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Durkheim’s General Conception Of Sociology

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Contents

  1. Introduction
  2. Approach to Sociology
  3. Durkheiminan Understanding of Sociology
  4. Concepts of Social Fact and the Rules for Observing Social Facts
  5. Rules for Observing Social Facts

Introduction

Durkheim likened society to an organism, with different parts functioning to ensure the smooth and orderly functioning and evolution of society. Durkheim took an evolutionary approach as he believed that society evolved from a traditional society to a modern one through the development and expansion of the division of labour. Some sociologists consider him a structural functionalist, on the grounds that he saw society as made up of structures that functioned together.

To construct such an approach, Durkheim made a distinction between structure and function. He saw society as made up of individuals, but he also clarified that society is not just the sum of individuals and their actions, behaviors and thoughts. Instead, society has its own structure and existence, separate from the individuals who inhabit it. Furthermore, he argued that society through norms, social facts; common feelings influence, limit and even constrain the individuals who live in them. It is now quite clear that Durkheim was concerned with the question of social order. So the main question of the day for him was; how modern society coexists, since society is made up of many individuals, each of whom acts individually and autonomously, with separate, different and different interests.

To answer this question Adam Sydie would say that Durkheim focused on the problems of reconciling freedom and morality, individualism and social cohesion in modern society. This led Durkheim to write his first book, The Division of Labor in Society, in which he explored and explained these issues

Approach to Sociology

Reading Sydie's works, one realizes that he proposes three main approaches to sociology. The first is positivism. This approach portrays society as an orderly, rational and social scientist, who through careful study of history and the society around them can develop and develop an understanding of the world. Augustine Comte is often considered the leading proponent of this approach.

The second approach is evolutionism. This approach portrays society as slowly changing and the process of change involves self-correction of problems in the social world.

The third approach is the functionalist one. That's actually where we come from. Durkheim is often considered a functionalist. In functionalism, society is seen as resembling a biological organism or body with parts connected together. And all of these parts have to work together before we can talk about a healthy body. The functionalist approach has been adopted by the less conservative sociologists. As already mentioned, Durkheim also followed this approach, but, according to Sydie Durkheim, clearly distinguished between functional and causal explanations of social problems. By this, it is claimed that Durkheim understood that it was necessary to explain why certain social structures arose historically, and if such structures worked, it required a separate explanation.

Durkheiminan Understanding of Sociology

Durkheim distinguished sociology from philosophy, psychology, economics, and other social science disciplines by asserting that society is a distinct entity. One of his main concerns was to define and establish the field of sociology as an academic discipline. He argued that sociologists should study the particular characteristics of collective or group life. He defines sociology as the study of social facts, external things and governing individuals. These social facts for Durkheim are characteristics of the group; they cannot be studied separately from the collective, nor can they be derived from the study of individuals. Examples of these social facts are religion, urban structures, legal systems and moral values ​​such as family values. Durkheim argued that these are characteristics of collective existence, which are not reducible to the characteristics of the atoms or individuals that compose it.

From this perspective, Durkheim sees the beliefs, practices, and consciousness of the collective as compelling individuals as actors. Following this trajectory, he realizes that he has a structuralist approach, taking into account the social structures that exert a strong influence on social action. Hence, individuals do not act on a purely individualistic basis, but rather act strongly influenced by the structures of which they are a part. He goes on to say that sociology can be distinguished from psychology. For him, psychology studies individuals and their mental processes, while sociologists deal with structures that influence social action and interaction. It is this study of society as a whole, of individuals in their social relations with other individuals, and of the links of these social relations with society, which constitutes the subject of sociology.

Concepts of Social Fact and the Rules for Observing Social Facts

Social Facts

Durkheim understood sociology as the scientific investigation of a reality; a clearly defined group of phenomena distinct from those studied by all other sciences, including biology and psychology. Durkheim reserved the term social facts for these phenomena. Social facts are a category of facts that have very specific properties: they consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, endowed with coercive powers by virtue of which they exercise control over them. Because these facts consisted of actions, thoughts and feelings, they could not be confused with biological phenomena; but neither were they within the realm of psychology, for they existed outside of individual consciousness.

According to his theory, Durkheim was particularly careful to distinguish social facts, which he sometimes called states of the collective mind, from the forms these states took when manifested through private and individual minds. This distinction is clearer in matters such as customs, moral and legal norms, religious beliefs; which indeed appear to have an existence independent of the various actions they bring about.

