ABSTRACT
Emile Durkheim established sociology in France, laid the methodological foundation of the field, and developed a specific perspective of modern society. According to Durkheim, the values of liberty, equality, and fraternity in the decades after the French Revolution could no longer find a secure home in France the political circumstances with changing regimes were too unstable. For Durkheim, there is no automatism of the rise in the division of labor to successful organic solidarity. He developed the circular argument that the worship of the sacred is a social, and that the sacred traces back to the collective function of the worship: religion equals society. On the other hand, in the development of his work particularly in the post-war period after Durkheim's death Mauss increasingly diverged from a religious theory of society and instead aimed at a symbol theory of society. The concept of mana, developed in the text about magic, shows clear differences to Durkheim's concept of the sacred.
