these
dimensions, these forces, to
human beings in forms—
symbols, stories, myths,
practices—that bring them
under tenuous human control.
• Beliefs
~ theology
~ doctrine
~ ideology
• Practices
~ rites
~ rituals
• United Moral Community
* family
~ church
* clan
~ temple
* tribe
~ mosque
* ethnos
~ Ummah
~ brotherhood * nation
• Sacred Things
~ Crucifix, Cross, Lost Ark of the Covenant
~ Bible, Torah, Talmud, Koran
~ Book of Mormon
* Magna Carta
* Declaration of Independence
* U.S. Constitution
* Bill of Rights
* U.N. Declaration of Human Rights
Elementary Forms of Religious Life
•
Religion is the basic form of social cohesion, which holds
complex societies together.
•
Totemism was the original form of religion, because it
was the emblem for the social group, the clan.
•
The function of religion is to make people willing to put
the interests of others ahead of themselves.
•
The model for relationships between people and the
supernatural is the relationship between individuals and
the community.
thus “God is society, writ large.”
•
Religion is a mechanism that sustains and protects a
threatened social order.
Religion: The Origins of Collective Conscience
• Durkheim studies religion as the fundamental institution of social life,
upon which the collective identity is structured.
• Religion unites members through the creation of a Collective
Conscience. All religious expression is founded on the identification of
members to a group.
• Shared religious beliefs and values establish and reinforce the strength
of the Collective Conscience.
"Voodoo is older than the
world,"
says Janvier Houlonon, a tour guide in
Benin and a lifelong voodoo practitioner.
"They say that voodoo is like
the marks or the lines which
are in our hands -- we born
with them.
Voodoo are in the leaves, in
the earth. Voodoo is
everywhere."
Play recording
Why did Durkheim study “primitive”
society to understand religion?
– Early development can be observed, and
change traced over time. (Evolutionary model)
– Durkheim looked for “the elements which
constitute that which is permanent and human
in religion; they form all the objective
contents of the idea which is expressed when
one speaks of religion in general.”
Why did Durkheim study “primitive”
society to understand religion?
• Simplicity allows for analysis of “essential”
features.
• “Everything is common to all. Movements are
stereotyped; Everybody performs the same ones in
the same circumstances, and this conformity of
conduct only translates to the conformity of
thought” (from Elementary Forms).
• These societies are different enough from our own
experience that we are able to see important
features.
Totemism
Sacred V. Profane
• Religion is defined by the cultural
distinction between the sacred and
profane.
• Sacred – objects extraordinary and set
apart.
• Profane – everyday, ordinary objects.
• Notions of the sacred are given
external representation through
objects or symbols, called collective
representations.
Durkheim’s Model of
religious evolution
Temporary
gatherings
occur
Interaction
escalates
Psychological need to
represent “mana” with a
material object
Structural need
for clan solidarity
Cultural need for
resulting permanent
groups
Powers are
attributed
to “mana”
Crowd stimulation,
heightened
emotions, and
collective
contagion occur
“Mana” is
symbolized
by the totem
and by sacred
objects of the
totem
Sense of
common
sentiments
that are
external
and
constraining
Totems
promote a
sense of
unity and
solidarity
among
members
The Black Stone (in Arabic: ‫ الحجر األسود‬al-Ḥajar alAswad) is the eastern cornerstone of the Kaaba, the
ancient stone building toward which Muslims pray,
in the center of the Grand Mosque in Mecca, Saudi
Arabia. It is revered by Muslims as an Islamic relic
which, according to Muslim tradition, dates back to
the time of Adam and Eve. The stone was venerated
at the Kaaba in pre-Islamic pagan times. It was set
intact into the Kaaba's wall by the Islamic prophet
Muhammad in the year 605 A.D.
Muslim pilgrims circle the Kaaba as part of the Tawaf ritual of the Hajj.
Many of them try, if possible, to stop and kiss the Black Stone, emulating
the kiss that Islamic tradition records that it received from Muhammad. If
they cannot reach it, they point to it on each of their seven circuits
around the Kaaba.
COLLECTIVE EFFERVESCENCE
is when we feel we are a part of something
bigger than ourselves:
“Vital energies are over-excited, passions more active, sensations
stronger… A man does not
recognize himself; he feels
himself transformed, and
consequently he transforms
the environment that surrounds
him.”
Is this -The Collective Conscience?
Collective
Effervescence
Effervescence occurs when we collectively share an ecstatic
experience. In Greek ek-stasis literally means stepping
outside reality as commonly defined.
We might say we are
“besides ourselves.”
Is this -The Collective Conscience?
