Religion and the Changing Intensity of Emotional Solidarities in Durkheim’s The Division of Labour in Society (1893)

Abstract

This article re-reads the six evolutionary stages contained in The Division of Labour so as to uncover the key importance of human emotion in Durkheim’s early views on the nature and social role of religion. This important, yet hitherto neglected, thematic link in Durkheim’s early writings will be used to defend Nisbet’s (1972[1966]) belief that it is the religious and emotional foundations of order that provide the true germinative link between Durkheim’s early and later work, and not structural functional differentiation, as commentators like Wallwork (1984, 1985) had otherwise suggested.