The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

Émile Durkheim 1912

A study of religion that looks for its roots in the beliefs and ceremonies of Aboriginal Australian clans. Durkheim argues that when people worship their gods, they are also honoring their own society.

580 pages 11h 16m reading time

Why it lasts

  • A founding classic of sociology and of the scientific study of religion.
  • Argues, from studies of Aboriginal Australian clans, that religion separates the sacred from the ordinary, and that what people worship is, at bottom, their own society.
  • Holds that shared rituals create "collective effervescence," a group excitement that binds people together.
  • It shaped modern sociology and anthropology through thinkers such as Talcott Parsons, Radcliffe-Brown and Lévi-Strauss.
  • Its ideas underlie the study of civil religion, the national rituals and symbols that bind modern societies.

Behind the book

  • Never set foot in Australia

    Durkheim never went to Australia, relying instead on reports by explorers, missionaries and fieldworkers.

  • A reading that changed him

    Durkheim said reading William Robertson Smith on religion in 1895 changed his thinking and set him on this path.

  • A revealing subtitle

    The French original was subtitled "The Totemic System in Australia," after the sacred clan emblems at its center.

  • Doubted from the start

    The folklorist Arnold van Gennep soon questioned whether its Australian evidence could carry such large claims.

Translated by Joseph Ward Swain