Durkheim and Social Facts

Emile Durkheim is widely considered the founder of modern sociology and remains one of sociology's most influential thinkers. Durkheim's methodology set the foundation for modern methodological approaches and his concept of "social facts" has enjoyed a new popularity in academia in its latest incarnation as culture. This article traces the intellectual influence of Montesquieu, Comte, and Spencer on Durkheim's development of social facts and outlines Durkheim's definition of social facts from "The Rules of the Sociological Method." The article then examines how Durkheim applied his own concepts of sociological method and social facts in his studies of division of labor and suicide. Finally, the article gives a brief overview of criticisms of Durkheim and Durkheim's lasting influence.

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Sociological Theory > Durkheim & Social Facts

Overview

Introduction

French social theorist Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) is broadly regarded as one of the founders of modern sociology. Durkheim's work focused on establishing sociology on a firm foundation of scientific methodology and the incorporation of this new social science into academia (Pickering, 1999). Durkheim, a son of a rabbi, was born in French province of Lorraine. He attended the prestigious École Normale Supérieure and studied philosophy despite his desire to pursue a social science. Unable to receive an appointment in Paris, he moved to Germany for a year to continue his studies until he received an appointment at University of Bordeaux. There Durkheim established the first European department of sociology, founded and edited the first sociological journal, and authored many of most influential early studies in sociology. At the heart of Durkheim's work was the desire to establish a scientific methodology that could objectively observe and analyze the social instead of the individual. In order to do this, it was necessary to have social things that were separate and distinguishable from individuals. To this end, Durkheim crafted the concept of "social facts." A social fact is a social practice, rule, duty, or sanction that exists outside of the individual. Durkheim believed the study of social facts could uncover universal social laws. These laws could then be used to judge a society's well-being (Morrison, 2006). What Durkheim did was give sociologists a field of things to study that he thought essential to separating sociology from the disciplines of psychology and biology (Schmidt, 1995). With social facts as subject matter to observe and analyze, sociology as social science was positioned to become an established discipline in academia and an instrument to uncovering the ills of society.

Montesquieu & Social Phenomena

Durkheim identified Charles Montesquieu (1689-1755) as the intellectual who foreshadowed the unity of social science. It was Montesquieu, in Durkheim's opinion, who identified the relationships between social phenomena. Social phenomena, such as religion, law, morality, trade, and administration, seem to differ in nature but are in fact interrelated and elements of a whole. It was Durkheim's belief that these phenomena existed separately from the individual and could only be understood in reference to each other. Durkheim changed Montesquieu's term to social facts and reiterated his position concisely that social facts can only be understood through other social facts. Durkheim wrote that though Montesquieu did not pursue the conclusion to these principles, he did pave the way for his successors in instituting sociology (Durkheim, 1960).

Comte & Positivism

Durkheim was greatly influenced by the work of Auguste Comte (1798-1857). It was Comte's project to set sociology (a term Comte coined) on the firm foundation of mathematical certainty and a positive scientific methodology (positivism). By doing this, Comte hoped to establish sociology as an academic discipline. Positivism is a system Comte developed to understand society. Comte believed that society evolved through three stages: theological, metaphysical, and positive. The positive stage is characterized by individuals who gather knowledge through observation and affirm this observation through the positive (scientific) method. Comte believed this process would allow individuals to identify problems in the world and thus govern themselves (Comte, 1988). Though Comte's influence would be significant, he was unable to establish sociology in academia. In at least two areas Durkheim's work can be seen as a continuation of Comte's project. First, Durkheim outlined some of the fundamental ideas of a social science and its methodological approach. Second, it was Durkheim who successfully introduced sociology into academia.

Though Durkheim is greatly influenced by Comte's positivism and Durkheim's social facts have become a defining attribute of positivism, Durkheim understood the limitations of the positivist approach. According to Miller (1996), Durkheim believed scientific method "under the guise of positivism" only spreads "mystery everywhere." For Durkheim, a philosophical understanding of the nature of society was essential. Scientific method without theory only clouded knowledge. The work of social science is to use scientific method to reveal the underlying laws of society (Miller, 1996). Understanding--and ultimately, knowledge--does not arise from observation and scientific method, but rather from the underlying laws in the world. Though Durkheim did not directly address the matter beyond this point, it can be assumed that an understanding of underlying laws remained the terrain of a philosophical approach.

