Religion, culture and society in the 'information age'

Sociology of Religion, Winter, 2004 by Philip A. Mellor

In the work of Durkheim, the notion of society is examined and reconsidered repeatedly, but in general it is used to address the "supra-individual" elements in social life relating to social actions, feelings, beliefs, values and ideals (Lukes 1973:115). Furthermore, these elements are understood to be emergent from, and central to the development and flourishing of, individual human beings: it is in this sense that he identifies society with "an immense cooperation that extends not only through space but also through time," combining ideas and feelings in a rich and complex set of processes through which we become "truly human" (Durkheim 1995:15-16). It is in this sense that, for Durkheim (1974a:27-8, 34), sociology's object of study, society, is not simply a set of institutions but a collective way of being emergent from diverse forms of human relationships. Consequently, although he is attentive to the great variety of forms that societies can take (and criticized Comte for failing to deal with this adequately), and although he is attentive to the fact that particular forms of society can emerge and decay, he is also clear that, so long as there are human beings, the notion of society will remain sociologically and philosophically important (Durkheim 1974b:197; 1995:315).

It is this focus on the human dimensions of society that shapes Durkheim's (1995: 438) view of culture: the collective representations that emerge from society but act back upon it have to be assessed in relation to broad issues concerning human capacities, agency and the ontologically open dynamics characteristic of society as an emergent reality. In this respect, it is worth noting that the enthusiasm with which some sociologists have embraced Durkheim as someone who prefigured the cultural turn has to be tempered by a recognition that culture cannot be studied separately from real social relationships (see Alexander 1988), a fact that is especially evident in relation to Durkheim's analysis of religion. Indeed, the idea that religion can simply be a cultural resource is quite alien to Durkheim's thought: on the contrary, it is his focus on humanity's social potentialities that also defines his distinctive understanding of religion as a "fundamental and permanent" feature of human society, since human interaction does not simply broaden our horizons beyond our own immediate perceptions and desires, but transforms them under the influence of an energy peculiar to collective life (Durkheim 1995:1,34). In short, Durkheim's sociology of religion does not equate religion with culture, even if he argues that religious beliefs can be regarded as collective representations. Religion, for him, is a phenomenon that embraces culture and society: it is a system of ideas, but is also a form of life emergent from the embodied potentialities of human beings (Durkheim 1995:309; Mellor and Shilling 1997).

Durkheim's arguments have, of course, aroused considerable debate, and even some of his admirers have expressed doubts about many aspects of his interpretation of religion (e.g. Pickering 1984). Nonetheless, in broad terms, the value of Durkheim's work is that it grounds sociological analysis in a form of social realism that takes seriously the human basis of religion, society and culture (see Jones 1999). More specifically, whether sociologists are inclined to agree with the details of his arguments or not, he reminds them that however significant a particular set of historically variable institutions, ideas or processes might appear to be, they have to be assessed in relation to more basic questions about what it is to be human. In this regard, it is clear that Durkheim's understanding of religion, culture and society offers an important challenge to many contemporary accounts of the information age, not least because it throws into sharp relief their highly questionable assumptions regarding the "post-human" direction of the world.