Intro: Site Notice: ‘Modern Sociological Studies & Methods’…
Tab commenced 01 August, 2009
SOCIETY, SOCIAL FACT & CONSTRAINT
ONE
What is a Social Fact?
BEFORE making inquiry into the method suited to the study of social facts, namely the interaction, in the first instance, between sociology, health, illness and medicine, it is important to know and understand which facts are commonly called ‘social’. This information is all the more necessary since the designation ‘social’ is used with little precision. It is currently employed for practically all phenomena generally diffused within society, however small that social interest might be. But, on this basis, there are, as it were, no human events that may not be called social. Each individual drinks, sleeps, eats, reasons; and it is to society’s interest that these functions be exercised in an orderly manner. If, then, all these facts are counted as ‘social’ facts, sociology would have no subject matter exclusively its own, and its domain would likely be confused or blurred with that of biology and psychology.
But in reality there is in every society a certain group of phenomena which may be differentiated from those studied by the other natural sciences. When, for example, I fulfil my obligation as a citizen, when I execute my contracts, I perform duties which are defined, externally to myself and my acts, in law and in custom. Even if they conform to my own sentiments and I feel their reality subjectively, such reality is still objective, for I did not create them; I merely inherited them through the process of education … The system of signs I use to express my thought, the system of currency I employ to pay my debts, the instruments of credit I utilise in my commercial relations, the practices followed in my profession, etc, function independently of my own use of them. And these statements can be repeated for each member of society. Here, then, are ways of acting, thinking, and feeling that present the noteworthy property of existing outside the individual consciousness.
These types of conduct or thought are not only external to the individual but are, moreover, endowed with coercive power, by virtue of which they impose themselves upon him, independent of his individual will. Of course, when I fully consent and conform to them, this constraint is felt only slightly, if at all, and is therefore unnecessary. But it is, none the less, an intrinsic characteristic of these facts, the proof being that it asserts itself as soon as I attempt to resist it. If I attempt to violate the law, it reacts against me so as to prevent my act before its accomplishment, or to nullify my violation by restoring the damage, if it is accomplished and reparable, or to make me expiate it if it cannot be compensated for otherwise.
In the case of purely moral maxims, the public conscience exercises a check on every act which offends it by means of the surveillance it exercises over the conduct of citizens, and the appropriate penalties at its disposal. In many cases the constraint is less violent, but nevertheless it always exists. If I do not submit to the conventions of society, if in my dress I do not conform to the customs observed, the ridicule I provoke, the social isolation in which I am kept, produce, although in an attenuated form, the same effects as a punishment in the strict sense of the word. The constraint is none the less efficacious for being indirect. I am not obliged to speak English with my fellow-countrymen nor to use the legal currency, but I cannot possibly do otherwise. If I tried to escape this necessity, my attempt would fail miserably. An industrialist, for example, is free to apply the technical methods of former centuries; but by doing so, he would invite certain ruin. Even if I free myself from these rules and violate them successfully, I am always compelled to struggle with them. When finally overcome, they make their constraining power sufficiently felt by the resistance they offer. The enterprises of all innovators, including successful ones, come up against resistance of this kind.
Here, then, is a category of facts with very distinctive characteristics: it consists of ways of acting, thinking, and feeling, external to the individual, and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him. These ways of thinking could not be confused with biological phenomena, which exist only in the individual consciousness and through it. They constitute, thus, a new variety of phenomena; and it is to them exclusively that the term ‘social’ ought to be applied. And this term fits them quite well, for it is clear that, since their source is not in the individual, their substratum can be no other than society, either the political society as a whole or some one of the partial groups it includes, such as religious denominations, political, literary, and occupational associations, etc. On the other hand, this term ‘social’ applies to them exclusively, for it has a distinct meaning only if it designates exclusively the phenomena which are not included in any of the categories of facts that have already been established and classified. These ways of thinking and acting therefore constitute the proper domain of sociology. It is true that, when we define them with this word ‘constraint’, we risk shocking the zealous partisans of absolute individualism. For those who profess the complete autonomy of the individual, man’s dignity is diminished whenever he is made to feel that he is not completely self-determinant. It is generally accepted today, however, that most of our ideas and our tendencies are not developed by ourselves but come to us from without. How can they become a part of us by imposing themselves upon us? This is the whole meaning and impetus behind construing a sound definition. And it is generally accepted, moreover, that social constraint is not necessarily incompatible with the individual personality.
