Give an assessment of Durkheimian notion of ‘scared’ and ‘profane’ in sociology of religion. (UPSC CSE Mains 2017 - Sociology, Paper 1)
Durkheim argued that religious rituals reinforce social bonds and collective conscience. In the Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) Durkheim argued that all societies divide the world into two basic categories: the sacred and the profane:
- The profane refers to mundane ordinary life: our daily routine/ grind of getting up in the morning, doing our ablutions, going to college, eating our daily Nachos, and doing the dishes.
- The sacred refers to anything which transcends the humdrum of everyday life: which typically take the form of collective representations which are set apart from society (spiritual places such as churches or mosques are the most obvious examples of ‘sacred’ spaces.)
For Durkheim, Religion is the collective practice of marking off and maintaining distance between the sacred and the profane, which is typically done through rituals, such as those associated with the daily or weekly visit to the church or mosque: prayer is an obvious example of an ‘occasional (sacred) ritual’ is marked out from ordinary mundane (or profane) life.
Importantly for Durkheim, anything can be sacred (or rather, a society can determine that anything is sacred): there is nothing in any object or action that makes it inherently sacred: anything can be sacred: not only churches, mosques, and religious books, but in some cultures, trees, or even rocks may be regarded as sacred.
Durkheim believed that in order to understand the role of religion in society, the relationship between sacred symbols and what they represent must be discovered.
Profane things are mundane. Anything that is not sacred is profane. Durkheim saw religion as the worship of society. Sacred rituals and forms of collective worship associated with them act to unify the group and promote social solidarity. It helps reinforce the collective conscience and order. In modern society, we see a ‘secular’ religion emerging. Watching sports is an example of some form of communal worship. The trophy or World Cup is seen as sacred. Similarly, national pride and patriotism are sacred values. The unified grief of all Indians during terrorist attacks or natural disasters also reinforces the collective conscience. At the same time, the ‘sacred’ value of traditional religion is still powerful, as seen by the demand for online darshanam, Aastha TV, and live streaming on apps. Thus, the sacred and profane can help understand the values upheld by any contemporary society and how they are reinforced.
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