INTRODUCTION The essay will asses Durkheim and Geertz differ greatly in their approaches Durkheim religion is society

y Geertz religion is humanity

DURKHEIM Regards religion as the means through which the clan expresses its being in a society A religion is a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to the sacred things (Durkheim and Giddens, 1972:224) People experience society as a force outside themselves, extrinsic, imposing rules of thought and behavior which they explain in terms of God and religious forces God is society, writ large God is nothing more but the symbolic expression of society; without is god wouldnt exist (Durkheim 1968:171). god is the creation of society A society is quite capable of arousing the sensation of the divine, simply by its influence over the minds of its members (Durkheim 1968:154). without society religion would not exist inter-social factors have given birth to the religious sentiment (Durkheim and Giddens 1972:220). society have birth to religion when man act under the influence of the society they feel as they are part of a whole Sacred beings exist only when they are represented as such in the mind the sacred is sacred only because we gave them this characteristic; the existence of gods depends upon human thought at the base of religion stands the formation of society, people created religion Society is constantly creating new sacred things (Durkheim 1968:160). Religious force is constructed though the feelings the collective moral beings arouses (Durkheim 1968:168), but these forces are not inherent, but come from the outside, are extrinsic, come from society Religious force becomes objectified by being anchored in an object which then becomes sacred (Durkheim 1968:174) the totem TOTEM TALLENSI Durkheim saw totemism as the original and simplest form of religion

The totemic principle is mana, the symbol of society The totem is the source of action, the visible body of the god; nothing but the clan (Durkheim 1968:166). The totem is a useful rallying point because it expresses the social unity in a material form so that it makes it tangible to everyone More meaning is placed on the totemic emblem than on the clan, as the totem acts like a flag, an object which acts to symbolize the clan itself (Durkheim 1968:165) The totemic emblem becomes the permanent, stable element of social life crocodiles are the incarnation of important clan ancestors (Fortes 1973:258) In some context and some situations, a crocodile from a certain special place is a person For Fortes totemism is the special relations of a ritual character between defined social groups and species of animals ; the men were in closer relations to animals than the plants or the sun, the moon While religious force, as embodied in the totem seems external to the individuals and transcendent, it is also true that, like the clan it symbolizes, this force can be realized only in and through those individuals (Durkheim 1968:167). the division between sacred and profane is socially constructed; the sacred became sacred because society invested it with this quality RITUAL AVATIP A man who experiences such sentiments feels that he is dominated by forces which he does not recognize as his own and which he is not the master of, but is led by *+. He feels himself in a world quite distinct from that of his own (Durkheim and Giddens 1972:228). Moments of collective ferment men himself becomes other; he is moved by passions so intense that they can be assuaged only by violent, extreme acts of superhuman heroism or bloody barbarism (Durkheim 1968:158) feeling possessed and led by some external power that makes him think and act differently from normal times, he naturally feels he is no longer himself (Durkheim 1968:163-164). Avatip religion centers on the male initiatory cult Avatip concepts of aggression are not from an innate drive held in check by normative constrains, but of a temporary ritual transformation of self (Harrisons 1989:583) They define sociality in an alternative way as based on inequalities of a ritually-conceived power deriving from a male initiatory cult (Harrisons 1989:583) a state of war *is+ a conceived permanent relation between the cult-spirits and other mystical agencies (Harrisons 1989:585) war is conceived as above all a ritual relationship between villages the war state is the ritual state

Warfare violent form of sociality (Harrisons 1989:585) Avatip distinguish two aspects of the person two counter posed conceptions of sociality (Harrisons, 1989:586): Understanding the ability to engage in every-day life sociality sacred and mundane Spirit their Spirits become active when they went to war; they undergo a change in their personalities profane and ritual Man speak of war magic as having induced in them a state of dissociation in which they become capable of extreme, indiscriminate violence, a kind of trance-state in which their only thoughts were of homicide (Harrisons 1989:588) a man in such a state of exaltation no longer knows himself; he easily loses self-control (Durkheim 1968:162-163); he feels filled to overflowing with an overabundance of forces, he feels dominated by a moral power that is larger than he is (Durkheim 1968:158). For them aggression is a form of communicative action (Harrison 1989:590), is social.

GEERTZ A religion is a system of symbols which acts to establish powerful, pervasive and long-lasting moods and motivations in men by formulating conceptions of a general order of existence and clothing these conceptions with such an aura of factuality that the moods and motivations seem uniquely realistic (Geertz 1973:90). Culture acts to make sense of the world through symbols and meanings CULTURAL SYSTEM Religion is made up of symbols which contain power and create an order for the group while making people believe it to be factual and realistic. The symbols make people believe that the world we see around us and all our beliefs are true and real. Religion acts to create a stable environment for people; it helps them to keep them sane, to be part of the culture. SYMBOLS Create a religious system, connecting the worldview (the way we see the world) and ethos (the way we live in it). Symbols are tangible formulations of notions *+ concrete embodiments of ideas, attitudes (Geertz 1973:91). Symbols are something extrinsic that shapes our behavior; they give men moods and motivations; they function to interpret reality.

