DURKHEIM AND RELIGION

Durkheim's later work concerned religion. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life was published in 1912. Two important things come out from this:
 1. Culture has a social origin.
 2. The world is divided into the "sacred" and the "profane"
  (a division between the religious and the secular)

By sacred things one must not simply understand those personal things which are called gods or spirits: a rock, a tree, a spring, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred.
(E. Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Live, 1912, cited Haralambos, Sociology: Themes and Perspectives, 5th edn., 2000, page 432; 6th edn., 2004, page 406.)

In simple societies, the collective conscience is strong, with shared moral beliefs and values for society. But Durkheim does not use culture (in the sense of the behaviour and material artifacts of a society)  with reference to what he called the collective conscience.

The totality of beliefs and sentiments common to average citizens of the same society forms a determinate system which has its own life; one may call it the "collective conscience".
(Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society, [originally published 1893] quoted from 1947 edition, Haralambros, Sociology Themes and Perspectives, 2000 edn., page 887).

In societies characterised by what Durkheim called "mechanical solidarity", those with little division of labour, there is a relatively uniform culture.

In more complex societies, with greater division of labour where the social process evolves into the more sophisticated mechanical solidarity, a shared culture is still necessary but is less strong. These societies have two distinct defects:
 1. individualism  leading to egotism
 2. meaninglessness leading to  "anomie"