Social fact is a sociological concept that concerns the ways of acting of the individuals of a certain group and of humanity in general. According to Émile Durkheim , a French thinker considered a classic of sociology , social facts shape the way people act by the influence they have on them.
Social facts are sets of habits practiced by people, through their actions, which allow the identification of a collective conscience, which acts behind individuals, influencing their actions in some way.
Read also: Emergence of sociology – factors that contributed to the creation of this science
What is social fact?
According to Durkheim, social fact is
“Any way of acting fixed or not, susceptible to exert an external coercion on the individual; or, still, that it is general in the extension of a given society, presenting its own existence, independent of the individual manifestations that it may have ” | 1 | .
French sociologist Émile Durkheim built his thinking on what he called social facts.
This means that social facts are general, coercive and external , that is, they present themselves as general rules in the way a society’s subjects act, they are external to the subject, and they are coercive insofar as they act as forces over the individuals. In this sense, the social fact is verified and cannot be modified by individual action , as there is an external force (the collective conscience) that shapes it.
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Social fact and education
Education is a sociological phenomenon that shapes the individual according to the collective conscience. The purpose of formal education is not only to teach the student the sciences, but also the culture and social norms expected of an individual who lives in a certain society, so that he can integrate with the social group.
Education is a social fact.
Education, in itself, is a social fact in the sense that it acts as a process of cultural preparation of individuals for life in society and in the sense that it is present, in a hegemonic way, within a society and in all societies.
All societies develop education systems, either in the form of formal education (provided by the school) or in the family sphere, as all societies cultivate the habit of holding adults responsible for preparing children for life in society.
Also read: Social institutions – those that make social life less aggressive
Normal and pathological social fact
Social facts can be normal or pathological. The normal social facts are those arising from the development of society within a common standard, a common standard of living aimed at improvement of individuals and maintaining the cohesion of these and of life in society. The normal social fact values an institutional order and individual life and keeps the bonds of solidarity that unite the individuals of a group in operation.
The pathological social fact is one that develops outside the norm, like a disease. It is dangerous, and when it reaches a larger dimension, it can negatively affect society. Pathological social facts can be, for example, crimes, homicide and violence as a whole. When a society finds itself seized by criminality and violence, it is possible to say that there is the effect of a pathological social fact, which escapes the normality expected by a society .
Widespread violence and crime are symptoms of a social pathology.
Social anomie and suicide for Durkheim
The anomie social is the social disorder that can be the beginning of a pathological social fact. Émile Durkheim was the first thinker to study suicide as a social fact. In his view, suicide is an intentional and conscious individual action that results from the death of the individual who acts.
For him, despite the action that causes death itself to be individual, there are social factors that cause it . Suicide can be considered a normal social fact or a pathological social fact. If it is practiced in a situation of social anomie, it is a pathological fact.
According to Durkheim, there are three types of suicide:
- Altruistic suicide:when the individual abdicates his own life in favor of a cause greater than himself, seeing in it a reason why it is worth dying. In this type of suicide, the individual ego sees itself as something less than the collective conscience, and the suicidal person commits suicide because he sees no reason to live if it is not for the satisfaction of that cause.
- Selfish suicide: itis practiced by a selfish, that is, non-social motivation. The individual sees his existence as something that does not compensate for life in the social environment. The social ego is left out, and the individual only sees his suffering and the will to stop it. This type of suicide is a social fact, because the suffering inflicted on the suicide is caused by the social environment.
- Anomic suicide: itis what happens in situations of social anomie, that is, of chaos and disorder in society, such as economic, social and moral crises. When a crisis settles in a society, it creates chaos and social disorder. These cause social roles to collapse. People who had economic and social power can suddenly lose everything, causing their relationship with you to collapse.
When anomie persists persistently, it causes a pathological situation in society that can be observed by violence, crime and anomic suicide.
See also: Concept of domination for sociologist Max Weber
Historical context
French sociologist Émile Durkheim is considered a classic of sociology , as he was the first to develop a method of sociological work completely autonomous in this discipline and rigorously developed from a scientific point of view. Durkheim did not recognize the work of Auguste Comte (French philosopher who idealized sociology) as sociological.
For Durkheim, despite Comte’s efforts, he would have remained at that intellectual point that he himself had been trying to overcome: metaphysical abstractions. Comte would not have founded sociology as a science in the sense of not having been able to create for it a rigorous and autonomous scientific method, capable of giving it the capacity for correct and concrete understanding of society.
Durkheim also introduced sociology to academic research , but in order to reach that level, he had to find an accurate method for the type of work, one that did not fail. One difficulty that hindered him was the fact that people and societies are so different from each other. Therefore, in search of the foundation of sociology as a science, the sociologist started to identify patterns in people’s behaviors .
It didn’t take long for him to realize that there were social facts that made up a general collective consciousness of societies . In order for sociological research to achieve the expected methodological rigor, the thinker understood that the sociologist’s object of study should be, precisely, the social fact.
