Social fact: concept, creator, types, context

FactSocial is a sociological concept that it concerns the ways of acting of individuals in a particular group and of humanity in general. Second Emile Durkheim, French thinker considered a classic of sociology, social facts shape the way people act by the influence they exert over 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 too: Emergence of sociology - factors that contributed to the creation of this science

What is a social fact?

According to Durkheim, social fact is

“every way of acting fixed or not, susceptible of exerting an external coercion on the individual; or, still, that it is general in the extension of a given society, presenting an existence of its own, regardless of the individual manifestations 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 the subjects of a society act, are external to the subject, and are coercive insofar as they act as forces on top of individuals. In this sense, the social fact is verified and cannot be modified by individual action, as there is an external force (the collective consciousness) 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. O purpose of formal education is not only about teaching the student science, but also The culture and social norms expected of an individual who lives in a given society, in order for him to be able to integrate into the social group.

Education is a social fact.

Education itself is a social fact in the sense that it acts as 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, whether in the form of formal education (provided by the school) or in the family environment, as all societies cultivate the habit of holding adults responsible for preparing the child for life in society.

Read too: Social institutions - those that make social life less aggressive

Normal and pathological social fact

Social facts can be normal or pathological. You normal social facts are those that result from the development of society within a common norm, a standard common of life that aims to improve individuals and maintain their cohesion and life in society. the normal social fact values ​​an institutional order and individual life and it maintains the solidary bonds that unite individuals in a group.

O 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, murder and violence as a whole. When a society finds itself taken over by crime and violence, it is possible to say that there is the effect of a pathological social fact, that flees from the normality expected by a society.

Generalized violence and criminality are symptoms of a social pathology.

Social anomie and suicide for Durkheim

THE anomiesocial is social disorder which may be the beginning of a pathological social fact. Émile Durkheim was the first thinker to study suicide as a social fact. In your view, the suicide is an intentional and conscious individual action which results from the death of the acting individual.

For him, despite the fact that the action that causes death itself is 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 smaller than the collective conscience, and the suicidal person commits suicide because he doesn't see a reason to live if not for the satisfaction of that cause.
• Selfish suicide: it is practiced by a selfish, that is, non-social motivation. The individual sees his existence as something that does not make up for life in the social environment. The social ego is left aside, and the individual only sees his suffering and the desire to end it. This type of suicide is a social fact, as the suffering inflicted on the suicide is caused by the social environment.
• Anomic suicide: it is the one that happens in situations of social anomie, that is, of chaos and disorder in society, such as economic, social and moral crises. When a crisis sets in in a society, it introduces social chaos and disorder. These cause social roles to collapse. People who had economic and social power can suddenly lose everything, causing their relationship to collapse.

When anomie is persistently installed, it causes a pathological situation in society that can be observed by violence, criminality and anomie suicide.

See too: Concept of domination for sociologist Max Weber

Historical context

the french sociologist Emile Durkheim It is considered a classic of sociology, as he was the first to develop a method of sociological work completely autonomous from that discipline and rigorously developed from the scientific point of view. Durkheim did not recognize the work of Auguste Comte (French philosopher who idealized sociology) as a sociologist.

For Durkheim, despite Comte's efforts, he would have remained at that intellectual point 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 a method for it rigorous and autonomous scientific, capable of giving you the ability to correctly and concretely understand the society.

Durkheim too introduced sociology in academic research, but for him to reach that level, he had to find an accurate method for the type of work, a method that would not fail. One difficulty that hampered him was the fact that people and societies were so different from one another. Therefore, in search of the foundation of sociology as a science, the sociologist started to identify patterns in people's behavior.

It didn't take him long to realize that there was factssocial that made up a general collective conscience of societies. In order for sociological research to reach the expected methodological rigor, the thinker understood that the object of study of the sociologist should be, precisely, the social fact.

Note

|1| DURKHEIM, Émile. The rules of sociological method. 17. ed. Translated by Maria Isaura Pereira de Queiroz. São Paulo: Companhia Editora Nacional, 2002. P. 11.

by Francisco Porfirio
Sociology Professor