Furthermore, Durkheim argued that a social fact is any course of action, fixed or not, which can exert an external coercion on the individual; or even any way of acting which is general in a particular society, but which at the same time exists in itself, independently of its individual manifestations. The facts of social action, therefore, consist of ways of acting, thinking and feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a coercive force, with which they control him. These ways of thinking cannot be confused with biological phenomena, as they are made up of representations and actions; nor with psychological phenomena, which exist only in and through individual consciousness. They thus constitute a new variety of phenomena, and it is exclusive that the term social applies.18 One thing Durkheim stressed was the fact that social facts were not limited only to modes of functioning, eg acting, thinking, feeling; but also extended to ways of being, for example the number, nature and relationship of the parts of a society, the size and geographical distribution of its population, the nature and extent of its communication networks

Ways of Recognizing Social Facts

When asked how to recognize social facts, Durkheim gave two answers. One pointed backwards to the division of labor and the other forwards to suicide. Since the essential characteristic of social facts is their external coercive force, Durkheim first proposed that social facts could be discerned by the existence of a pre-established legal sanction or, in the case of moral and religious beliefs, by their response to these forms of individual belief. and actions they perceived as threatening. But where the exercise of social constraints is less direct, as in the forms of economic organization that produce anomie, their existence is more easily ascertained by their generality combined with objectivity. But whether direct or indirect, the essential defining characteristic of social facts remains their external, constraining power, as manifested in the constraint they exert on the individual. The second class of structural facts, according to Durkheim, presents exactly the same characteristics of exteriority and constraint as the first; For example, a political organization constrains our behavior no less than a political ideology, and a communication network no less than the thought to be conveyed. In fact, Durkheim insisted that there were not two classes at all,

When asked how to recognize social facts, Durkheim gave two answers. One pointed backwards to the division of labor and the other forwards to suicide. Since the essential characteristic of social facts is their external coercive force, Durkheim first proposed that social facts could be discerned by the existence of a pre-established legal sanction or, in the case of moral and religious beliefs, by their response to those forms of individual belief and action that they perceived as threatening. But where the exercise of social constraints is less direct, as in the forms of economic organization that produce anomie, their existence is more easily ascertained by their generality combined with objectivity. But whether direct or indirect, the essential defining characteristic of social facts remains their external and constraining power, as manifested in the constraint they exert on the individual. 

The second class of structural facts, according to Durkheim, presents exactly the same characteristics of exteriority and constraint as the first; For example, a political organization constrains our behavior no less than a political ideology, and a communication network no less than the thought to be conveyed. Indeed, Durkheim insisted that there are not two classes at all, since the structural features of a society are nothing more than social functions consolidated over long periods of time.

Rules for Observing Social Facts

Avoiding all Misconceptions

The starting point for Durkheim is that he sees social facts as things. 21. Before we have any scientific ideas about social phenomena, we develop our commonsense conceptions about these phenomena. This is because reflection comes before science. It is very difficult to dismiss these views because social things are only made by people. I am a product of human activity. Yet we must separate social phenomena from the conscious things they represent. Only then is scientific objectivity possible.

The first of these conclusions is the following: All prejudices must be systematically avoided. It is a method that Durkheim borrowed from Descartes, the French philosopher. Durkheim argues in advance that the sociologist must refuse to use concepts formed outside of science for extra-scientific needs. The sociologist must free himself from those deceptive notions which dominate the mind of the common man, and cast off once and for all the yoke of those empirical categories which long habit often renders tyrannical.

Defining Phenomena

The second rule that Durkheim establishes for the observation of social facts is that the object of study must encompass only a group of phenomena previously defined by certain common external characteristics, and all phenomena which correspond to this definition must be so encompassed. He underscores this by insisting that any scientific inquiry must begin by defining the specific set of phenomena that concern it. If this definition must be objective, it must not refer to an ideal conception of these phenomena, but to those properties both inherent in the phenomena themselves and apparent from the outside at the first stages of the investigation. He followed this procedure in his book The Division of Labor.

Presenting social facts in Isolation from their Individual manifestation

Finally, Durkheim argues that when the sociologist undertakes the responsibility of examining any order of social facts, he should endeavor to consider them from a point of view in which they arise apart from their individual manifestations. As we have seen, according to him, science must reject the prejudices formed by common extra-scientific experiences and recreate its own concepts on the basis of systematically observable data. In making this claim he was also aware that, even in the natural sciences, sensory experience itself can be subjective, so that observables that are too personal to the observer have been rejected, and only those that have a degree of required for objectivity. . In this light, sociological observations should be equally objective, and therefore social facts should be as completely detached as possible from the individual facts through which they manifest themselves.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

  1. Durkheim Emile, (1897) The Rules of Sociological method, Eighth ed. Trans. Sarah A. Solvay and John H. 
  2. Mueller & edited by George E.G. Cathin, New York: Free Press, 1962. 
  3. --------- (1897), The Rules for Sociological Method, Trans by W.D Halls &Ed by Stephen Lukes, New York: Free Press. 
  4. ----- (1897), Le suicide: Etude de Sociologie, Paris: Les Presses Univesitaire de France. 
  5. -------, The Division of Labour in Society, Trans. By W.D Halls, New York: Free Press,
  6. -------- (1897), The Rules for Sociological Method, Trans by Solovay and Mueller&Ed by George Catlin London: Collier-Macmillan Ltd.
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