Spencer & Progress

Comte's immediate successor was Herbert Spencer (18201903). Spencer adapted the ideas of Darwin and suggested a social order based on an evolutionary progress and survival of the fittest (Francis, 2007). Durkheim believed that Spencer was less interested in social facts and more focused on a philosophical approach that verified his evolutionary take on the social realm. Durkheim was careful in taking exception to Spenser's approach. If scientific evolution determined politics, economics, aesthetic, and morals, then sociological explanation could too easily stray from observation and analysis and slip into ideology. Additionally, Spencer explained the formation of a society through its utilitarian relationships. Institutions created society through a cooperative utility that best reconciled interests and brought about greater happiness. For Spencer, progress and utility were inseparable. Durkheim thought Spencer had explained the utility of social things but failed to address the origin (Durkheim, 1982). Yet there was something to Spenser's philosophical approach. The progressive evolution of human society could be seen in the knowledge that survives each generation and joins that of the generation that follows. The social things that this progress left for the following generation appeared to be very similar to Durkheim's social facts. Additionally, Durkheim believed Spencer linked societies to the universe and the obscure forces that lay beneath the surface of the conscience collective. Durkheim was so enamored with Spencer's description of social evolution that he called progress the social fact par excellence (Durkheim, 1903).

Durkheim's Social Facts

Social facts are primarily social practices, rules, institutions, or sanctions. In The Rules of the Sociological Method (1982), Durkheim defines social facts in great detail. Social facts are:

* Different from psychological and biological facts;

* A law or custom external to the individual;

* Deontological in that they require and obligation or duty;

* Coercive;

* Of varying levels;

* General;

* Isolated using statistics;

* Parts of a whole.

Social facts are not psychological or biological facts. They exist separate from the individual. In society, every individual eats, drinks, sleeps, and reasons, and society has an interest in these functions that occur regularly. However, these functions are individual and biological, not social. If they were social, there would be no need for a separate discipline called sociology since psychology and biology could provide all explanations required. The individual body belongs to the domain of biology. The individual mind belongs to the domain of psychology. Social facts exist beyond both of these domains and cannot be explained by biology or psychology. This was an important issue to Durkheim, who was driven to complete Comte's project and establish sociology as its own academic discipline.

Social facts are laws and customs that are external to and precede the individual. They include how we are raised, educated, employed, and buried. They are linked together in the manner Montesquieu delineated and inherited from generations that came before the individual in the respect Spencer outlined. Social facts are not only prior to individuals, but individuals are born into them and enact them (McCormack, 1996). Durkheim leaves little room for individuals creating social facts, altering them, or reflexively coexisting with them. Durkheim believed that social facts were things (McCormack, 1996). His effort to establish social things in no small way can be attributed to his efforts to give sociology the discipline an object to study (Pels, 2000). Social facts were also conduits to the very underpinnings of society. Social facts observed and analyzed revealed the universal or underlying laws of the world.

Characteristics of Social Facts

Social facts are deontological (not Durkheim's term). In ethics, a deontological action is taken out of duty or obligation as opposed to utility. This is where Durkheim breaks from Spencer. It is an important break since Durkheim maintains that the analysis of social facts will reveal "healthy" and "unhealthy" social societies (Thompson, 2002) When an individual fulfills an obligation or duty to family, friends, church, employer, or government, he or she is responding to an institution of rules and practices (social facts) that informs the action. The action is taken because it is expected and deemed right or normal. It is the force of social facts felt on the collective conscience that make the action a duty. To not act in response to duty would be unethical. This element to Durkheim's construction of social facts should not be surprising, given his philosophical training and early preoccupation with ethics (Miller, 1996).

Social facts are coercive. They reflect a manner of thinking, feeling, and acting that is external to the individual. They utilize public surveillance of the collective to restrict any act that violates the social norm. Social facts inform how people eat, drink, sleep, play, work, and worship. They impose upon the individual constraints not developed by the individual.

