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Durkheim and Social Fact

Durkheim and Social Fact

Emile Durkheim 's The Rules of Sociological Method ' posits the existence of various `social facts ' which , according to him , should be the scope of all sociological study and discourse . Durkheim 's discourse defines social facts as .a category of facts with very distinctive characteristics : it consists of ways of acting , thinking and feeling , external to the individual , and endowed with a power of coercion , by reason of which they control him (Durkheim 3

Thus the three main features of social facts are surfaced as being external to

the individual , emanating from a general and higher level than the individual and that these coerce or force an individual to act in accordance to them for the purpose of control . These facts , according to Durkheim , must be considered things , which he defines as realities that may be observed and classified . These things are posited to exist on the level of society , completely outside the realm of the individual and are used to control a person 's thoughts , actions and feeling from being otherwise . Should a person refuse to submit to this coercion , he would find himself the object of negative reactions ranging from ridicule , isolation or even concrete punishment or sanction

The implications of this definition initially cast sociology 's field of study as all-encompassing , referring to all realities and processes of human life and behavior , thus Durkheim seeks to clarify and establish the meaning of the descriptor `social ' as opposed to other adjectives such as `biological , psychological ' and `philosophical

Each individual drinks , sleeps , eats , reasons and it is society 's interest that these functions be exercised in an ly manner . If then , all these facts are counted as social ' facts , sociology would have no subject matter exclusively its own , and its domain would be confused with biology and psychology (Durkheim 1

As mentioned above , Durkheim perceives the social fact as the scope of sociological study , and uses other fields of study to show what sociology should underscore . Biological facts and study deal with characteristics of the physical body of a person and are therefore not social , since the need to follow these facts (such as sleeping , eating and breathing ) emanate from the physiological needs of an organism to survive . Psychological study deals with thought processes and phenomena that occur within an individual 's consciousness . Durkheim posits that `social ' facts emanate not from one person 's consciousness nor from a person 's physiological needs , but from the level of society itself .this term [social] fits them quite well , for it is clear that since their source is not the individual , their substratum can be no other than society (Durkheim 3

Another implication of his definition is that social facts exist only with the presence of social institutions which enforce them and create them . For Durkheim , it is imperative to clarify that in most cases a social institution exists with the social fact , but it must not be thought that for a social fact to exist , a social...

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