This article argues the Canadian government’s decision in 2010 to eliminate the mandatory long-form census constitutes a mobilizing appeal to libertarian populism commensurate not only with neoliberal concepts of individualism, private property, and the role of the state, but also with a redefinition of what counts as valid argumentation and a legitimate basis for making knowledge claims. This rationale has implications for sociological research and theory, for the profession of sociology, and for a sociological vision of society.

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In sociological or political-theoretical discussions of monarchy, the voice of Émile Durkheim is mostly absent. Although Durkheim himself had little to say on the topic, his theory of religion, and elements of his political sociology, provide resources for an engagement with monarchy both as a social institution and as a political possibility. The twentieth-century crisis of religion which Durkheim addressed in a particularly trenchant fashion has an analogue in the twentiethcentury crisis of monarchical sovereignty: its supposed collapse into irrelevance, its survival, and its return in other forms. In the work of Schmitt and Agamben, this is represented as a theologicopolitical dilemma. This article explores what Durkheimian sociology might still contribute to a discussion of sacral and juridical aspects of sovereignty. By this is meant not only examination of its sociopolitical location and functions, but also a study of the 'fictions' and paradoxes of monarchical sovereignty as exemplary instances of the paradoxicality of the social. What are the features and consequences of a king-shaped hole or an empty throne in modern political imaginaries?

Durkheim's Elementary Forms of Religious Life examines a fundamental intercalation of selfhood, sociality and cosmology, but as a response to a particular political context, it may also speak to contemporary issues of sovereignty and democracy. Reading the Elementary Forms in this context, and in light of Durkheim's references to monarchy, absolutism and revolution, is suggestive of an approach to such issues which resists sacrifice of the social to the sovereign, whether hierarchical or popular.Résumé. Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse écrit par Emile Durkheim explore l' intercalation fondamentale de la subjectivité, de la sociabilité et du cosmos, mais dans la mesure où cela renvoyait à un contexte politique et historique précis, cela pourrait également insister sur les problèmes de la souveraineté moderne et de la démocratie de manière moins directe. Lire Les formes élémentaires de la vie religieuse dans ce contexte tout en étant conscient des références de Durkheim à la monarchie, à l'absolutisme et à la révolution suggère que son approche de ces questions résiste au sacrifice de « la vie » sur le « pouvoir », du social sur le mécanisme de la souveraineté qu'elle soit hiérarchique ou populaire. Mots clés:Durkheim, souveraineté, sociologie politique, révolution, sacré, représentation ambiguity and ContingenCy: the diverSe meSSageS of The elemenTary Forms T he publication of The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (hereafter, EFRL) marked a controversial intervention into cultural politics (Tiryakian 2009: 172-186), but subsequently, that context and the unsettling potential of its argument were often obscured (Stedman Jones 2001) by interpretations emphasizing the functional aspects of religion: the ar-596 © Canadian Journal of SoCiology/CahierS CanadienS de SoCiologie 39(4) 2014 the elementary formS aS politiCal (a)theology