Durkheim’s herbarium: Situating Arnold van Gennep’s review of Émile Durkheim’s The elementary forms of the religious life

This introductory article situates Arnold van Gennep’s review of Émile Durkheim’s The elementary forms of the religious life. It does so by relating the review to van Gennep’s much-neglected endeavor to establish methodological foundations for the emerging social sciences in the early twentieth century, in open contrast to Durkheim and the Durkhemian school of anthropology and sociology. It also contextualizes the review by revisiting earlier publications where van Gennep decisively went up against Durkheim’s approach to religion
and society. The article finally suggests that Arnold van Gennep must be considered a founding figure of ethnographic theory, of relevance still today.