Durkheim in Dialogue

Sondra L. Hausner is Oxford's first University Lecturer in the Study of Religion. An anthropologist by training, she teaches social and cultural theories of religion in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford. Her ethnographic work focuses on Himalayan and South Asian religions and the social dynamics of ritual. She won the Joseph W. Elder Prize in the Indian Social Sciences from the American Institute of Indian Studies for her Durkheim-inspired monograph, Wandering with Sadhus: Ascetics in the Hindu Himalayas (Indiana University Press, 2007).

• Acknowledgments List of Contributors Introduction: Durkheim in Disciplinary Dialogue Sondra L. Hausner Chapter 1. The Notion of Soul and Science Positive: A Retrieval of Durkheim's Method Karen E. Fields PART I: SOCIAL FORMS Chapter 2. Return to Durkheim: Civil Religion and the Moral Reconstruction of China Zhe Ji Chapter 3. Elementary Forms of War: Performative Aspects of Youth Militia in Sierra Leone Paul Richards Chapter 4. Elementary Forms vs. Psychology in Contemporary Cinema Louise Child PART II: COLLECTIVE MINDS Chapter 5. Durkheim's Sacred-Profane Opposition: What Should We Make of It? N.J. Allen Chapter 6. Durkheim and the Primitive Mind: An Archaeological Retrospective Clive Gamble Chapter 7. Durkheim, Anthropology, and the Question of the Categories in Les Formes Elementaires de la vie Religieuse Susan Stedman Jones PART III: EFFERVESCENCE Chapter 8. Is Individual to Collective as Freud is to Durkheim? Sondra L. Hausner Chapter 9. Collective Representations, Discourses of Power, and Personal Agency: Three Incommensurate Histories of a Collaborator's Rebellion in the Colonial Sudan Gerd Baumann Chapter 10. Actants Amassing (AA): Beyond Collective Effervescence and the Social Adam Yuet Chau FIN Chapter 11. The Creation and Problematic Achievement of Les Formes Elementaires W. Watts Miller

"This volume is a timely contribution in rethinking the socially immanent dimensions of religion in contemporary times and I would recommend it to any student or scholar studying religion and its various relationships with both classical and contemporary anthropology." · Social Anthropology"The volume conveys the potential of Elementary Forms to inspire new areas of research in the field of cognitive studies and of collective processes and rituals more specifically. As the contributors suggest, there is much to explore in contemporary phenomena by wary of Durkheim's original approach to the study of religion." · Durkheimian Studies/Etudes Durkheimiennes"...the volume as a whole shows that dialogue is how knowledge advances and that Durkheim is still worth talking about and talking to." · Anthropology Review Database