Durkheim believed that social facts existed in varying degrees or levels of crystallization. A public gathering might cause a rise in enthusiasm or indignation. This might be seen as a "social current." This current is not created by an individual, but by a movement among many. This current consolidates or organizes into a collective manifestation and eventually organizes further into an institution. As a society becomes more advanced, it reaches a point where it relies more heavily on these institutions (or social facts handed down) than new knowledge acquired (Emirbayer, 1996).

Social facts are general. That is to say, they are shared by many across society or they inform the collective conscience as opposed to the individual mind. What constitutes social facts are the beliefs, tendencies, and practices of society taken collectively. The individual could not be the starting point of sociology as in utilitarian philosophy. The "pre-social" individual no longer exists in modern societies (Thompson, 2002). The individual is tied up with the modern organic society, and the organic self is about sentiments of attachments and solidarity. These relationships are anchored relationships guided by social facts (Miller, 1996).

Durkheim believed that the coercive characteristic of social facts had a measurable effect on society. This effect on the collective conscience could be measured and isolated with statistics. Thus, by analyzing marriage, birth, or suicide rates, for example, a sociologist could identify the social current (social fact) informing the changes in society. Since the methodology includes individual cases without distinction, the specific individual motivations or circumstances that may have played some part in individual cases cancel each other out and leave only the social facts that inform the collective mind.

Finally, Durkheim returns to Montesquieu when he claims that a society's political structure is the only way in which various components, or social facts, have been able to become accustomed to one another. Society is a political society, and political society is a network of social facts that exist outside and independent of the individual. More importantly, Durkheim argued that political society (the whole) did not consist of individuals; rather, individuals were derived from political society. The parts were derived from the whole (Durkheim, 1982).

Applications

How Durkheim applied his methodological approach can be seen in two of his most famous works, The Division of Labour and Suicide: A Study in Sociology. The Division of Labour was an early work, and Durkheim introduced many of the elements that would inform his development of social facts. In Suicide, a mature Durkheim leverages his concepts and strengthens his argument for a sociology grounded in his methodological approach and concepts.

The Division of Labour

In The Division of Labour, Durkheim attempts to move social theory away from the pure evolutionary framework of Comte and Spencer (and even Marx) that focused on historical transformations of society. His project was to analyze the changing social relationship brought on by modern capitalism and identify how these changes altered the basis of solidarity and how the individual related to society. The main focus of the work was to present society as a whole, comprising layers of social structures and forces that constrain the individual (Thompson, 2002). Durkheim argued that the appearance of the more autonomous individual was misleading. Individual autonomy was actually brought on by social forces, specifically the growing division of labor.

The division of labor had been addressed by earlier theorists. Karl Marx divided the labor in society into two classes: the working class and those who own the means of production, the capital class. Adam Smith took this a step further and wrote about the separation of occupations and specialization. Both Marx and Smith leverage the idea of division of labor in order to make a moral argument about how society should construct its economic systems. Durkheim wished to avoid the moral arguments (Thompson, 2002). He called for a sociological examination of the empirical facts. To do this, Durkheim analyzed the division of labor in three modes:

* Functional--determine the function of the division of labor

* Causal--determine the causes and conditions that maintain the division of labor

* Ideal Type--classify normal and deviant forms of the division of labor

Durkheim believed that precise analysis could unearth the particular social facts and the condition of their existence. He attempted to present the division of labor as a social thing to be studied. He carefully stepped through each mode of analysis and presented his findings. However, at the end of the book, he steps away from strict analysis and offers his personal take on a society he sees as poorly regulated with an artificially constructed division of labor. He determines, through a mix of analysis and personal opinion, that society is unhealthy.

Suicide: A Study in Sociology

For Durkheim, collective tendencies, or social facts, have an existence of their own. These forces have an effect on the individual. Social facts can be observed and collected. When submitted to statistics, social facts can yield proof of the forces at play in phenomena such as suicide (Durkheim, 1997). The study of suicide was Durkheim's first attempt to apply the full methodology outlined in The Rules of the Sociological Method. The social fact could not be the individual act of suicide; instead, it was statistical suicide rates. Durkheim described suicide as all deaths occurring as a direct result of the act of an individual who knows what his or her actions will produce (Thompson, 2002). He intentionally avoided describing suicide in terms of motivations and intentions.

