Emile Durkheim's The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, in the Karen Fields translation from Free Press, is a foundational text of the sociology of religion. Its strength is that it is the actual source of the sacred and profane distinction that much later scholarship on religion still works from or argues against. Its limit is that it is a single early twentieth century theorist's general theory, built substantially on then current ethnographic accounts of Australian totemism that later fieldwork has revised, so its specific evidentiary claims need checking against more recent anthropology even where its conceptual framework endures.
Facts
Assessment
Reliability Tier2
Reliability tier 2: a foundational sociological text in a respected scholarly translation, though its own evidentiary base in Australian ethnography has since been revised by later fieldwork. NotesFoundational text of the sociology of religion; source of the sacred/profane distinction.
Citation
AuthorEmile Durkheim; Karen E. Fields (trans.)
PublisherFree Press
Publication Year1912
Source Typebook
Claims Backed By This Source (8 claims)
This source backs 8 claims across the atlas. As facts: 7 well-attested. Plus 1 entities citing it as a general reference with no single fact or relationship attached.
Disposition By Topic
- Sources, 7 claims: 7 well-attested.
- Doctrines, 1 claims: 1 general references.
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