the symbols shape the worlds climate by inducing in the worshipper a certain distinctive set of dispositions (Geertz 1973:90) cockfights? Men depend upon symbols (Geertz 1973:99), they need religion to keep them sane, part of the culture, helps them cope with and undermine Chaos (Geertz 1973:100), to make sense of the world they live in. All symbols have meanings given by the men himself. They convey some message to us about the nature of our world, they teach us to see and understand our world in a particular way, they shape our experience; they communicate something about our worldview; they give us a message about how to respond to our experience, they tell us how to live and how we ought to live; they communicate something about our ethos. Azande tribe Common sense acceptance of the world and its symbols For Geertz, ritual is consecrated behavior, where the world men live in and the world they imagine fuse, through symbols, into the same world (Geertz 1973:112); is the symbolic fusion of ethos and worldview Religion shapes the social order (Geertz 1973:119), affirms that the life we live in is comprehensible and we are not living in total Chaos. People come to accept the reality, the worldview, by doing and performing certain acts participating in religious rituals. Therefore, rituals help men to make sense of the world; they make him believe in religious reality. Geertz suggests that every group and every individual may have a religion, even if no one in that group believes in god or the afterlife. Every group has a religion because every group has some overall framework that all its members share in common, to make sense out of life and guide behaviour. Each of us encounters times of crisis, when we have to endure some kind of suffering. Religious symbols help men to make the pain more endurable and cope with it, even if they do not give clear explanation for it; they only affirm that there are answers. Returning to the same symbol men have created gives them moods and motivations. Moods are the way we feel about the world and respond to it and motives are our values, the things we aspire to. A ritual is a way of acting out a symbol The most important function of ritual is to convince men that our worldview and way of life are true and good. BALINESE COCKFIGHT One of the most famous analysis of rituals, but does not deal with religious ritual

Only participants who fully understand all the symbolic nuances of the fight are the central betters, who are places at the inner circle near the fight itself. Only they engage in what Geertz calls deep play, which may be a euphemism for religious communion. cockfights are rituals Cocks: bearers of meaning, their symbol; embodiment of beliefs Cockfights are the Balinese way of life (Geertz 1973:414) Cocks are symbolic expressions *+ of their owners self (Geertz 1973:419) Cockfight as a sociological entity (Geertz 1973:424), a means of expression (Geertz 1973:444) The cockfight gives the Balinese a understanding of them, is what defines them as a clan (Geertz 1973:447) Motivations: assorts humans into fixed hierarchical ranks and organizes the whole existence/organization of the clan around it (Geertz 1973:448-449), to pacift ravenous and cannibal hunger (Geertz 1973:420) Moods: hatred, cruelty, drama, violence and death, all resented during the cockfight (Geertz 1973:420) AZANDE Witchcraft is emergent from malice, jealousy, and pettiness of neighbors and affines and causes illness, accident and even death Witchcraft is an individual trait (Evans-Pritchard 1976:4), like religion is to Geertz witchcraft is an everyday matter emerging from everyday emotions Witchcraft is a classification of misfortunes which while differing from each other in other respects have this single common character, their harmfulness to man (1965a *1937+: 64). Witches, as the Azande conceive them, clearly cannot exist (Evans-Pritchard 1976:18). witches are only in the imagination, in the mind of the Zande people; they created it. Witchcraft is something in the body of witches, quite impersonal. Granaries do not fall on and crush people as a consequence of physical processes unless caused to by witchcraft; bananas do not make one ill unless one is bewitched. But this is their beliefs, their religion, and can be explained in real life. We have a notion of an ordered world conforming to what we call natural laws, but some people in our society believe that mysterious things can happen, which cannot be accounted for by reference to natural laws and which therefore are held to transcend them, and we call these happening supernatural. To us supernatural means very much the same as abnormal and extraordinary. Azande certainly have no such notions of reality. They have no conception of natural as we understand it, and therefore neither of the supernatural as we understand it. Witchcraft is to Azande an ordinary and not an extraordinary event (Evans-Pritchard 1976:30). CONCLUSION

BIBLIOGRAPHY Durkheim, E. 1968 [1915]. The elementary forms of religious life. London: George Allen and Unwin Ltd. Durkheim, E. and Giddens, A. 1972. Emile Durkheim: selected writings. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press Evans-Pritchard, E. E. 1976. Witchcraft, Oracles and Magic among the Azande. Orford: Clarendon Press Fortes, M. 1973. On the Concept of the Person among the Tallensi in Dieterlen G. (ed.) La Notion de la Personne en Afrique Noire. Paris: Editions du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique Geertz, C. 1973. The interpretations of cultures. New York: Basic Books Harrison, S. 1989. The Symbolic construction of Aggression and War in a Sepik River Society in Man, New Series. Vol. 24, No. 4 (Dec. 1989)