『宗教生活の原初形態』における「俗」の位置

デュルケーム宗教社会学の動学化のために

抄録

　This article reconsiders Emile Durkheim's sociology of religion in The Elementary Forms of The Religious Life (1912) for the purpous of theoretical study of social change. Often criticized as 'being static', his work nevertheless contains 'dynamic' elements, which leads us to find a keystone for a social change theory.
　In The Elementary Forms, Durkheim finds the origin of religious and social life through the study of the ethnographic material on the Australian Aborigines. It is in the state of 'collective effervescence', that new ideas emerge and the members feel morally strengthened. This process could be called the creative/re-creative function, and this creative function could be related to 'dynamic' social change.
　Although Durkheim's sociology of religion has 'dynamic' elements, from a theoretical point of view, there are obstacles for the study of social change. The most serious one is that 'the sacred' has theoretical priority over 'the profane'. The religious beliefs and practices among the Aborigines are classified in terms of this dichotomy which Durkheim attempted to explain by linking the sacred to 'society' and the profane to 'individual' life. His description of Aboriginal social life centered on their beliefs and practices that concerned 'the sacred', because of his main forcus, 'social solidarity'.
　But for the study of social change, his unbalanced dichotomy must be reformed by emphasising 'the profane' in each phases - beliefs, practices and so on - of religious life. Through this rectification of Durkheim's unbalanced dichotomy, we can thus reconstruct theoretical position of 'the sacred' and 'the profane', and explain how the 'collective effervescence' occurs.