Suicide rates were compared at the macro level. Countries and classes of people were analyzed. Durkheim used a model that measured degrees of group attachment (egoism and altruism) and degrees of moral regulation (anomie and fatalism) (See Table 1). Durkheim describes the social facts affecting suicides at each extreme of his model. Some of the more provocative findings were that suicides were higher for Protestants than Catholics and higher for unmarried people than married. He believed the focus on individual freedom, the absence of many of the Catholic support sacraments, and a lower number of clergy per capita contributed to high suicide rates in Protestant countries. Additionally, marriage and the size of the family appeared to be mitigating factors to suicide.

Anomic suicides occur when people with boundless appetites and desires confuse their wants for needs. Without moral constraint, a society can slip into constant economic striving as seen in many modern capitalistic societies. This endless striving leads to unhappiness. Durkheim's work showed suicides to be higher in modern economic societies than traditional agricultural societies. Suicide focused on the coercive social facts that brought disequilibrium to a society. The social facts of religion, marriage, families, and economic systems play a central role in Durkheim's analysis of suicide.

Viewpoints

Criticism of Durkheim

Criticism of Durkheim, his social science, and social facts focuses on the assumptions Durkheim made in his approach to understanding society. Durkheim's social science is really not science. It is really more of a philosophy that incorporates observation and statistics into an approach to reasoning about social phenomena. At the foundation of Durkheim's research projects are his assumptions about the structure of nature and society. His conclusions about the health or pathology of a society is as much determined by his assumptions about the structure of the social as it is by his research.

Many critics hold an opposing view of society insisting that society is constructed of individuals and not the other way around. Their critique of Durkheim's view of society is that it does not fully take into consideration the individual's ability to create and alter social facts and ultimately lead to a philosophical determinism. Because social facts limit the agency of the individual, the concept fails to give an accurate view of society and individuals.

Another problem arises where Durkheim insists on underlying laws or principles and gives a prognosis of health based on local environments that do not align with these laws. The judgment of a society is based on his Western understanding of these laws. Additionally, his methodology of studying social facts in Western societies tends to establish the underlying laws of social facts based on what already exists. The failure in this approach is that it censures non-Western societies and the very progress within Western societies that Durkheim championed. Finally, since social facts as a category are self-referencing (social facts can only be understood through other social facts), they have been attacked as irreducible.

Durkheim's Influence

Despite the criticism of Durkheim's work, his influence in and out of sociology is substantial. He is viewed by many as the father of sociology and has a significant impact on the study of history, anthropology, criminology, religion, law, and education. Durkheim's rules gave sociology its methodological foundation. French historian Marc Bloch, one of modern history's most influential theorists, was greatly influenced by Durkheim. Bloch called for a history that took into consideration social facts, solidarity, and the coercive force social facts (Colbert, 1978).

The foundations of twentieth-century French structural anthropology and British social anthropology emphasize a mechanical society, which can be traced back to the writings of Durkheim (Erikson & Murphy, 2008). Durkheim's research on crime, punishment, division of labor, suicide, law, and education still inform these disciplines. Durkheim's view of society's structure and social facts has been incorporated into the theories of sociological giants Talcott Parsons, C. Wright Mills, and Robert Merton. Perhaps most impressive is the rise in academic circles of Durkheim's concept of social facts. Of course, the term social facts is rarely used, but the idea of culture, the reconceptualized and renamed heir of social facts, is being discussed and studied everywhere.

Terms & Concepts

Anomie: Instability in modern economic societies caused by a collective sense of alienation and purposelessness brought on by erosion of standards and values and a conflation of wants and desires with needs.

Conscience Collective: Shared beliefs and attitudes that act as a unifying force in society.

Division of Labor: A system in which different people do different things in the production process. This can include specialization, separation of duties for accountability, and separation of labor and capital.

Mechanical Solidarity: Unity based upon the similarities of individuals and shared rituals, rites, and rules. Durkheim believed this solidarity was eroding in modern societies.

Mechanical Societies: Durkheim believed older societies were mechanical in that they were held together by homogeneous individuals. Basic solidarity makes society an organism rather than just the sum of its parts.

