Abstract
We can profit from the disagreement between Mauss and Durkheim over two questions concerning Durkheim's theory of religion. (a) Durkheim's reflections on religion arrive at an ontology of the sacred (“virage essentialiste”). Mauss, on the contrary, believes that the mana is a more comprehensive category than the sacred, and more useful for the study of non-semitic religions (such as the Chinese). (b) Does a religious feeling exist? Durkheim, who follows William James's psychological theory, thinks so. Mauss, however, believes that religious feeling does not exist as such, but comprises collective and immanent feelings only. The consequence of this is to displace Durkheim's theory of the sacred. Mauss's disagreement with Durkheim about those two central points was not open, so the theory of the sacred became the “normal paradigm” (in Thomas Kuhn's sense) of the sociology of religion. This “normal paradigm” (socio-religion, in José A. Prades's term) is more suited to an explanation of the religious phenomena of traditional society than it is able to define the specific concerns of postmodern society. Between Mauss and Durkhem, who is right? Georg Simmel proposes a relational sociology - not a relativistic one - which offers new and interesting insights concerning many phenomena of the modern and postmodern society: from money to fashion; from the urban way of life to the arts; from group dynamics to social conflicts. A relational sociology of religion may be the starting-point for a profitable analysis of religious phenomena in postmodern society.