Social Facts

Social facts  – Durkheim In his book, “The Rules of  Sociological Method” (written in the year

1895), Emile Durkheim explained Social Facts. Social facts is a category of facts which presents very special characteristics: they consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by the virtue of which they exercise control over him. Since they consist of representations and actions, they cannot be confused with organic phenomena. Thus they constitute a new species and to them must be exclusively assigned the term ‘social’ .

Social facts could be divided into 2 categories. They are as follows:1) Material social facts are features of society such as social structures and institutions. These could be the system of law, the economy, church and many aspects of religion, the state, and educational institutions and structures. They could also include features such as channels of communication, urban structures, and population distribution. The example under material social facts is Durkheim’s study “the Division of Labour

in Society” where all his facts are observable. The division of labour gets affected due to the social institutions and structures of the simple and complex societies. 2) Non-Material social facts are social facts which do not have a material reality. They consist of features such as norms, values, and systems of morality. Some contemporary examples are the norm of the one to three child families, the positive values associated with family structures, and the negative associations connected to aggression and anger. In Durkheim's terminology, some of these nonmaterial social facts are morality, collective consciousness, and social currents. Example for this kind of

social fact would be his study on the differing rates of suicide where he tries to explain that it is not because of psychological or geographical reasons due to which suicide rates differ, rather it is the social reasons and pressures of norms and values of the society that affect the rate of suicide. Social facts are associated with certain characteristics that Durkheim considers crucial to the understanding of material and non-material categories. They are:a) Externality:

Social facts exist outside the consciousness of the individual. Their existence is external to the individuals. For example, domestic or civic or contractual obligations are defined, externally to the individual, in laws and customs. Religious beliefs and practices exist outside and prior to the individual. An individual takes birth in a society and leaves it however; social facts are already given in society. For example language continues to function independently of any single individual. b) Constraint:

Social facts exercise a constraint on individuals. Social fact is recognized because it forces itself on the individual. For example, the institutions of law, education, beliefs, etc. are already given to everyone from without. They are commanding and obligatory for all. Such a phenomenon is typically social because its basis, its subject is the group as a whole and not one individual in particular. c) Independence and Generality

A social fact is that which has more or less a general characteristic in a society. Also it is independent of the personal features of

individuals or universal attributes of human nature. Examples are the beliefs, feelings and practices of the group taken collectively. In order to approach his concept of social facts, Durkheim laid out some rules for their general understanding. They are:1) Social Facts should be treated as ‘things’. Social facts are real. Thus, the belief systems, customs and institutions of society, the facts of the social world, should be considered as things in the same way as the objects and events of the natural world. As such they can be directly observed and objectively measured. 2) All preconceptions must be eradicated. The sociologist must emancipate himself from the common place ideas that dominate the mind of the layman and adopt an emotionally neutral attitude towards what he sets out to investigate. 3) When the sociologist undertakes the investigation of some order of social facts he must consider them from an aspect that is independent

of

their

individual

manifestations

(existed

independently from individual manifestations). The objectivity of social facts depends on their being separated from individual facts which express them. They provide a common standard for members of the society. They exist in the form of legal rules, moral regulations, social conventions, etc. It is these that the sociologist must study to gain an understanding of social life. 4) To define social facts with external characteristics. It is necessary to give a boundary of a social phenomena or fact. Before studying any subject we need to first define it. There would be no specificity. By looking its nature and primary characteristics, we need to define social facts.

5) Social facts are a group phenomenon. Here the sociologist would study the society not on the basis of individuals but rather in groups as whole. In ‘The Rules of Sociological Method’, Durkheim has discussed the

nature of social facts as well. He dwells on the subject with introduction of normal and pathological states of social facts. Normal social facts are general throughout the society. If the functioning of the society is taking place on the normal lines then solidarity would be maintained. (E.g. of crime rate in both pathological and normal social facts) Pathological social facts are not general throughout the society. They exist for a very short span of period in the society. It is necessary to know the cause of social facts that is in simple words, to understand its origin. To know the functioning of social fact is also necessary. Besides understanding the origin we need to understand its function/effect in the society. Like the effects of religion, or of laws on the society which have made an impact towards the society as these are the institution that help to maintain the solidarity. Besides cause and effect, differentiation between the individual and society is necessary. While explaining the social facts we do not need to understand it in terms of individual understanding rather we have to understand it in terms of social/society. In The Rules of Sociological Method, Durkheim aimed to boost sociology as a valid science for identifying knowledge. He introduced the term social fact as the focus of his study. The article offers various explanations of what a social fact is according to Durkheim, but he best defines the meaning in his last line of the work. “A social

fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations”

His goal in establishing a social methodology was two-fold; first, he wants sociology to be more scientific and move from the realm of subjectivity to objectivity. And second, he wants to prove the primacy of the “social facts”. For Durkheim, social facts must be

treated as things and not as personal experiences, but must also be observed by a researcher. Durkheim states that, in the past, analysis was made and combined our ideas with our observations and comparisons. These social facts, however, possess resistance, meaning that they cannot be moulded to satisfy any specific situation but will remain independent researcher, the individual and, to an extent, the situation even though these facts are born of the summation of individual experiences.