Durkheim, the Durkheimians, and the Arts

The first part of this fascinating treatment deals with Durkheim's own exploration of art, the next on the reflections of other Durkheimians on Durkheim. The contributors cover art and The Elemental Forms, the arts and the moral sword, festivals as elements of effervescence and institutions, the power of imagination and the economy of desire, Dostoevsky in the mirror of Durkheim, l'annee sociollogique and art, Mauss and the division of isolation and totality, Halbwach's Kansas City jazz and the language of music, Levi-Strauss and art and classification, Leiris and the search for myths, Bataillle and the aesthetics and ethics of the negative, and Bataille contra Wagner. Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Alexander Tristan Riley is Professor of Sociology at Bucknell University. With the aid of the late Philippe Besnard, he edited the war correspondence of Robert Hertz, Un ethnologue dans les tranchees. He is the author of Godless Intellectuals?: The Intellectual Pursuit of the Sacred Reinvented (Berghahn Books, 2010) and currently he is contemplating a book on literary autobiography, cultural sociology, and the writing of Michel Leiris.