Emile Durkheim: Understanding Social Factors
Emile Durkheim: Understanding Social Factors
The Concept of 'Social'
The term 'social' is often broadly applied to all societal phenomena but doesn't inherently imply specific social interest.
A human event is not considered social unless it excludes basic activities like drinking, sleeping, eating, or reasoning.
Sociology's Distinct Domain
Sociology possesses a unique domain, distinguishing it from biology and psychology.
Each society harbors a distinct set of phenomena that are separate from those studied by other natural sciences.
Examples of Social Factors
External Obligations: Individuals abide by duties defined by law and custom, which originate externally to their personal will and actions.
These obligations are not self-prescribed but acquired through education.
Religious Life: Beliefs and practices within religious life exist independently of any single individual.
Social Systems: Systems like the signs used for expressing thoughts ( ext{language}), the monetary system for settling debts, and professional practices all function autonomously from individual utilization.
Broad Sociological Factors: Social factors encompass:
Culture
Economic status
Education
Family structure
Ethnicity
Gender
Religion
Social class
These factors are societal circumstances, conditions, and elements that significantly influence an individual's and a community's lifestyle, well-being, and behaviors.
The Coercive Power of Social Factors
Social behaviors and ways of thinking exist independently of an individual's consciousness and are endowed with a compelling and coercive power.
Intrinsic Coercion: Coercion is an inherent characteristic of these social facts, persisting even when individuals attempt to resist them.
Public Conscience: Collective moral rules are enforced by the public conscience through surveillance and specific punishments for infringements.
Indirect Constraints: Mechanisms like not conforming to social conventions or maintaining social distance can produce effects similar to actual penalties, indicating their coercive power.
Public Conscience: A Collective Standard
Definition: The collective sense of moral and ethical standards shared by a society or group.
Function: It represents a shared awareness, attitudes, and values that collectively shape both individual and group behavior.
Emergence Through Convergence: The Power of Social Constraints
Necessity of Constraints: It is crucial to acknowledge and address social constraints, as they are external to the individual and exert significant coercive power.
A New 'Species' of Phenomena: These constraints are neither organic nor psychical phenomena; they represent a distinct category that should be exclusively designated as 'social'.
Fitting Terminology: The term 'social' is appropriate because it refers to phenomena that do not fit into existing categories of facts and constitute the proper subject matter of sociology.
Individual Personality: Social constraints do not necessarily negate or exclude individual personality.
Social 'Currents': These are external phenomena possessing objectivity and ascendancy over individuals.
Definition: Powerful, collective emotions or trends that sweep across society (e.g., waves of enthusiasm or collective indignation).
Durkheim's Coining: Coined by Émile Durkheim, social currents are a type of non-material social fact, distinct from stable social institutions.
Influence and Coercion: Despite their ephemeral nature, they impose influence and coercion on individuals, shaping collective consciousness.
Spontaneous Energy: Social currents represent spontaneous and potent energy generated within a group, often carrying individuals along in a unified direction.
Manifestation of Coercion: The external coercive power is most acutely evident in instances of resistance, though it often operates without individuals being consciously aware of it.
Collective Emotion vs. Individual Feeling: When individuals participate in a common emotion, the experience differs significantly from what they would feel in isolation.
Broader Application: These transitory outbreaks of emotion extend to more enduring movements of opinion in religious, political, literary, and artistic spheres.
Understanding Social Facts and Their Dissociation
Definition of Social Facts: Beliefs, tendencies, and practices considered collectively by a group.
Dissociation: Social facts frequently dissociate from one another, developing their own distinct forms.
Customs: Collective customs exist not only through their manifestation in successive actions but are also formally expressed ( ext{e.g.} through oral repetition, education, or written records).
Evidence of Dissociation: Numerous instances demonstrate that social facts exist independently of their individual effects, thus proving dissociation.
Methodological Isolation: Even when dissociation isn't immediately apparent, it can often be revealed through specific methodological examination.
Isolating Social Factors
Opinion Currents: Specific currents of opinion, which vary across time and geography, can influence societal trends such as marriage rates, suicide rates, or birth-rates.
