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In sociology, social facts are values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control. The French sociologist Émile Durkheim defined the term, and argued that the discipline of sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social facts. For Durkheim, social facts "consist of ...
Nov 7, 2024 · In sociology, one of the foundational concepts that shape our understanding of human behavior and society is “social facts.” Coined by the renowned sociologist Émile Durkheim, the term encapsulates the external, collective aspects of social life that exert a powerful influence on individuals.
- Classification of Social Facts
- Examples of Material Social Facts
- Examples of Non-Material Social Facts
- Definition of Social Facts
- Characteristics of Social Facts
- The Origin of Social Facts
- Conclusion
Durkheim classified social facts as being of two types – material and non-material. Material Social Facts– Material social facts refer to institutionalized norms and laws in a society that exist in either in the form of written codes, or are directly observable. Non-material Social Facts – Non-material social facts are the unwritten codes of conduc...
1. Legal Systems
Different societies have different legal systems and they represent social facts that are binding on the individuals. Even though laws are made, implemented, and enforced by individuals the legal system transcends the individual and becomes representative of the entire society. For instance, the legal system of the United States is different from the legal system of Saudi Arabia, each of which is a social fact about the respective society.
2. Institutionalized Religion
Institutionalized religion refers to religions that follow a formal code and is administered by a specialized cadre of individuals ordained for religious duty. Even though individuals engage with religion on a personal level, the entire religious community taken as a whole comes to represent certain values that can be construed as a social fact. For instance, in Durkheim’s classic study of suicide, he attributed higher rates of suicides among protestants to certain attributes particular to th...
3. The Nation-State
The state is a collection of individual citizens who have organized themselves to perform certain social functions. At the same time, the state is much more than the mere sum of the capabilities of its individual citizens. The state is, in this sense, “external” to the individual citizen in Durkheim’s sense of the term. The ordinances of the state are binding on the individual, and its laws, in most cases, are applicable to the citizenry as a whole.
6. The Nuclear Family
In most societies, there is no particular law that states that families must be nuclear, or which prohibits joint families. Yet, in almost all societies in the modern world, the nuclear family, with 1 to 4 children has become the norm. When we take this information as a whole, we arrive at a relevant social fact about modern society – that certain conditions such as capitalism, urbanization, and the demands of the modern workforce have induced a preference for the nuclear family in society.
7. Morality
Most societies have codified laws, but morals are rarely written down, nor are they enforced by the state or its agents. Yet, there is an expectation from the members of the society to be moral and ethical in all their dealings with other members. Standards of morality may also vary from one society to another. For instance, the extremely low rates of crime in Japan are attributed to the moral and ethical values embedded in Japanese culture that all individuals are expected to adhere to. (Lop...
8. Liberalism
States have political ideologies that are often enshrined in their constitutions. However, in addition to these, states follow certain values that are not written down, but become symbolic of them. These values, in turn stem from the cultural orientation of their citizens. For instance, countries of the “west”, commonly understood as comprising Western Europe, North America, Australia, and New Zealand are often classified as liberal. The term liberal here is used not in the political economy...
Social Fact is a concept proposed by the French sociologist Emile Durkheim ( 1858 – 1917). The social fact is a phenomenon that is viewed as a fact by a large collectivity, and like many other social phenomena, may be socially constructed. According to Durkheim, social facts consist of: “manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the indiv...
Based on the definition above, we can now identify three characteristics of social facts: 1. General– Social facts are general in two senses – one they apply to all, or at least, most members of a social group. Second, that they influence almost all spheres of human life. 2. External– Social facts are external to the individual because they become ...
Durkheim arrived at the concept of social facts through his study of suicide rates in Catholic and Protestant communities in Europe. This study became his celebrated monograph, Suicide, published in 1897. Durkheim observed that suicide rates among Protestants were higher than those among Catholics, attributing this to certain social characteristics...
Durkheim belonged to a conservative family of French Jews and was raised in a religious household towards the end of the 19th century. This was a time of immense and drastic social change, and Durkheim became interested in investigating how societies (such as his own French Jewish community) held on to traditions in the face of overwhelming forces ...
Apr 7, 2022 · Social facts are things that happen outside of an individual but strongly affect the individuals concerned. Emile Durkheim refers to it as external, constraining societal patterns of experiencing, conceiving, and acting.
Dec 12, 2016 · Social Facts are one of Emile Durkheim's most significant contributions to sociology. Social facts are things such as institutions, norms and values which exist external to the individual and constrain the individual.
Oct 17, 2017 · In layman’s terms, anything that restricts the activity of the individual from outside is a social fact. A simple example would be Religion, which influences or restricts individual actions in society.
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“A social fact is every way of acting, whether fixed or not, which is capable of exercising an external constraint on the individual; or, which is general throughout a given society, whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations” (Durkheim [1895] 2004:50).
