According to Émile Durkheim, social facts are defined as “ways of acting or thinking with the peculiar characteristics of exercising a coercive influence on individual consciousnesses.”
Society as a Reality Sui Generis
Durkheim posited that society is not the mere sum of its individual members but a specific reality with its own unique characteristics.
- Critique of Psychological Reductionism: He assumed that psychological impulses were general to humankind’s bodily constitution and could not explain the vast diversity of human societies.
- Challenge to the Social Contract: He challenged the theories of Hobbes and Rousseau, arguing that there was never a time when autonomous individuals came together to form a social contract. Instead, all known societies developed out of earlier ones.
- External Obligations: Duties such as being a brother, husband, or citizen are performed according to definitions that exist externally to the individual.
Social Constraints and Independent Existence
Religious beliefs and patterns of obligatory behavior exist before the birth of the individuals who currently practice them.
- Independence from Will: These patterns impose themselves upon the individual regardless of personal will.
- Enforcement of Morality: While constraints may not be apparent during conformity, stepping “out of line” triggers:
- Public Ridicule: Enforcement of morality.
- Formal Punishment: The law as repression or restitution.
Social Currents and Collective Emotion
Beyond organized institutions, there are social currents—waves of enthusiasm, pity, or indignation that infect a crowd.
- Source of Interaction: These currents are products of interaction between members of a crowd (often associated with the tragedy of the Paris Commune).
- Earliest Social Forms: Because these currents do not depend on existing institutions, Durkheim suggested they provided the context for the emergence of the earliest forms of society.
The Comparative Method and Participant Observation
Durkheim anticipated the value of participant observation, arguing that social facts cannot be studied by armchair introspection.
The Role of the Social Scientist
The scientist must go into the field to discover how a society conceives of its own institutions through external, objective signs:
- Family organization.
- Contract law.
- Types of crimes and appropriate punishments.
Normal vs. Pathological Behaviour
Durkheim followed Auguste Comte in arguing that “crime” and “morality” vary by social system. He proposed that:
- Normality is Relative: What is normal for a given social system is the condition most generally observed in societies of that type (e.g., what is normal for a mollusk is not normal for a vertebrate).
- Function of Crime: Even crime and suicide may have “normal” rates of occurrence in any specific society.
- Testing Hypotheses: The only suitable scientific tool is the comparative method, testing if similarities in one aspect of two systems lead to similarities in others.
The Classification of Societies
Durkheim’s method depended on a classification system based on “decisive features” rather than exhaustive descriptions. Relying on the ideas of Herbert Spencer, he derived a fourfold classification:
Durkheim’s Unilinear Model of Progressive Social Evolution
| Type of Society | Primary Components | Social Characteristics |
| Simple | Hordes | Characterized by isolated family groups with no contact. |
| Compound A | Clans | Clans that periodically assemble as a tribe. |
| Compound B | Local Communities | Kinship gives way to local organization. |
| Complex | Central Government | Overarching structures deprive local communities of political autonomy. |
Conclusion: The Internal Social Dynamic
Implicit in this typology is the Enlightenment notion of social evolution, proceeding toward increasing complexity. Unlike Darwin or Wallace, who looked at selective environmental pressures, Durkheim (alongside Marx, Comte, and Spencer) believed evolution occurred through an internal social dynamic. For these 19th-century thinkers, the success of a population was judged by its internal progression rather than adaptation to the environment.