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Abstract
In their highly influential push for a “strong program” in Cultural Sociology, Jeffrey Alexander and Philip Smith argue for deep cultural codes of “good” versus “evil,” which they equate to the “sacred” versus the “profane,” respectively. However, Dmitry Kurakin argued that, in equating the “good” with Durkheim’s “sacred” and “evil” with the “profane,” Alexander and Smith depart from Durkheim’s original meaning where both good and evil are part of the sacred. While I agree with Kurakin on this, I critique his subsequent interpretation of Durkheim on the “ambiguity of the sacred” and hold he has not adequately addressed what difference this correction makes for the strong program. In contrast, I argue that the real problem of ambiguity, as well as for the strong program, lies with the profane rather than the sacred – it is what Durkheim saw as profane that gets omitted from the strong program’s analyses via its conflation of the “profane” with “evil.” I conclude with a discussion of how, by bringing the profane back in, we can expand and deepen the analysis of culture beyond “the times of tension, unease, and crisis” emphasized by Alexander and Smith.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).
Notes
1 The explicit linkage between the good and bad, and Durkheim’s sacred and profane, is not as frequent in their later pronouncements of the “strong program” but is still present (see e.g., Alexander and Smith Citation2003a: 15; 2019: 13, 16), and the “codes” continue to be posed in terms of “good” versus “evil.”
2 The present author made this same argument regarding Alexander and Smith’s treatment of “evil” as “profane” in a paper presented at the Canadian Congress of Social Sciences and the Humanities/Canadian Sociological Association Annual Meetings, in Calgary, Alberta, Canada, May 28 – June 3, in 2016. Unfortunately, I had not yet seen Kurakin’s article at the time of this presentation. Kurakin (Citation2015: 381) further notes that the misunderstanding in which “good/evil” is equated with “sacred/profane,” respectively, is more widespread than in Alexander and Smith’s argument.
3 That said, I do believe there is a contribution to Durkheimian scholarship implied in what follows, building in part on [Weyher Citation2012]. This contribution is being developed separately; to pursue it here is beyond the scope of this paper and would detract from my argument regarding the strong program.
4 To my knowledge, while Alexander and Smith have acknowledged Kurakin’s critique regarding Durkheim, they have not issued any more systematic response to it (see Alexander and Smith Citation2019: 18). In his book Durkheim and After, Smith (Citation2020: 47, 81–5, 161–63, 186–94) gives more attention to this discrepancy without, however, truly addressing how Durkheim’s “profane” (which Smith acknowledges meant “the mundane, the ordinary, the everyday, the utilitarian, the unremarkable, the practical, and the functional” (2020: 47)) should be integrated into the strong program and its emphasis on binary codes of “good” and “evil,” if the latter is seen as part of the sacred rather than as “profane.” For Smith, “Whether the reading [of Durkheim] is correct is a moot point, … the fact remains that this interpretation was motivational and was to become influential and widely shared in the next three decades” (2020: 187). While I appreciate this influence, I do not feel it is “moot” to ask about what was left out as a result.
5 In what follows, I present further evidence from Durkheim to again provide context for the reader and to illustrate how clear Durkheim is on this, and thus how different Alexander and Smith’s position is. However, I repeat that this is not intended to be a contribution to Durkheimian scholarship, for which the inclusion of both good and evil within the sacred is well understood and documented. Building on prior work (Weyher Citation2012), my analysis of the “profane” later in this paper may constitute a contribution to Durkheimian scholarship; however, a full elaboration of this in relation to the literature on Durkheim goes beyond the scope of this paper and will be developed separately.
6 Note, I focus my discussion here on Kurakin’s interpretation of the “ambiguity of the sacred” and of the “impure sacred” within this. As a result, there are other points in Kurakin’s article that I do not address (such as his turn to more recent Durkheimian scholars like Mary Douglas, Victor Turner, and Rene Girard, in order to further develop his conception of the “impure” and the “ambiguity” that results from it). Since I disagree with his interpretation of Durkheim on these fundamental ideas, I feel this difference must be addressed first. Further discussion of subsequent developments besides those of the strong program go beyond the scope of this paper and must be postponed.
7 Throughout, Kurakin (Citation2015) refers to the “two modes” of the “sacred,” the “pure” and “impure.” Notably, the one place where he refers to the possibility of other “modes,” is in considering how emotions relate to the sacred and here he questions why such other modes don’t exist for Durkheim: “If there are special modes of the sacred which stem from pleasure and sadness, why aren’t there also any other modes concerned with other kinds of emotions…?” (2015: 385). As I address later, the reference to “pleasure and sadness” here conforms to his understanding of “pure” and “impure,” respectively. That there are “other [forms]” of “sacred” and accompanying emotions is also addressed in what follows.
