Practice question · Multiple choice
Durkheim's account of totemic ritual has been called both profound and unfalsifiable. What is the claim, and where is the difficulty?
Hints
- Ask what evidence would count against the claim.
- The participants say they worship the totem. Does the theory allow their testimony to settle it?
Show the answer
D. That in worshipping the totem the group worships itself
Why
The theory reads the symbol as society misrecognised, so participants' denials are precisely what it predicts, which makes it powerful and hard to test. Collective effervescence remains one of the most productive ideas in the sociology of religion, and its unfalsifiability is the standing objection to it.
Practise Religion, Myth, and Ritual
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More questions on Religion, Myth, and Ritual
- Order the moments of an initiation as a rite of passage.
- Match each theorist to their signature idea about religion.
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- Why did Durkheim conclude that totemic ritual is not really about the emblem animal at all?
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- Van Gennep published _Les rites de passage_, naming the three-phase structure, in which year? Set the slider.
- Which are functions anthropologists attribute to ritual?
- Order the steps of Frazer’s imitative-magic logic, as an analyst would reconstruct it.