Summary
Emile Durkheim: Elementary forms of religious life
Totemistic system in Australia
About the book ELEMENTARY FORMS OF RELIGIOUS LIFE
Elementary forms can therefore be read in any of the above interpretive keys: someone will find in them a classic study of the totemic beliefs and customs of the Australian natives, others will discern a general theory about the origin of religious feelings and religious institutions, others will follow traces of an unusual teaching about the sources of conceptual thinking and basic logical categories, the fourth will be most interested in the formal analysis of kinship systems, and some will perhaps focus on the theory of religion as a symbolic system whose meaning must be deciphered under the comprehensive opposition between the sacred and the profane. (Aljoša Mimica)
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