Sacred–profane dichotomy

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Short description: Sociological concept

The sacred–profane dichotomy is a concept posited by the French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who considered it to be the central characteristic of religion: "religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things, that is to say, things set apart and forbidden."[1] In Durkheim's theory, the sacred represents the interests of the group, especially unity, which were embodied in sacred group symbols, or totems. The profane, however, involves mundane individual concerns. Durkheim explicitly stated that the sacred–profane dichotomy is not equivalent to good-evil, as the sacred could be either good or evil, and the profane could be either as well.[2]

Durkheim's claim of the universality of this dichotomy for all religions and cults has been criticized by scholars such as the British anthropologist Jack Goody.[3] Goody also noted that "many societies have no words that translate as sacred or profane and that ultimately, just like the distinction between natural and supernatural, it was very much a product of European religious thought rather than a universally applicable criterion."[4] As Tomoko Masuzawa explains in The Invention of World Religions (2005), this system of comparative religion privileged Christianity at the expense of non-Christian systems. Any cosmology without a sacred–profane binary was rendered invisible by the field of religious studies, because the binary was supposed to be "universal".

See also

References

  1. ↑ Emile Durkheim. [1912] 1995. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life, edited and translated by K. E. Fields. New York: The Free Press. p. 35.
  2. ↑ Pals, Daniel. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. US ISBN:0-19-508725-9 (pbk). p. 99.
  3. ↑ "The sacred-profane distinction is not universal". http://press-files.anu.edu.au/downloads/press/p35161/mobile/ch06s03.html.  quote: "neither do the Lo Dagaa [group in Gonja, editor note] appear to have any concepts at all equivalent to the vaguer and not unrelated dichotomy between the sacred and the profane"
  4. ↑ "Sacred and Profane – Durkheim's Critics". http://science.jrank.org/pages/11183/Sacred-Profane-Durkheim-s-Critics.html. 

Further reading

  • Acquaviva, S. S., and Patricia Lipscomb. The Decline of the Sacred in Industrial Society. (Review: JSTOR 1202830).
  • Bakhtin, Mikhail. [1941] 1993 Rabelais and His World, translated by H. Iswolsky. Bloomington: Indiana University Press.
  • Barber, C. Renate. 1965. "Sacred and Profane: Some Thoughts on the Folk-Urban Continuum of This Dichotomy." Man 65:45–46. doi:10.2307/2797525 JSTOR 2797525
  • Colpe, Carsten. "The Sacred and the Profane," translated by R. M. Stockman. In the Encyclopedia of Religion. via Encyclopedia.com.
  • Durkheim, Emile. 1912. The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life,
    • [1915] 1965, translated by Joseph Swain. The Free Press: ISBN:0-02-908010-X
    • 1995, translated by Karen E. Fields. The Free Press: ISBN:0-02-907937-3
  • Eliade, Mircea. 1957. The Sacred and the Profane: The Nature of Religion, translated by W. R. Trask. New York: Harcourt Brace & World.
  • Pals, Daniel. 1996. Seven Theories of Religion. New York: Oxford University Press. ISBN:0-19-508725-9 (pbk).




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