Can anyone define Emile Durkheim's "collective myth" theory?

Question

I want to find information about the "collective myth" concept that I believe the French Sociologist named Emile Durkheim developed.

I have searched for it online as well as in history textbooks and I cannot find any information regarding it. If anyone knows about this, history majors, political science majors, even philosophy, or sociology majors please let me know any information about this.

Thank you!

Answer 1

Durkheim was more famous for his theory of anomie, meaning a lack of norms in society.

Norms are what is commonly believed by the majority of a society.  Things such as religion, myths, legends, ideals, politics, reason and logic.

We have become so diversified in the development of society that there are no longer any common beliefs.

Answer 2

Anomie

A term coined by French sociologist Emile Durkheim in the late 19th century. The literal meaning is 'without law'. Durkheim used it to explain how crime spreads when social control of individual behavior has become ineffective, and, later, to explain why individuals commit suicide. In both cases, anomie is a state of low morale arising from the absence of conventions, shared perceptions and goals. The term implies that conformity to norms is natural and normal; that resistance is pathological.

http://imomus.com/thought300501.html

Along with Herbert Spencer, Durkheim was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in keeping the society healthy and balanced, and is thus sometimes seen as a precursor to functionalism. Durkheim also insisted that society was more than the sum of its parts. Thus unlike his contemporaries Ferdinand Tönnies and Max Weber, he focused not on what motivates the actions of individual people (methodological individualism), but rather on the study of social facts, a term which he coined to describe phenomena which have an existence in and of themselves and are not bound to the actions of individuals. He argued that social facts had an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that composed society and could only be explained by other social facts rather than, say, by society's adaptation to a particular climate or ecological niche.

Finally, Durkheim is remembered for his work on 'primitive' (i.e. non-Western) people in books such as his 1912 volume Elementary Forms of the Religious Life and the essay Primitive Classification that he wrote with Marcel Mauss. These works examine the role that religion and mythology have in shaping the worldview and personality of people in extremely (to use Durkheim's phrase) 'mechanical' societies. In Elementary Forms of the Religious Life Durkheim develops a theory of religion which is based on Collective Effervescence.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emile_Durkh...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Collective_...

"Collective effervescence">>>> NOT<<<< "collective myth"

Collective effervescence is the basis for Émile Durkheim's theory of religion as laid out in his 1912 volume Elementary Forms of the Religious Life. This book is largely based on studies of the aboriginal tribes.

http://strix.org.uk/posts/Collective-Eff...

Hope This Helps .... Good Luck