Scholars of the social sciences and religion take up Emile Durkheim's (1858-1917) central premise in the sociology of religion: that religion is a social form that continues to define a mode of human communications and connectedness. They continue to test it in multiple contexts with different bodies of evidence and drawing on many theoretical and historical critiques. Among the topics are civil religion and the moral reconstruction of China, performative aspects of youth militia in Serra Leone, an archaeological retrospective on Durkheim and the primitive mind, whether individual is to collective as Freud is to Durkheim, and three incommensurate histories of a collaborator's rebellion in the colonial Sudan. Annotation ©2014 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)