Durkheim – Social Facts and Social Constraints

The Nature of the Social

The term ‘social’ is often used to describe all phenomena within society, but it does not necessarily imply a specific social interest.
No human event can be considered social if it doesn't include basic activities such as drinking, sleeping, eating, or reasoning.
Sociology has a distinct domain compared to biology and psychology due to its unique characteristics; every society has a distinct group of phenomena that are separate from those studied in other natural sciences.

What Counts as Social Factors (Social Facts)

Individuals fulfill obligations defined in law and custom, which are external to themselves and their actions.
These obligations are not prescribed by the individual but are transmitted through education.
Beliefs and practices of religious life exist outside the individual.
The system of signs used to express thoughts, the monetary system used to pay debts, and the practices followed in professions function independently of how the individual uses them.

The Power of Social Factors

These behaviors and ways of thinking exist outside the individual's consciousness and are endowed with a compelling and coercive power.
Coercion is intrinsically a characteristic of these facts, even when the individual resists.
The public conscience restricts any act infringing on moral rules through surveillance and special punishments.
Indirect constraints—such as not conforming to conventions or social distance—produce the same results as real penalties.

Emergence Through Convergence: The Power of Social Constraints

The author argues for embracing social constraints that are external to the individual and exert coercive power.
These constraints are not organic (biological) or psychical (mental) phenomena, but constitute a new species and should be designated exclusively by the term ‘social'.
The term ‘social' is appropriate because it refers to phenomena that do not fit into existing categories of facts and belong to sociology.
Not all social constraints exclude individual personality; some may coexist with personal traits.
Social 'currents' are external phenomena with the same objectivity and ascendancy over the individual, capable of sweeping people along despite themselves.
The external coercive power asserts itself strongly in cases of resistance, even when the individual is not consciously aware of it.
Even when individuals share in a common emotion, the impression they experience differs from what they would feel if they were alone.
These transitory outbreaks apply to longer-lasting movements of opinion in religious, political, literary, and artistic matters.

Understanding Social Factors and Their Dissociation

Understanding Social Factors

Social facts are beliefs, tendencies, and practices of a group taken collectively.
These facts often dissociate from each other, acquiring a form peculiar to themselves.
Collective customs exist not only in a state of immanence within the successive actions they determine but also express themselves once and for all in formulas repeated by word of mouth, transmitted by education, and enshrined in writing.

Dissociation of Social Factors

Dissociation exists in numerous important instances cited to prove that the social fact exists separately from its individual effects.
Even when dissociation is not immediately observable, it can often be demonstrated with methodological devices.

Isolating Social Factors

Certain currents of opinion, varying with time and country, push us toward marriage or suicide, toward higher or lower birth-rates, etc.
These currents are clearly social facts and are not inaccurately represented by rates of births, marriages, and suicides.
The individual circumstances that might have contributed to producing the phenomenon cancel each other out and do not determine the nature of the phenomenon.

Understanding Social Phenomena

Social phenomena are not solely sociological; they also depend on the individual's psychical and organic constitution and circumstances.
They are not limited to the immediate content of sociology but are of interest to sociologists.

The Concept of Collective Phenomena

Phenomena can be collective if they are common to all members of society or at least a majority.
A phenomenon is not only collective because it is general but also because it is a condition of the group repeated in individuals.
Beliefs and practices handed down by previous generations are the work of the collectivity and are invested with a special authority that education teaches us to recognize and respect.

The Field of Sociology

Sociology embraces a single, well-defined group of phenomena.
A social fact is identifiable through the power of external coercion exerted upon individuals or by determining how widespread it is within the group.
A mode of behaviour existing outside the consciousness of individuals becomes general by exerting pressure upon them.

The Concept of Collective Ways of Being

Sociology cannot dissociate itself from the substratum of collective life.
The number and nature of the elements that constitute society, how they are articulated, the degree of coalescence, the distribution of population, the extent and nature of the network of communications, and the design of dwellings do not at first glance seem to relate to ways of acting, feeling, or thinking.

The Importance of Social Facts

These ways of being impose themselves upon the individual just as do the ways of acting we have discussed.
The organization of a society is a form of compulsion that determines its nature and domestic and civic relationships.
The type of dwelling imposed upon us reflects how everyone around us and previous generations have habitually built their houses.

Understanding Social Factors (Summary of Key Points)

Social facts are not distinct species but rather permanent arrangements or rigid moral maxims.
There are gradations between clearly defined structural facts and undefined social life currents.
Differences between forms of life depend on their degree of consolidation.
The term 'morphological' is reserved for social facts related to the social substratum.
A social fact is any way of acting that can exert external constraint over an individual or is general over a society, independent of individual manifestations.

Key Connections and Implications

Durkheim positions social facts as things—external, coercive, and objective—shaping individual behavior.
The concept of currents and collective life emphasizes how social forces can move populations even without conscious awareness.
Distinguishing between collective phenomena and individual circumstances helps explain why certain social patterns persist beyond individual variation.
The morphology of society (dwelling, communications, population distribution) is integrally linked to social actions, feelings, and thoughts.
Ethical and practical implications include recognizing the power of social constraints in shaping morality, law, and social order, as well as the potential tension between individual autonomy and collective requirements.

Real-World Relevance and Applications

Public policy and reforms must account for external social constraints and the coercive power of social facts.
Education and cultural transmission play a crucial role in shaping what is accepted as normal or authoritative within a society.
Analyses of birth rates, marriage patterns, and suicide rates can reveal underlying social currents rather than purely individual causes.
Understanding the dissociation and convergence of social factors can inform research methods in sociology, including how to isolate social factors for study.

References to Foundational Principles

The distinction between social facts and individual psychology underpins the methodological approach of sociology as a discipline distinct from biology and psychology.
The emphasis on external constraint and collective life reflects Durkheim’s broader project of defining social reality as something sui generis that influences individuals.