Durkheim, Development and the Devil: A Cultural Sociology of Community Conflict

Authors

  • Mervyn Horgan University of Guelph

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.29173/cjs19024

Keywords:

Sacred/Profane, Solidarity, Civil Society, Rural Space

Abstract

Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life provides a theory of the eminently social processes by which people, places, times and things come to be seen as sacred or profane. He demonstrates how the sacred is a locus of collectivization essential to the formation of the solidaristic bonds that characterize a moral community. Recent work in cultural sociology suggests that the mobilization of the binary discourse of civil society—the sacred/profane—is key to democratic deliberation in the public sphere (Alexander 2006). Drawing on participant observation, local media resources, and printed and online materials, this paper examines the deployment of this binary discourse in a conflict around the rezoning of agricultural land in rural Nova Scotia (2009-2011). Substantively, this case demonstrates how the symbolic coding of rural/agricultural space as sacred played a significant role in the rejection of the proposed rezoning. At a theoretical level, this paper reaffirms that the Durkheimian vision of the symbolic power of the sacred remains a core cultural resource in social organization and political mobilization, and a vital conceptual resource in sociological analysis.

Author Biography

Mervyn Horgan, University of Guelph

Assistant Professor & Graduate Program Coordinator

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Published

2014-12-30

Issue

Vol. 39 No. 4 (2014): Special Issue: Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life: Contemporary Engagements

Section

Group II: Creative Deployments and Contemporary Analyses

License

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