Maryanski has undertaken to critically review accumulated data from various sources including evolutionary biology, primatology, and comparative history…as she methodically retraces Durkheim shedding light on the origin of the mysterious force that transforms human individualism into a collective community...Readers of Émile Durkheim and the Birth of the Gods will find it an essential new, must sociological reading.
Edward A. Tiryakian, Professor Emeritus of Sociology, Duke University, from the Foreword
This is an important book. Maryanski shows that the evolutionary record of human ancestors and relatives needed a mechanism that would turn very loosely organized, in many respects individualistic and a-social apes, into the strong-yet-flexible ties that have made up the history of human societies. It could not have happened by building on ape family structures, since these lacked strong ties across and within the generations. Humans took a different route by developing emotional rituals that generate symbols of membership, thus providing a flexible tool for building societies of many different kinds. Maryanski uses evidence of biology and animal researchers in a new and impressive way to show how humans interact emotionally and cognitively to create socially shared institutions. This is an important theoretical broadening of human evolution, beyond the slow mechanism of genetic selection, and the usual focus on individual psychology: how humans acting together developed a mechanism to create and change social structure.
Randall Collins, Emeritus Professor of Sociology, University of Pennsylvania
This is a brilliant, original and challenging contribution to the sociology of religion and to our understanding of social life. It is essential reading for scholars and graduate students in sociology, anthropology, and religion. Using convincing data Maryanski sheds fresh light on Durkheim’s quest to provide a scientific explanation of the roots of religion and the central part it plays in the roots of human sociality.
Kenneth Thompson, Emerius Professor, The Open University
A scintillating effort to put Durkheim into conversation with contemporary knowledge from paleoanthropology, primatology, evolutionary biology and sociobiology. Maryanski proves there is still gold to be mined in the oeuvre of this venerable founding father.
Alexander Riley, Professor of Sociology, Bucknell University