Social Facts Represented by Rates: These opinion currents are clear social facts and are accurately quantifiable through statistical indicators like rates of births, marriages, and suicides ( ext{e.g.} rate{births}, rate{marriages}, rate_{suicides}).
Cancellation of Individual Circumstances: Individual circumstances that might contribute to these phenomena tend to cancel each other out, thus not determining the overall nature of the collective phenomenon.
Complexity of Social Phenomena
Beyond Pure Sociology: Social phenomena are not exclusively sociological; they also depend on individual psychical and organic constitutions, as well as specific circumstances.
Sociological Interest: While not confined solely to sociology's immediate content, these phenomena are of significant interest to sociologists.
The Concept of Collective Phenomena
Generality Requirement: A phenomenon can only be considered collective if it is common to all members of society, or at least to a significant majority.
Beyond Mere Generality: A phenomenon is collective not just because it is widespread, but because it represents a condition of the group that is replicated in individuals.
Inherited Authority: Beliefs and practices passed down from preceding generations are the product of the collectivity and are imbued with a special authority that individuals learn to recognize and respect through education.
Social Phenomena: Definition, Scope, and Examples
Definition (Observable Patterns): Observable patterns of behavior, events, or situations that emerge from human interaction and actively shape the surrounding society.
Scope: Encompasses interactions between individuals, the structures and functions of social groups (like families or institutions), and broader cultural and environmental contexts.
Examples: Common daily rituals ( ext{e.g.} commuting), the emergence of social media, the development of new social norms, or the far-reaching impact of policy decisions on communities.
Collective Phenomena: Coherent Group Action
Definition: A specific type of social phenomenon where numerous individuals act in a unified, often spontaneous or synchronized manner, forming a larger, coherent event or entity.
Key Characteristics: Typically involves strong internal cohesion among participants and can be analyzed as a single, distinct entity.
Examples: Fads and fashions, characterized by rapid, widespread adoption of certain behaviors or items, followed by a swift decline in popularity.
The Field of Sociology
Sociology is dedicated to studying a single, clearly defined group of phenomena.
Identifying Social Facts: A social fact can be identified in two primary ways:
By its capacity to exert external coercion on individuals.
By ascertaining its prevalence or how widespread it is within a given group.
Generalization through Pressure: A mode of social behavior that exists independently of individual consciousness becomes widespread by exerting pressure on the members of society.
The Concept of Collective Ways of Being (Social Substratum)
Sociology cannot ignore or separate itself from the fundamental underpinnings of collective life, which Durkheim terms the social substratum.
Elements of the Substratum: These include:
The number and characteristics of society’s constituent elements.
How these elements are interconnected (articulation).
Their degree of integration or 'coalescence'.
The distribution of the population across geographical space.
The extent and nature of communication networks.
The architectural design of dwellings.
Initially, these elements may not seem directly related to ways of acting, feeling, or thinking, but they are crucial to the social substratum.
The Importance of Social Facts
Imposed Ways of Being: These 'ways of being' (referring to the substratum elements) impose themselves on individuals in the same manner as social 'ways of acting'.
Form of Compulsion: The organization of a society fundamentally acts as a form of compulsion, determining its inherent nature and influencing domestic and civic relationships.
Example (Dwelling Type): The type of dwelling an individual inhabits is not a personal choice but is largely dictated by the customary building practices of their contemporaries and, in part, previous generations.
Understanding Social Factors (Consolidation and Morphology)
Not Distinct Species: Social facts are not fundamentally distinct species, but rather encompass permanent arrangements (structural facts) or rigid moral maxims.
Gradations of Consolidation: There exists a spectrum with gradations between clearly defined structural facts and less defined social life currents.
Degree of Consolidation: The differences between these forms of social life are primarily based on their degree of consolidation or rigidity.
'Morphological' Term: The term 'morphological' is specifically reserved for social facts that are directly related to the social substratum (the underlying physical and demographic structure of society).
Comprehensive Definition of Social Fact: A social fact is defined as any way of acting, thinking, or feeling, whether fixed or not, which is capable of exerting an external constraint on the individual; or, alternatively, it is general throughout a given society while maintaining an existence independent of its individual manifestations.