EMILE DURKHEIM’S MODEL
EFFERVESCENCE = BEING DOMINATED BY
THE FORCES OF ONE’S OWN CREATION
INTERNALIZATION
T
O
T
E
M
THE SACRED
the prismatically
focused power of
the collective
RITES, RITUALS,
BELIEFS, AND
PRACTICES THAT
ESTABLISH
THE MORAL
COMMUNITY
OBJECTIVATION
SHARED
COLLECTIVE
SENTIMENTS
EXTERNALIZATION
BEHAVIORS IN CONCERT
DURKHEIM ala PETER
BERGER
BELIEFS, IDEOLOGY
INTERNALIZATION,
SOCIALIZATION,
ENCULTURALIZATION
THE SACRED:
TOTEM
PARTICIPANT
OBJECTIVATION,
SOCIAL FACTICITIES,
SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
REALITY
EXTERNALIZATION,
PUTTING ONE’S SELF
INTO EFFECT
UNITED MORAL COMMUNITY:
TRIBE or CLAN
PRACTICES, RITES, RITUALS
DURKHEIM1 ala PETER
BERGER
BELIEFS, IDEOLOGY
INTERNALIZATION,
SOCIALIZATION,
ENCULTURALIZATION
THE SACRED:
GOD
BELIEVER
OBJECTIVATION,
SOCIAL FACTICITIES,
SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
REALITY
EXTERNALIZATION,
PUTTING ONE’S SELF
INTO EFFECT
UNITED MORAL COMMUNITY:
“CHURCH”
PRACTICES, RITES, RITUALS
DURKHEIM2 ala PETER
BERGER
BELIEFS, IDEOLOGY
INTERNALIZATION,
SOCIALIZATION,
ENCULTURALIZATION
THE SACRED:
MONARCH
by
DIVINE RIGHT
SUBJECT
OBJECTIVATION,
SOCIAL FACTICITIES,
SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
REALITY
EXTERNALIZATION,
PUTTING ONE’S SELF
INTO EFFECT
UNITED MORAL COMMUNITY:
KINGDOM
PRACTICES, RITES, RITUALS
DURKHEIM3 ala PETER
BERGER
BELIEFS, IDEOLOGY
INTERNALIZATION,
SOCIALIZATION,
ENCULTURALIZATION
THE SACRED:
the PEOPLE
via
THE CHARTERS
OF FREEDOM*
CITIZEN
OBJECTIVATION,
SOCIAL FACTICITIES,
SOCIALLY-CONSTRUCTED
REALITY
EXTERNALIZATION,
PUTTING ONE’S SELF
INTO EFFECT
UNITED MORAL COMMUNITY:
NATION-STATE
PRACTICES, RITES, RITUALS
*THE DECLARATION
OF INDEPENDENCE,
THE CONSTITUTION &
THE BILL OF RIGHTS
,
EMILE DURKHEIM’S MODEL
BEING DOMINATED BY
THE FORCES OF ONE’S OWN CREATION
REPRESENTATIONS
THE
INDIVIDUAL
CONSCIENCE
composed of
SOCIAL FACTS
= ISOMORPHIC =
COGNITIVE
&
EMOTIONAL
THE
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
composed of
SOCIAL FACTS
COGNITIVE
&
EMOTIONAL
BEHAVIORS IN CONCERT
RECREATING THE
COLLECTIVE
CONSCIENCE
RE-PRESENTATIONS
Religion and Collective Conscience
• These social categories shape how we think and orient
ourselves to world: time, space, quality . . .
• Establish our basic categories of thought!
– “If men did not agree upon these essential ideas at every
moment… all contact between their minds would be
impossible, and with that, all life together. Thus societies
could not abandon the categories to the free choice of the
individual without abandoning itself.”
• Collective conscience guides human action!
– “We have the feeling that we cannot abandon them if our
whole thought is not to cease being fully human.”
Function of Religion?
Religion is a way of expressing and reaffirming shared social
beliefs, a functional element of society.
“There can be no society which does not feel the need of
upholding and reaffirming at regular intervals the collective
sentiments and collective ideals… This moral remaking cannot be
achieved except by the means of reunions, assemblies, and
meetings where individuals reaffirm their common sentiments.”
•
Historically, religion has been the cement of society - the means by which men
had been led to turn from the everyday concerns in which they were variously
enmeshed to a common devotion to something greater than themselves
It was a unified system of beliefs and practices in response to the Sacred that
united into one single moral community all those who adhere to them.”
•
Durkheim described religion as serving 4 major functions:
1) Disciplinary: establishing, enforcing and
administrating an externally imposed legitimate
sense of order
2) Cohesive: bringing people together with a
strong shared strong bond
3) Vitalizing: energizing, making the group
more lively or vigorous, vitalize, boosting spirit
4) Euphoric: creating a positive feeling, sense of
happiness, confidence, well-being
Durkheim’s Legacy
• Durkheim helped make the study of sociology
mainstream. Sociology today has gained
tremendous popularity in Europe, the US, and
across the world.
• Many of Durkheim’s students pursued his ideas in
their own studies.
• Founded the academic journal, L'Annee
Sociologique.
• In recent decades, Durkheim’s philosophies have
been more influential in the US and Britain than in
France, his native country.
• Durkheim’s ideas influenced several major
theoretical movements in the twentieth century.
– His work was strongly present in the emergence of
‘structuralism’ through the work of Jean Piaget and
Claude Levi-Strauss, in British anthropology, and
mid-century American sociology.