Sociology and Social Facts

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Origin Story: The firm was founded by William Warder Norton and Mary D. Herter Norton. Its initial publications were lectures delivered at the People's Institute, which served as the adult education division of Cooper Union in New York City.
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Current Status: Today, W. W. Norton & Company employs a staff of approximately $500$ individuals. It publishes hundreds of trade, college, and professional titles annually and holds the distinction of being the largest and oldest publishing house owned entirely by its employees.

Core Premise: Sociology is built upon the fundamental idea that individuals influence their communities and are, in turn, influenced by them.
The Concept of Self:
- Wealthy democracies often emphasize individualism, captured by phrases like Shakespeare’s "To thine own self be true" or the modern colloquialism "You do you."
- These phrases suggest an "authentic self" that exists independently of society.
The Sociological Reality:
- Sociology posits that while humans are born as individuals, they do not remain isolated units.
- At birth, an individual joins a "stream of consciousness" that is hundreds of thousands of years old, inheriting a history of legends, wisdom, and folly.
- Statistical Context: Every living person is unique, distinct from the approximately $108 \times 10^9$ other human consciousnesses that have existed in history.
- The Paradox: Human beings are individuals, yet they are inevitably tied to others; they were never meant to be alone.

Origin of the Term: The term "social facts" was coined in $1895$ by Émile Durkheim (pronounced "eh-meel der-kime"), a French social scientist who lived from $1858$ to $1917$ .
Formal Definition: Social facts are products of human interaction that possess persuasive or coercive power and exist externally to any individual.
Key Characteristics:
- Indifference to the Individual: Human civilization as a whole is indifferent to any specific individual; social life continues unimpeded regardless of an individual's presence.
- External Reality: They are powerful realities brought into existence by humans that are larger than any single person.
- Expansive Definition: This book defines social facts as anything produced collectively by people that exerts a force upon us, ranging from trivial daily habits to momentous global structures.

The Handshake:
- Handshaking is a social fact that has existed for over $2,000$ years.
- It exists independently of any living person (most people who have ever shaken hands are now dead), yet the practice persists.
- It possesses persuasive/coercive power: refusing a handshake can be interpreted as rude, strange, or hostile, leading to "strained relations."
Distinction from Non-Social Facts:
- Nonsocial Facts: Realities that humans cannot change, such as the gravitational pull of the earth, the sun, the solar system, and the universe.
Nature as a Social Fact: Nature becomes a social fact when humans mold it to suit their ends.
- Examples: Manicured backyards, city parks, college campuses, freeways, bridges, and national borders.
- Agriculture: As a result of human activity, wheat now covers approximately $870,000\,\text{square miles}$ of the earth's surface.
- Seismic Observation: During the Covid- $19$ pandemic, stay-at-home orders caused a sudden stillness in the planet's vibrations, as registered by scientific machinery.
Societal Structures: Social facts include the ways we fall in love, build families, morals, methods of worship, play, and conflict. They encompass nations, economies, wars, and fields of knowledge such as medicine, mathematics, and sociology itself.

Historical Context: In Durkheim's era, the scientific study of society was a new concept. While psychologists studied individuals and philosophers theorized about reality, few applied the scientific method to society.
Durkheim’s Contribution: He established society as an object of empirical inquiry, which involves looking to the physical world for evidence to test hypotheses.
The Science of Facts: Durkheim argued that social facts are as real as any other facts studied by other sciences (e.g., rocks in geology, cells in biology, fission in physics).
Data and Methods:
- Data: Systematically collected sets of empirical observations.
- Research Questions: Queries about the world that can be answered through empirical evidence.
- Sociological Research Methods: Scientific strategies for gathering empirical data about social facts.

Harriet Martineau ( $1802$ - $1876$ ):
- A British sociologist who wrote the first book on sociological research methods: How to Observe Morals and Manners ( $1838$ ).
- Her work predated Durkheim’s methodology manual by nearly $60$ years.
Émile Durkheim ( $1858$ - $1917$ ): Published The Rules of Sociological Method in $1895$ , providing a manual for studying society scientifically.
W. E. B. Du Bois ( $1868$ - $1963$ ):
- A pioneering American sociologist who introduced statistics to the field in the United States.
- Pronunciation Note: Pronounced "du boyz" rather than the French "du bwah."
- Background: Born five years after the end of legal slavery in the U.S. ( $1868$ ). He studied at Harvard and the University of Berlin.
- Motivation: Du Bois used statistics to communicate objective facts about Black lives to a racist audience, recognizing that numerical data provided high credibility.

Qualitative Research Methods:
- Focus on the careful consideration and discussion of the meaning of non-numerical data.
- Sources: In-person interviews, images, text, and direct observation.
- Utility: Ideal for understanding how people feel, think, and behave.
Quantitative Research Methods:
- Involve the examination of numerical data using mathematics.
- Statistics: A mathematical approach to research involving the collection, manipulation, and analysis of numerical data.

Sociological Sympathy (Martineau's Concept): The skill of understanding others as they understand themselves.
- As a Data Tool: Essential for comprehension. Martineau likened a scholar without sympathy to someone watching people dance without hearing the music—they see the movement but miss the joy or romance.
- As an Objectivity Tool: True objectivity is not value-neutral but an earnest attempt to adopt the point of view of the subject to avoid judging them by one's own standards.
Professional Research Ethics: A set of moral principles guiding empirical inquiry.
- Respect: Treating people as autonomous individuals with the right to make informed decisions.
- Justice: Conducting research that is fair, non-discriminatory, and non-exploitative.
- Beneficence: Ensuring the research does more good than harm.
Ethical Practices:
- Reporting conflicts of interest.
- Attaining informed consent from research subjects.
- Ensuring confidentiality.
- Minimizing the use of deception.