Though it is now discredited, totemism once captured the imagination of Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, James Frazer, and other prominent Victorian thinkers. In this lively intellectual history, Robert Alun Jones considers the construction of a theory and the divergent ways religious scholars, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, and cultural theorists drew on totemism to explore and define primitive and modern societies' religious, cultural, and sexual norms. Combining innovative readings of individual scholars' work and a rich portrait of Victorian intellectual life, Jones brilliantly traces the rise and fall of a powerful idea. First used to describe the belief systems of Native American tribes, totemism ultimately encompassed a range of characteristics. Its features included belief in a guardian spirit that assumed the form of an a particular animal; a prohibition against marrying outside the clan combined with a powerful incest taboo; a sacrament in which members of the totemic clan slaughtered a representative of the totemic species; and the tracing of descent through the female rather than the male. These attributes struck a chord with the late Victorian mentality and its obsession with inappropriate sexual relations, evolutionary theory, and gender roles. Totemism represented a set of beliefs that, though utterly primitive and at a great evolutionary distance, reassured Victorians of their own more civilized values and practices. Totemism's attraction to Victorian thinkers reflects the ways in which the social sciences construct their objects of study rather than discovering them. In discussing works such as Freud's Totem and Taboo or Frazer's The Golden Bough, Jones considers how theorists used the vocabulary of totemism to suit their intellectual interests and goals. Ultimately, anthropologists such as A. A. Goldenweiser, Franz Boas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that totemism was more a reflection of the concerns of Victorian theorists than of the actual practices and beliefs of "primitive" societies, and by the late twentieth century totemism seemed to have disappeared altogether.
Professor Jones gives a succinct and critical analysis of the sociological theories and methodology of Emile Durkheim. He focuses on four of Durkheim's books -- The Division Of Labour In Society (1893), The Rules Of Sociological Method (1895) and The Elementary Forms Of Religious Life (1912). With an illuminating chapter analysis of each work, this text is ideal for undergraduate and graduate students.
Drawing on a historicist perspective, this book explores the development of Durkheim's social realism and argues that it was less a sociological method than a way of speaking and thinking about social phenomena. Using for the first time the newly-discovered lecture notes from Durkheim's philosophy class of 1883-4, Professor Jones explores the significance of German social science in Durkheim's thought. The Development of Durkheim's Social Realism will be of immense value to graduate students and scholars in sociology, social theory, social and political philosophy and the history of ideas.
Drawing on a historicist perspective, this book explores the development of Durkheim's social realism and argues that it was less a sociological method than a way of speaking and thinking about social phenomena. Using for the first time the newly-discovered lecture notes from Durkheim's philosophy class of 1883-4, Professor Jones explores the significance of German social science in Durkheim's thought. The Development of Durkheim's Social Realism will be of immense value to graduate students and scholars in sociology, social theory, social and political philosophy and the history of ideas.
Though it is now discredited, totemism once captured the imagination of Sigmund Freud, Émile Durkheim, James Frazer, and other prominent Victorian thinkers. In this lively intellectual history, Robert Alun Jones considers the construction of a theory and the divergent ways religious scholars, anthropologists, psychoanalysts, and cultural theorists drew on totemism to explore and define primitive and modern societies' religious, cultural, and sexual norms. Combining innovative readings of individual scholars' work and a rich portrait of Victorian intellectual life, Jones brilliantly traces the rise and fall of a powerful idea. First used to describe the belief systems of Native American tribes, totemism ultimately encompassed a range of characteristics. Its features included belief in a guardian spirit that assumed the form of an a particular animal; a prohibition against marrying outside the clan combined with a powerful incest taboo; a sacrament in which members of the totemic clan slaughtered a representative of the totemic species; and the tracing of descent through the female rather than the male. These attributes struck a chord with the late Victorian mentality and its obsession with inappropriate sexual relations, evolutionary theory, and gender roles. Totemism represented a set of beliefs that, though utterly primitive and at a great evolutionary distance, reassured Victorians of their own more civilized values and practices. Totemism's attraction to Victorian thinkers reflects the ways in which the social sciences construct their objects of study rather than discovering them. In discussing works such as Freud's Totem and Taboo or Frazer's The Golden Bough, Jones considers how theorists used the vocabulary of totemism to suit their intellectual interests and goals. Ultimately, anthropologists such as A. A. Goldenweiser, Franz Boas, and Claude Lévi-Strauss argued that totemism was more a reflection of the concerns of Victorian theorists than of the actual practices and beliefs of "primitive" societies, and by the late twentieth century totemism seemed to have disappeared altogether.
Drawing on the kind of historicist perspective encouraged by Quentin Skinner and Richard Rorty, this book explores the development of Durkheim's social realism. Durkheim argued that social facts should be studied as real, concrete things but Professor Jones argues that his social realism was less a sociological method than a way of speaking and thinking about social phenomena through which Durkheim hoped to secure the allegiance of French citizens to the Third Republic. Professor Jones's book, based on many years' research in this area, takes advantage for the first time of newly discovered lecture notes from Durkheim's philosophy class of 1883–4 and explores the significance of German social science in Durkheim's thought. The Development of Durkheim's Social Realism will be of immense value to graduate students and scholars in sociology, social theory, social and political philosophy and history of ideas.
A textbook for A-Level Business Studies and equivalent examinations. It emphasizes the interrelation of a number of business-skills areas, and encourages students to apply theoretical principles through the provision of practical activities, including case studies and fieldwork suggestions.
This volume presents discussions of material culture and society. It offers a perspective that recognizes technology as material culture, that is, as manufactured things spawned by a community amd as characteristic of it as its language, behaviour and oral and written knowledge. The chapter "Progress in Separate Spheres" addresses the relationship between the theme of progress and material culture through advertising. Another chapter analyzes the computer and points out that the physical attributes of the machine make it an enigma which cannot be revealed by disassembling its working parts, but must be discovered through the mental comprehension of its processes. Two papers discuss the introduction of technologies to communities from different perspectives. The volume ends with a paper on human automata, an example of an object in which technology and humanity confront each other.
Sociologist Robert Wuthnow notes remarkable similarities in the social conditions surrounding three of the greatest challenges to the status quo in the development of modern society--the Protestant Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the rise of Marxist socialism.
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