The Elementary Forms of The Religious Life

Emile Durkheim - Even though some histories of sociological thought place David Emile Durkheim (April 15, 1858 - November 15, 1917) helow Auguste Comte and Herbert Spencer, another shade of opinion credits iom as one who established the discipline on a solid footing and was, along with Karl Marx, an architect of modern social science. While the works of Comte and Spencer, despite being voluminous, resembled what was then known as "system-building," Durkheim was far more down-to-earth than both his predecessors, as one can witness from his very first major work, The Division of Labour in Society (1893). Published in 1912, in the last part of Durkheim's life, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life may be regarded as a crowning achievement of this author. Here we see being empirically applied the principles which he had developed in the early part of his career. One may not agree with Durkheim on all points but cannot yet ignore the basis thesis, advanced by him, that the very nature and structure of one's own society gets its reflection in the latter's pantheon. It was not very surprising that several concepts used by him, like totem, taboo, mana and couvade, still have their relevance for researches in religious sociology. Also, his was a major contribution in the battle between collectivism and individualism that raged through the 19th century, and his terms like "collective consciousness" have come to stay in the jargon of sociological research. It was not surprising if Nikolai Bukharin thought him close to the philosophy of materialism. The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) and Suicide (1897) are other major works of this thinker whose journal L'Annee Sociologique, established in 1896, found as wide an acceptance in Europe as its founder did.