Positivism: An approach to knowledge that claims direct observation and scientific method is the only valid path to knowledge of the world.

Social Facts: Social practices, rules, duties, or sanctions that exist outside of the individual. Durkheim believed a positivist social science could study social facts and uncover universal social laws. These laws could then be used to judge a society's well-being.

Social Science: A general concept that includes academic disciplines with social content, including anthropology, economics, human geography, politics, psychology, and management.

Bibliography

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Comte, A. (1988). Introduction to positive philosophy. Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc.

Durkheim, E. (1960). Montesquieu and Rousseau: Forerunners of sociology. Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press.

Durkheim, E. (1982). The rules of the sociological method. New York, NY: Free Press.

Durkheim, E. (1997). Suicide: A study in sociology. New York, NY: Free Press.

Emirbayer, M. (1996). Durkheim's contribution to the sociological analysis of history. Sociological Forum, 11, 263-284. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=10809703&site=ehost-live

Erikson, P., & Murphy, L. (2008). A history of anthropological theory. Buffalo, NY: Broadview Press.

Francis, M. (2007). Herbert Spencer and the invention of modern life. New York, NY: Cornell University Press.

Hirst, P. Q. (2011). Individualism and holism: Purpose, function and social facts. In Durkheim, Bernard and epistemology (pp. 136-152). London, England: Routledge. Retrieved November 5, 2013 from EBSCO online database eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=345362

McCormack, P. (1996). The paradox of Durkheim's manifesto: Reconsidering The Rules of Sociological Method. Theory and Society, 25, 85-104. http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9605143838&site=e host-live

Thompson, K. (2002). The work. In Emile Durkheim. Oxfordshire, England: Taylor & Francis Ltd. /Books. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct =true&db=sih&AN=17444074&site=ehost-live

Schmidt, J. (1995). Civil society and social things: Setting the boundaries of the social sciences. Social Research, 62, 899-932. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN=9604102348&site=ehostlive

Miller, W.W. (1996). Introduction: Durkheim's project. Durkheim, Morals & Modernity. Oxfordshire, England: Taylor & Francis Ltd. /Books. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search. ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=sih&AN= 1683 3409&site=ehost-live

Weyher, L. (2012). Emotion, rationality, and everyday life in the sociology of Emile Durkheim. Sociological Spectrum, 32, 364-383. Retrieved November 5, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=sih &AN=76911538

Morrison, K. (2006). Marx, Durkheim, Weber: Formations of modern social thought. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage Publications.

Pels, D. (2000). Intellectual as stranger. Oxfordshire, England: Taylor & Francis Ltd./Books. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search. ebscohost.com/login. aspx?direct=true&db=sih&jid=13QW &site=ehost-live%5Fhl%5F

Pickering, W.S.F. (Ed.). (1999). Durkheim and representations. Oxfordshire, England: Taylor & Francis Ltd. /Books. Retrieved May 1, 2008, from EBSCO Online Database SocINDEX. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct =true&db=sih&jid=13SO&site=ehost-live

Robbins, D. (2011). From solidarity to social inclusion: The political transformations of Durkheimianism. Durkheimian Studies, 17, 80-102. Retrieved November 5, 2013 from EBSCO online database SocINDEX with Full Text. http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=tr ue&db=sih&AN=69808113

Suggested Reading

Giddens, A. (Ed.). (1972). Emile Durkheim: Selected writings. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.

Jensen, H. (2012). Weber and Durkheim: A methodological comparison. New York, NY: Routledge. Retrieved November 5, 2013 from EBSCO online database eBook Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/ login.aspx?direct=true&db=nlebk&AN=460381

Pickering, W. (1994). Debating Durkheim. New York, NY: Routledge.

Terrier, J. (2011). "In Us, But Not of Us": The location of society according to Emile Durkheim. In Visions of the social: Society as a political project in France, 1750-1950 (pp. 119-144). Leiden, Netherlands: Brill. Retrieved November 5, 2013 from EBSCO online database eBook Academic Collection (EBSCOhost). http://search.ebscohost.com/login.aspx?direct=true&db=e000xna&AN=3772 87&site=ehost-live