says Durkheim, are concurrent with those of society. Rejecting alternative versions of religion’s origin – such as those of projection favoured by Marx and others relating to dreams – Durkheim argues that religion arises as a discursive and practical expression of human sociality. In making his case, Durkheim uses now contested fieldwork data gathered by others working with aboriginal groups in Australia and elsewhere. Durkheim uses this material because he believed the ‘primitive’ and ‘simple’ religiosity practised by aboriginal groups to be the closest thing to religion as it was when it actually emerged.3 Durkheim also draws on data generated by others working with indigenous groups in North America and Melanesia. Despite their apparent variations, Durkheim concludes, the different kinds of religious symbols and rituals used by these groups actually serve to express the same underlying social dynamics which make human society possible. In effect, religion is ‘above all a system of notions by which individuals imagine the society to which they belong and their obscure yet intimate relations with that society’ (2001, pp. 170–1).
Believing these indigenous cultures to be living laboratories of social and religious evolution, Durkheim argues that their simple structures and primitive processes show most clearly the ways in which religion emerges as the symbolic and practical representation of collective, societal dynamics. By virtue of their everyday involvement in social interaction, and subject to the overarching dynamics of societal forces, individuals experience life as derived from and dependent upon something not just outside of but also greater than themselves. While we – by virtue of our advanced knowledge – know this something to be ‘society’, primitive cultures attribute their feelings of derivation and dependence to supernatural forces or entities perceived to give rise to rather than originate from the social world. In such a way, life comes to be seen as a gift from a power greater than ourselves, and humankind regards itself as indebted – and thereby morally obligated – to supernatural forces or entities who claim acknowledgement, merit thanks and may, at times, demand some form of personal abnegation. Society, claims Durkheim:
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