SOCY 101 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Human Events
16 Apr 2019
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Document Summary
Religion is the system of beliefs, practices and values shared by a group of people. Durkheim claimed that all religions drive the universe into two categories: sacred - those things that are set apart, holy: and knowable only through extraordinary experience, profane - that which is ordinary; knowable through normal empirical observation. The sacred - what is of ultimate concern. You can come to believe that anything is sacred -a deity, a place a particular (jerusalem) time or season (ramadan), an idea, a rock, a tree, a flag. The sacred is treated with respect, and you relation to it is often defined in rituals. Rituals: a set of regularly repated, prescribed and traditional behaviors that serve to symbolize some value belief. Rituals are enacted during ceremonies and festivals - example funerals and weddings or other rites of passage. Rites of passage: rituals that surround major transitions in life, birth, puberty, marriage, death.
