Durkheim, Frazer, and Smith: The Role of Analogies and Exemplars in the Development of Durkheim's Sociology of Religion

Abstract

By the time of his last major work, The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1912), Durkheim's arguments concerning the influence of society on individual action were no longer couched predominantly in a language of externality and constraint. In 1913, defending the "principal ideas" of that work, Durkheim supported his conception of the "duality of human nature" (simultaneously social and individual) by emphasizing the "dynamogenic quality of religion," its ability to inspire human aciton a well as to curb it. These arguments do not represent a straighforward development of Durkheim's earlier work but must be undestood within the borader intellectual context within which he worked. Of particular importance were the growing differences among British social anthropologists, notably William Robertson Smith and James Frazer, concerning the mythic or utilitarian nature of primitive religion. On the evidence of this context, it is argued that one of the most critical shifts in the development of Durkheim's sociology of religion took place only after 1900. The process by which Durkheim developed his arguments in support of the former position may be understood in the light of recent work associated with the "strong programme" in the sociology of science. Major contemporary works used by Durkheim can be viewed as exemplars and the basis for analogies between substantively different areas of work rather than as the product of the application of a generalizable sociological method.