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First published in English 1960. The historical value of Hertz's
writings is that they are a representative example of the
culmination of two centuries of development of sociological thought
in France, from Montesquieu to Durkheim and his pupils. In the
intervening years since publication, that development has grown
into the systematic comparative study of primitive institutions,
based on a great body of ethnographic facts from all over the
world: in effect social anthropology.
First published in English 1960.
The historical value of Hertz's writings is that they are a
representative example of the culmination of two centuries of
development of sociological thought in France, from Montesquieu to
Durkheim and his pupils. In the intervening years since
publication, that development has grown into the systematic
comparative study of primitive institutions, based on a great body
of ethnographic facts from all over the world: in effect social
anthropology.
"Classical Durkheimian Studies of Myth and the Sacred" presents
English translations of several important essays, some never before
translated, by members of the famous Annee sociologique group
around Emile Durkheim. These works by Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert,
and Robert Hertz are key contributions to today s growing interest
in and reinterpretation of Durkheimian thought on culture,
religion, and symbolism. The central thrust in this new
interpretive effort uses the Durkheimian theory of the sacred to
understand the symbolism and meanings of cultural structures and
narratives more generally. This book is vital to any contemporary
collection emphasizing social theory.Durkheim indicated in "The
Elementary Forms" that the sacred would certainly transform itself
in modernity, although he limited his conjecture as to precisely
how it would do so to some brief remarks on popular political
manifestations of collective effervescence and sacred symbolic
production. Much contemporary work in cultural sociology has made
use of this observation by Durkheim to postulate new manifestations
of the sacred in secular cultural forms. The texts translated here
show how thoroughly such efforts can be rooted in the work emerging
in the original Durkheimian school during its heyday in the first
two decades of the 20th century. "
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