TWO
TO CONFIRM this definition of the social fact by a characteristic illustration from common day experience, one only need observe the manner in which children are brought up. Considering the facts as they are and as they have always been, it becomes immediately evident that all education is a continuous effort to impose on the child ways of seeing, feeling, and acting which he could not have arrived at spontaneously. From the very first hours of his life, we compel him to eat, drink, and sleep at regular hours; we constrain him to cleanliness, calmness, and obedience; later we exert pressure upon him in order that he may learn proper consideration for others, respect for customs and conventions, the need for work and respect for the law. If, in time, this constraint ceases to be felt, it is because it gradually gives rise to habits and to internal tendencies that render constraint unnecessary; but nevertheless it is not abolished, for it is still the source from which those habits are derived. It is true that, according to social theory (Spencer), a rational education ought to reject such methods, allowing the child to act in complete liberty; but as this pedagogic theory has never been applied by any known people, it must be accepted only as an expression of personal opinion, not as a fact which can contradict the observations previously made. What makes these facts particularly instructive is that the aim of education is, precisely, the socialisation of the human being; the process of education, therefore, gives us in a nutshell the historical fashion in which the social being is constituted. This unremitting pressure to which the child is subjected is the very pressure of the social milieu which tends to fashion him in its own image, and of which parents and teachers are merely the representatives and intermediaries.
Indeed, it would appear that certain of these social manners of acting and thinking acquire, by reason of repetition, a certain rigidity which on its own account crystallises them, so to speak, and isolates them from the particular events which reflect them. They thus acquire a body, a tangible form, and constitute a reality in their own right, quite distinct from the individual facts which produce it. Collective habits are inherent not only in the successive acts which they determine but, by a privilege of which we find no example in the biological realm, they are given permanent expression in a formula which is repeated from mouth to mouth, transmitted by education, and fixed even in writing. Such is the origin and nature of legal and moral rules, popular aphorisms and proverbs, articles of faith wherein religious or political groups condense their beliefs in such instances as standards of tastes being established by literary schools. None of these can be found entirely reproduced in the applications made of them by individuals, since they exist even without being actually applied.
Such are social phenomena, when disentangled from all foreign matter. As for their individual manifestations, these are, to a certain extent, social, since they partly reproduce a social model. Each of them also depends, and to a large extent, on the organopsychological constitution of the individual and on the particular circumstances in which he is placed. Thus they are not sociological phenomenon in the strict sense of the word. They belong to two realms at once; conceivably, one could call them sociopsychological. They interest the sociologist without constituting the immediate subject matter of sociology. There exist in the interior of organisms similar phenomena, compound in their nature, which form in their turn the subject matter of the ‘hybrid sciences’, such as physiological chemistry, for example.
THREE
THE OBJECTION may be raised that a phenomenon is collective only if it is common to all members of society, or at least to most of them – in other words, if it is truly general. This may be true; however, it is general because it is collective (that is, more or less obligatory), and certainly not collective because general. It is a group condition repeated in the individual because it is imposed on him. It is to be found in each part because it exists in the whole, rather than in the whole because it exists in the parts. This becomes conspicuously evident in those beliefs and practices which are transmitted to us ready-made by previous generations; we receive them and adopt them because, being both collective and ancient, they are invested with a particular authority that education has taught us to recognise and respect. It is, of course, true that a vast portion of our social culture is transmitted to us in this way; but even when the social fact is due in part to our direct collaboration, its nature is not different.
We should thus arrive at the point where one can formulate and delimit in a precise way the very domain of sociology. It compromises, in fact, only a limited group of phenomena. A ‘social fact’ is to be recognised by the power of external coercion which it exercises or is capable of exercising over individuals, and the presence of this power may be recognised in its turn either by the existence of some specific sanction or by the resistance offered against every individual effort that tends to violate it.
A legal regulation is an arrangement no less permanent than a type of architecture, and yet the regulation is a ‘physiological’ fact. A simple moral maxim is assuredly somewhat more malleable, but it is much more rigid than a simple professional custom or a fashion. There is thus a whole series of degrees without a break in continuity between the facts of the most articulated structure and those free currents of social life which are not yet definitely moulded. The differences between them are, therefore, only differences in the degree of consolidation they present. Perhaps then a definition should include the whole range of relevant facts if we say:
…A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations.
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© Mark Dowe 2009: all rights protected
