Durkheim's Treatment of Practice

Abstract

It is generally thought that Durkheim based his theory of knowledge on a theory of representations. However, in The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life (1915 [1912]) he places great emphasis on concrete and witnessable aspects of practice such as sounds and movements and downplays the importance of beliefs and representations. He argues that ritual sounds and movements, when collectively enacted, can create sentiments that give rise to the essential concepts that he refers to as the categories of the understanding. Representations are, in his view, secondary phenomena that arise only after participation in social practices. This article demonstrates through an analysis of Durkheim's text that he carefully referred to ritual practices in concrete and not representational terms at strategic points in the argument. Furthermore, it is argued that the collective experience of concrete sounds and movements was, on Durkheim's view, a prerequisite for the subsequent development of representations.