The way Durkheim underlines The Social Fact is how “structural forces affects the level of social integration within the relationships between people and society” (Intro.7). He discusses the study of sociology is the study of social facts. Similar to psychology, the social fact is the study of human behavior among society, but that there is a distinction between the two and that the distinction should be highlighted because, “psychological factors determines the nature of individuals and not the nature of society” (55). Three ways we can look at the social fact is one, people act the way they do whether it is fixed or not. Two, the external constraint has to do with lack of individual mobility, and forcing them to choose form limited options. Third, Durkheim mentions how the social fact has its own independent existence. What I feel Durkheim is saying is that there is this invisible power that has control over these individuals and acts as an external constraint. The synthesis of society brings a “new reality” and this new reality is social consciousness, where people are aware of these social facts.
The image above is an image I stumbled upon on orgtheory.net. The image labeled as a general model of social science explanation, and describes the macro-to macro causation. I wanted to find some sort of illustration on how the social fact works in society, so I decided to use this and break it down. The way I interpret the table is if we want to look at a large-scale of social outcomes we must examine the social facts such as institutions that lead to the outcomes. As far as the smaller scale, it’s more of the constraints on the individual that lead up to the individual to act and results as a natural social outcome. However, I feel that these four points all have to do deal with the macro-level of societal issues and not macro versus micro. The social cohesion between the individuals and the institution brings out the outcomes of this “new reality”, which is that society only exists because human associations and relations have constituted it. The macro- level would be that these independent manifestations are dependent on the individual circumstance or constraint. Within the figure, one can conclude that the social fact is being known by the external power over individuals and then resistance that the power offers to the individual is being opposed by the individual action.
Similar to C. Wright Mills, his notion of the sociological imagination and Durkheim’s social fact, I believe both coincide with one another. The sociological imagination is used to explain the nature of sociology by is individuals linking individual experiences with the social world. We cannot understand history and its social phenomena by not analyzing the social facts seen across time. Social facts are not very literal and often social theorists or sociologists write their own ideas and we as individuals apply them to society stating them as social facts being real and being repeated in different forms. The social fact functions in the relationship among the social environment.
The image above is an image I stumbled upon on orgtheory.net. The image labeled as a general model of social science explanation, and describes the macro-to macro causation. I wanted to find some sort of illustration on how the social fact works in society, so I decided to use this and break it down. The way I interpret the table is if we want to look at a large-scale of social outcomes we must examine the social facts such as institutions that lead to the outcomes. As far as the smaller scale, it’s more of the constraints on the individual that lead up to the individual to act and results as a natural social outcome. However, I feel that these four points all have to do deal with the macro-level of societal issues and not macro versus micro. The social cohesion between the individuals and the institution brings out the outcomes of this “new reality”, which is that society only exists because human associations and relations have constituted it. The macro- level would be that these independent manifestations are dependent on the individual circumstance or constraint. Within the figure, one can conclude that the social fact is being known by the external power over individuals and then resistance that the power offers to the individual is being opposed by the individual action.
Similar to C. Wright Mills, his notion of the sociological imagination and Durkheim’s social fact, I believe both coincide with one another. The sociological imagination is used to explain the nature of sociology by is individuals linking individual experiences with the social world. We cannot understand history and its social phenomena by not analyzing the social facts seen across time. Social facts are not very literal and often social theorists or sociologists write their own ideas and we as individuals apply them to society stating them as social facts being real and being repeated in different forms. The social fact functions in the relationship among the social environment.