Émile Durkheim et la sociologie des religions

Abstract

This article examines Henri Hubert and Marcel Mauss’s Essay on the nature and function of sacrifice, published in the second volume of L'Année sociologique edited by Durkheim. By focussing on the comparative method used by Hubert and Mauss to compare the civilisations of ancient India and Israel, we can trace how Durkheim gradually elaborated upon the sociology of religions and the subject of sacrifice. Two sociological concepts are used to analyse this intellectual exchange. First, the notion of ‘configuration’, following Norbert Elias, that is understood as a space of mutual dependence and interaction in which authors, journals, disciplines and academic institutions participate. Second, the notion of ‘a conversational space’, borrowed from Erving Goffman, that formed among Émile Durkheim, Marcel Mauss, Henri Hubert and Sylvain Lévi. We contend that the writing and thinking of sacrifice in Hubert and Mauss’s essay was marked by the different backgrounds to which these four scholars belonged—three Jews and one Christian—while at the same time they were committed in the name of justice and equality to the defence of Captain Dreyfus, seen as an ‘expiatory victim’.