Marx's Alienation
It is 7:30 AM on Monday morning and much of corporate America is beginning to get dressed for work. Suits are no longer necessary in the workplace, since many companies and organizations have shifted toward "business casual" attire. Everyday is now "casual day" and instead a sport jacket, as it has so cleverly been labeled, is appropriate. A tie is no longer essential and a suit is a bit too much for the business casual environment, but a sport jacket, sport coat, or blazer as it is commonly referred to, is quite befitting. Whether black, brown, blue, gray, plaid, or even green, the sport jacket has become an everyday accouterment, yet we hardly ever take notice to what it has come to symbolize and mean in both the daily life of corporate America and the realm of professional golf. On the first weekend in April of each year, at the claimed Augusta National Golf Club in Augusta, Georgia, one man is deemed the champion of one of sports most prestigious tournaments, the Masters. The Masters is the culmination of the golfing season for professional golfers around the world, and there is perhaps no other sporting event that has as rich a tradition. The golfing season consists of many tournaments, yet none
One way to understand how and why professional golf's "green jacket" falls under the category of the sacred is by looking at Emile Durkheim's theory of the sacred and the profane, with regard to religion. As a seminal figure in functionalist theory, he regarded religion as of vital importance in all societies, as it provided a key function in assisting social cohesion. He was concerned with what religion was in addition to the role it played in human society. To Durkheim, religion was a "social thing" par excellence outside of each individual. It was simply waiting for him or her at birth to help shape the individual into society. Durkheim saw religion as related to a radical division of all human experiences, the sacred and the profane. According to Durkheim, at the root of this theory are beliefs and rites. Beliefs, according to Durkheim, are "representations that express the nature of sacred things and their relations with other sacred things or with profane things." Rites are simply "rules of conduct that prescribe how one must conduct him or her self with sacred things" (Fields, 38). Durkheim believed that beliefs are collectively shared by a definite group that purports them and that practices the corresponding rites. They are accepted by all of the members of that group and express the nature of what is sacred to them. The sacred, according to Durkheim, includes the domain of human experience that is residual to, and other than, the prosaic sphere of life. It lays somewhere beyond the profane sphere, and evokes an attitude of awe and reverence. That which is sacred is protected from and forbidden to those of the mundane or profane world. The profane, on the other hand, is the realm of routine experience or the secular, everyday world of work, toil and domestic duties. It is the sphere of adaptive behavior, and is essentially utilitarian. Durkheim claims that the sacred and the profane are "completely separate genera, with nothing in common." He asserts that "a rock, a tree, a spring, a pebble, a piece of wood, a house, in a word, anything can be sacred" if collectively shared beliefs deem it so (Fields, 36). There is a distinct line between that which is sacred and that whi
Some common words found in the essay are:
According Durkheim, Champions Dinner, , Heisman Trophy, Sam Snead, Emile Durkheim's, ESPN Magazine, Tiger Woods, Masters Masters, Judaism Christianity, green jacket, sacred profane, sport jacket, according durkheim, golf's green jacket, golf's green, professional golfing, rules conduct, professional golfers, sacred object, golfing community, green jacket sacred, society durkheim religion, rites rules conduct, wear green jacket,
Approximate Word count = 1497
Approximate Pages = 6 (250 words per page double spaced)
|
