DURKHEIMS’ CLAIM THAT ‘SOCIAL FACTS SHOULD BE STUDIES AS THINGS
INTRODUCTION
Durkheim (1858-1917) is extensively credited as baseline father of the sociology discipline by social theorists builds based on scientific principles. I am going to examine and explore Durkheim’s decree to a sociologist to consider social facts as things. And also, discuss how it is crucial and persuasive .we can also see that Durkheim argued that this all doesn’t emerge from the individual but emanate from created collective forces. And it is hard to observe them, social facts are things, and that means the study should be done empirically but not philosophically (Ritzer, p.78). Thoughts and pure reason cannot be deducted, but the study of society and history is required for you to know the social facts and effects.
DISCUSSION
According to Durkheim (1982), in the Rule of Sociological Method oblige the recognition of social theorist, “the first and the most basic rule is to consider social facts as the things.” But Craib (1997) proposed that when Durkheim said social facts are things, he meant positivist, empirical, scientific observation and sociological phenomena analysis and also the metaphysical theorizing consistent with contemporary philosophy. The social world is understood differently with all humans (Craib, 1997). Still, Durkheim is telling us never to start with such kind of perception, from deduction or structuring theories a priori, but considering facts are observable of social mechanisms within the actuality of their society, individual institution independence, then embracing speculative detection to shape theory through induction, from the bottom up, a posteriori (Durkheim, 1989). A useful explanation is given by Craib (1997) on what Durkheim injunction on treating social facts as things meant. Since objectivity is a state of mind, Craib (1997) argued that it should not be considered as social facts objectively by sociologists, but as remaining universal and constant, depending on the way an individual might interpret it.
To come up with a basic definition of what social facts are made up of, Durkheim (1982) gave an explanation that they are external to, and constraint on the individual are affected. In requesting social facts to be treated as things by sociologists.
According to Durkheim’s definition, the scorn that sets sociology above psychology as sociology, unlike psychology, the conceptualization of its facts don’t need a long testing method. Suggestion by Durkheim is that interpretation of events is somehow hard because of its complexity, but accessibility is ready. There is an affirmation by Durkheim that if there were universal adoption of his rule by sociology, the discipline would remove the psychologist from the lead they have been enjoying under its historical pre-emergence. In the Division of labour in society, we have examples provided by Durkheim. The repressive laws are mention as factually ominous of social facts to be considered as things, because the rules are not imagined laws but real to those that infringe them. The laws exert an external; clearly, there is compelling evidence provided by the individual influence and coercive for the persuasiveness and importance of injunction.
The injunction is used to treat social facts as things by Durkheim, to persuasively conceptualize the move from historical, mechanical solidarity, to the coeval, organic togetherness stage of social unity in his 1893 hypothesis the Division of Labor in Society. The part played by repressive law in the ‘feudal mechanic’ solidarity is discussed by Durkheim. Durkheim considers the phase of social unity, where the society who are prone to revenge by whipping individuals, and by doing that, others get discouraged from transgressing, and this brings the problem in bringing society together with an emphasis on the collective uniformity of rather than individual going against a low level of societal differentiation, current organic solidarity is gestated by Durkheim (Cohen, 2008) social unity stage which is differentiated by societal differentiation of high level with particular emphasis rather than before, the collective ‘we.’ The statistical information encircling the act of individual suicide; the inclusion definition was also met as a social fact. Suicide was recognized as a thing according to Durkheim since it was graphically presented in the statistical report as authentic mortality evidence (Morrison, 2006). This information forms the subject of imaginable his most significant work, and for that reason, the publication of suicide was done in 1987. According to Morrison (2006), there was faster growth of industrial development in Europe, which was caused by an increased level of suicide in the mid-nineteenth century. But Durkheim’s explained this as a sign of weak social unity and a feature of the nuclear agreement, where individualism was emphasized (Morrison, 2006). Maybe the motivation by Durkheim’s is getting a sociological link between suicide and imperfect social unity. Therefore social facts are seen separate from that psychology studied, is proposed by Morrison (2006) assumed that suicide was communicated by a psychological state as mental illness and exacerbated by individuality pressure. Social linkage thesis was defended by Durkheim, and therefore its sociological documents by proposing. In essence, the sum of independent units is not only suicide but a fact suigeneris, with its nature and unity, nevertheless, social dominantly.
Putting suicide as a social phenomenon different from the previously received wisdom of mental illness, the importance of Durkheim’s instruction is highlighted persuasively for social facts treatment by sociologists, in this case, suicide as things.
Religion was also recognized as a social fact by Durkheim simply because of its coercive influence and externality to individuals. Durkheim mapped the nationality and religion against individual’s suicides, and he discovered that Catholics have a lower suicidal rate in all nations than Protestants communities to be diagnostic of their more moderate, with catholic comparison, social control. Conditions were obviously to be found in current organic unity with its insistence, lack of societal regulation and transference, hence giving a convincing fit a posteriori, for Durkheim’s anomic theory.
His associates criticized Durkheim’s work on suicide because we had people like Morrison (2006), whom they still had a strong belief that the psychological state of the person to be rooted in suicide, an example developed by psychologists, opposite to what Durkheim had said.
Scholars have not deeply examined the relationship between suicide and religion, according to Durkheim’s recent analysis. Many scholars have accepted information given Durkheim, but they have failed to acknowledge the ecological fallacy whereby scholars have treated group data on suicide as an individual suicide data. They came with the conclusion that the information by Durkheim was due to how suicides were recorded in regional statistics.
CONCLUSION
The essay has examined the evaluation of Durkheim’s social facts from their positivist beginning and gives us a clear picture of what Durkheim meant by treating them as things. We have also discussed their importance and persuasiveness as a tool that is used to give us an explicit knowledge of social cohesion mechanisms throughout his work.we have found out that injunction by Durkheim my lack reliability and validity aspect, on the recent data of contagious suicide, which was referred chronic anomie, gives us an indication that Durkheim’s data has contemporary relevance, rejecting his work will be so unfair because of this flaws will be so unfair. Still, instead, the sociological thinking canon of Durkheim must put contemplated in the nineteenth context.