8 It is interesting to note that, in a later essay “On the Social Construction of Moral Universals: The ‘Holocaust’ from War Crime to Trauma Drama,” Alexander has indicated that there are some “evils” so extreme that they are, in fact, sacred (Alexander Citation2003b: 50), rather than profane. Here, he discusses the “Holocaust” as a “sacred-evil” – an evil so “inexplicable” that it must be “set apart from ordinary evil” (which, implicitly, remains profane, though he does not mention the profane here for comparison). However, this only seems to apply to extremes. Elsewhere in the same book, Alexander returns to the conflation of “evil” with the “profane.” (e.g., 2003c: 110; Alexander and Smith Citation2003b: 124).
9 Though in a relative sense, this could be said to encompass all the other aspects, as Durkheim implied in the previously discussed footnote.
10 Since Durkheim does use the “pure” and “impure” as opposites elsewhere, Kurakin has grounds for interpreting them as he does. However, that Durkheim doesn’t consistently do so raises grounds for other interpretations. I make the case for my own reading of Durkheim on this issue based on how this fits together with my understanding of Durkheim’s overall theory and argument, as well as what this allows us to see or do when looking at culture today. For the latter, how either interpretation works in relation to the cultural codes emphasized by Alexander and Smith is a key factor, since the conflation of “evil” with the “profane” is a starting point for both Kurakin’s and my own argument.
11 It is possible that Kurakin got the association between “positive” and “negative” rites with positive and negative emotions, respectively, from the following passage in Durkheim: “No matter how greatly the actions they involve may differ from one another, the various positive rites just reviewed have one feature in common: They are all carried out with confidence, joy, and enthusiasm” (1995: 392). However, Durkheim continues: “But there are sad ceremonies as well…” (ibid.); “But mourning consists of more than prohibitions to be respected. Positive acts are required…” (1995: 393, italics added). These passages make clear that the “sad ceremonies” Durkheim discusses here still fall under the category of “positive rites.”
12 Such a reduction into a simple calculus of “pleasure” versus “pain” also characterizes the Utilitarian position which Durkheim also critiqued and regularly sought to distinguish from his own position.
13 On this general level, Kurakin (Citation2015) and I agree. We disagree, however, on how this collective emotional basis relates to the “impure sacred,” how that then impacts the “ambiguity of the sacred,” and, most importantly, where that then leaves the “profane” in cultural analysis. Kurakin mainly addresses the profane via “transgression.”
14 For Durkheim, this inequality of concepts can be seen most clearly in his discussion of the “categories of understanding” that comprise “reason” (1995: 13–17; for further development of this point, see Weyher [Citation2012]).
15 “Mundane” might have been a better term for Durkheim’s “profane,” in light of its linkage to the “ordinary” and “routine” aspects of “everyday life” (see also Pickering 1984: 137). It is worth noting that Alexander and Smith (Citation1993: 202n36; see also Alexander Citation2003c: 252n3) cite Roger Caillois, who, they claim, “pointed out [that] in his later work Durkheim systematically fails to distinguish among the sacred, the profane, and the routine” (in Man and the Sacred (Citation1959 [1939]). Unfortunately, no specific page numbers are given for this point in Caillois.
16 Part of this sense of being “driven” is that, under the circumstances (whatever they may be) we feel we can no longer remain in our comfortable and relatively “free” bubble of everyday life (the profane world) but must, instead, set that temporarily aside in order to deal with more pressing or more weighty issues. In other words, under the circumstances we cannot go on with “business as usual.”.
17 Except to the extent that these different kinds of “sacred” are viewed as “profane” relative to each other.
18 NOTE: While regularly alluded to, such emotive dimensions have not been the subject of any systematic theorizing or elaboration. This is an important area for further research which I am developing separately.
19 For another approach that suggests a similar conclusion, see Hilbert’s (1991) discussion of “The Ethnomethodological Recovery of Durkheim” – Garfinkelian “breaching experiments” illustrate the latent presence of the “sacred” within the taken-for-granted structures of everyday life whenever the latter are broken. See Weyher (Citation2012) for further discussion.
20 If I am right, then, Durkheim here anticipates work in the Sociology of Emotions by scholars who emphasize that much of how emotions work in social life occurs at a less than conscious, or at a “tacit” level (see, e.g., Jack Barbalet Citation1998; Randall Collins Citation1990; Citation2004; Thomas Scheff Citation1988).
21 In his 2001 Presidential Address to the ASA, Doug Massey (Citation2002) argues that “emotional cultures” not only long preceded but made possible later “linguistic ones” in the evolution of human societies (see also Turner Citation2000, Citation2007).
22 There is a parallel here with the necessity of selection that cultural anthropologists such as Benedict and Geertz as well as cognitive sociologists such as Zerubavel have emphasized for culture. Perhaps this is also a version of Simmel’s “blasé attitude,” where we need to not sense, and certainly not be aware of everything in order to get on with anything in life without burning out.
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L. Frank Weyher
Dr. L. Frank Weyher completed his doctorate in Sociology at the University of California-Los Angeles and is currently an Associate Professor of Sociology at Kansas State University. His current research focuses on the role of emotions in social life, culture, and social theory. Together with Maurice Zeitlin, he was awarded a Distinguished Contribution to Scholarship Award, Honorable Mention, from the American Sociological Association’s Political Sociology Section (for their 2001, AJS article, “Black and White, Unite and Fight”).