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Emile Durkheim: Understanding
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Emile Durkheim was born at Epinal in the eastern Frenchprovince of Lorraine on April 15, 1858. Son of a rabbi anddescending from a long line of rabbis, he decided quite earlythat he would follow the family tradition and become a rabbihimself. He studied Hebrew, the Old Testament, and the Talmud,while at the same time following the regular course ofinstruction in secular schools.
Durkheim bases this detailed discussion of organic solidarity and contracts on a dispute against Spencer. Spencer claims that industrial solidarity is spontaneous and that there is no need for a coercive apparatus to produce or maintain it. Social harmony is simply established of its own accord. Durkheim asserts that, were this the case, the sphere of social action would diminish greatly because it would no longer be needed except to enforce negative solidarity (149). This is not the case.
Emile D. Durkheim was born on the evening of April 15, 1858 at Epinal, in Lorraine. His mother, Melanie, was a merchant's daughter and his father was the Rabbi of Epinal and was ... Chief Rabbi of the Vosges and Haute-Marne. Emile spent part of his early school years in a rabbinical school, destined to follow the footsteps of his father, grandfather and great grandfather, who had also been rabbis. However, this desire was short-lived as he cut away from Judaism after he arrived in Paris.
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Carroll attempts to evaluate Durkheim's hypothesis regarding the social evolutionary origins of religion in light of the archeological evidence that has come to light in the past 60 years. Carroll concludes that Durkheim's hypothesis "seems consistent with the archeological record." Further, Carroll argues that "it might now be time to reconsider the question of social evolutionary origins in light of the careful investigations conducted by modern archeologists" (p.300).
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Durkheim describes religion in terms of beliefs and rites. For him, the details of these in particular religions are particular ways of dealing in thought and action with the fundamental dichotomy of sacred and profane.
Durkheim's interest in social phenomena was ... spurred on by politics. France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War had created a backlash against secular, republican rule and many considered a Catholic, vigorously nationalistic approach the only way to rejuvenate France's fading power on the continent. Durkheim, a Jew and socialist, was thus in the political minority, a situation which galvanized him politically. The Dreyfus affair of 1894 only strengthened his activist stance.
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