Sociology 201

Contemporary Social Theory

Spring, 2014

Assignment #2, Due on February 6 by 4:30PM

Using the section from Emile Durkheim's Elementary Forms of the Religious Life, which discusses ritual and the excerpt from Lloyd Warner's book , The Living and the Dead, please apply the insights of these materials to interpret some aspect of your own social experience.

In Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and The Living and the Dead, Durkheim and Warner discuss religion in a way that is different from the conventional understanding of it, which is based on worshiping deities. Instead, they focus on religion as a social phenomenon that includes community formation around certain beliefs and rituals. Religious ceremonies are not solely a way to celebrate supernatural deities...