ABSTRACT
Under the influence of Durkheim and Radcliffe-Brown, some students of modern society have learned to look for the symbolic meaning of any given social practice and for the contribution of the practice to the integrity and solidarity of the group that employs it. However, in directing their attention away from the individual to the group, these students seem to have neglected a theme that is presented in Durkheim’s chapter on the soul. 1 There he suggests that the individual’s personality can be seen as one apportionment of the collective mana, and that (as he implies in later chapters), the rites performed to representations of the social collectivity will sometimes be performed to the individual himself.
