Chapter1: Introduction: Sociological Theory

INTRODUCTION

There are two main themes in the work of Emile Durkheim. The first is the priority of the social over the individual. and the second is the idea that society can be studied scientifically. Because both of these themes continue to be controversial, Durkheim is still relevant today, We live in a society that tends to see everything as attributable to individuals, even clearly social problems such as racism, pollution, and econormic recessions. Durkheim approaches things from the opposite perspective, stressing the social dimension of all human phenomena. However, even some who recognize the importance of society tend to see it as an amorphous entity that can be intuitively understood, but never scientifically studied. Here again, Durkheim provides the opposing approach. For Durkheim, society is made up of "social facts" that exceed out intuitive understanding and must be investigated through observations and measurements. These ideas are so central to sociology that Durkheim is often seen as the "father" of sociology (Gouldner, 1958). To found sociology as a discipline was indeed one of Durkheim's primary goals.

Durkheim (/90011973b:3) believed that sociology, as an idea, was born in France in the nineteenth century. He wanted to turn this idea into a discipline, a well-defined field of study, He recognized the roots of sociology in the ancient philosophers--such as Plato and Aristotle---and more proximate sources in French philosophers such as Montesquieu and Cundorcet. However, in Durkhehn's (1900/1973b:6) view, previous philosophers did not go far enough, because they did not try to create an entirely new discipline.

Although the term sociology had been coined some years earlier by Auguste Comte, there was no field of sociology per se in late nineteenth-contrary universities. There were no schools, departments, or even professors of sociology. There were a few thinkers who were dealing with ideas that were in one way or another sociological, but there was as yet no disciplinary "home" for sociology. Indeed, there was strong opposition from existing disciplines to the founding of such a field. The most significant opposition came from psychology and philosophy, two fields that claimed already to cover the do-main sought by sociology. The dilemma for Durkheim, given his aspirations for sociology, was how to create for it a separate and identifiable niche.

To separate it from philosophy, Durkheim argued that sociology should be oriented toward empirical research. This seems simple enough, but the situation was complicated by Durkheim's belief that sociology was also threatened by a philosophical school within sociology itself. In his view, the two other major figures of the epoch who thought of themselves as sociologists, Comte and Herbert Spencer, were far more interested in philosophizing, in abstract theorizing, than they were in studying the social world empirically. If the field continued in the direction set by Comte and Spencer, Durkheim felt, it would become nothing more than a branch of philosophy. As a result, he found it necessary to attack both Comte and Spencer (Durkheim, 1895/1982:19-20) for relying on preconceived ideas of social phenomena instead of actually studying the real world. Thus Comte was said to be guilty of assuming theoretically that the social world was evolving in the direction of an increasingly perfect society, rather than engaging in the hard, rigorous, and basic work of actually studying the changing nature of various societies. Similarly, Spencer was accused of assuming harmony in society rather than studying whether harmony actually existed.

SOCIAL FACTS

In order to help sociology move away from philosophy and to give it a clear and separate identity, Durkheim (1895/1982) proposed that the distinctive subject matter of sociology should be the study of social facts (see Crane, 1988; Gilbert, 1994; and the special edition of Sociological Perspectives [1995]). Briefly, social facts are the social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive of, actors. Students, for example, are constrained by such social structures as the university bureaucracy as well as the norms and values of American society, which pIace great importance on a college education. Similar social facts constrain people in all areas of social life.

Crucial in separating sociology from philosophy is the idea that social facts are to be treated as "things" (S. Jones, 1996) and studied empirically. This means that social facts must be studied by acquiring data from outside of our own minds through observation and experimentation. This empirical study of social facts as things sets Durkheimian sociology apart from more philosophical approaches.

A social fact is every way of acting, fixed or nut, capable of exercising on the individual an ex- ternal constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own fight independent of its individual manifastations.

(Durkeim, 1895/1982:13)

Note that Durkheim gave two ways of defining a social fact so that sociology is distinguished from psychology. First, it is experienced as an external constraint rather than an internal drive; second, it is general throughout the society and is not attached to any particular individual.

Durkheim argued that social facts cannot be reduced to individuals, but must be stud-ied as their own reality. Durkheim referred to social facts with the Latin term suigeneris, which means "unique." He used this term to claim that social facts have their own unique character that is not reducible to individual consciousness. To allow that social facts could be explained by reference to individuals would be to reduce sociology to psychology. Instead, social facts can be explained only by other social facts. We will study some examples of this type of explanation below, where Durkheim explains the division of labor and even the rate of suicide with other social facts rather than individual intentions. To summarize, social facts can be empirically studied, are external to the individual, are coercive of the individual, and are explained by other social facts.

Durkheim himself gave several examples of social facts, including legal rules, moral obligations, and social conventions. He also refers to language as a social fact, and it provides an easily understood example. First, language is a "thing" that must be studied empirically. One cannot simply philosophize about the logical rules of language. Certainly, all languages have some logical rules regarding grammar, pronunciation, spelling, and so forth; however, all languages also have important exceptions to these logical rules (Quine, 1972). What follows the roles and what are exceptions must be discovered empirically by studying actual language use, especially since language use changes over time in ways that are not completely predictable.

Second, language is external to the individual. Although individuals use a language, language is not defined or created by the individual. The fact that individuals adapt lan-guage to their own use indicates that language is first external to the individual and in need of adaptation for individual use. Indeed, some philosophers (Kripke, 1982;Wittgenstein, 1953) have argued that there cannot be such a thing as a private language. A collection of words with only private meanings would not qualify as a language since it could not perform the basic function of a language: communication. Language is, by definition, social and therefore external to any particular individual.

Third, language is coercive of the individual. The language that we use makes some things extremely difficult to say. For example, people in lifelong relationships with same-sex partners have a very difficult time referring to each other. Should they call each other partners--leading people into thinking they are in business together--significant others, lovers, spouses, special friends? Each seems to have its disadvantages. Language is part of the system of social facts that makes life with a same-sex partner difficult even if every individual should be personally accepting of same-sex relationships.

Finally, changes in language can be explained only by other social facts and never by one individual's intentions. Even in those rare instances where a change in language can be traced to an individual, the actual explanation for the change is the social facts that have made society open to this change. For example, the most changeable part of language is slang, which almost always originates in a marginal social group. We may assume that an individual first originates a slang term, but which individual is irrelevant. It is the fact of the marginal social group that truly explains the history and function of the slang.

Some sociologists feel that Durkheim took an "extremist" position (Karady,1983:79-80) in limiting sociology to the study of social facts. This position has limited at least some branches of sociology to the present day. Furthermore, Durkeim seemed to artificially sever sociology from neighboring fields. As Lemert (1994a:91 ) puts it," Because he defined sociology so exclusively in relation to its own facts, Durkheim cut it off from the other sciences of man." Nevertheless, whatever its subsequent draw-backs, Durkheim's idea of social facts both established sociology as an independent field of study and provided one of the most convincing arguments for studying society as it is before we decide what it should be.