Tagged: group behavior

nmccoy1   Recently, CNN reported on the case of a woman in Papa New Guinea being burned alive for witchcraft (see below).  Aside from the echoes to our own history of witch hunts, this case also highlights the collective effervescence, specifically religious, of which Durkheim was interested.  According to Durkheim, group energies can culminate in a kind of frenetic moment and can itself construct a collective reality.  This effervescence marks the delineation of the space between a heightened collective experience...