Editing Émile Durkheim (section)

===Social facts===
{{Main|Social fact}}

{{blockquote|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.|''The Rules of Sociological Method''<ref name="socialfact" />|title=|source=}}

Durkheim's work revolved around the study of social facts, a term he coined to describe phenomena that have an existence in and of themselves, are not bound to the actions of individuals, but have a coercive influence upon them.<ref>{{harvp|Allan|2005|pp=105-06}}</ref> Durkheim argued that social facts have, ''[[sui generis]]'', an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that compose society.<ref name="Allan_106">{{harvp|Allan|2005|p=106}}</ref> Only such social facts can explain the observed social phenomena.<ref name="Calhoun2002-103"/> Being exterior to the individual person, social facts may thus also exercise [[Social control|coercive power]] on the various people composing society, as it can sometimes be observed in the case of formal laws and regulations, but also in situations implying the presence of informal rules, such as religious rituals or family norms.<ref name="socialfact" /><ref name="Durkheim_1994_433">Durkheim, Émile. 1994 [1895]. "Social facts." Pp. 433–40 in ''Readings in the Philosophy of Social Science'', edited by M. Martin and [[Lee C. McIntyre|L. C. McIntyre]]. Boston: [[MIT Press]]. {{ISBN|978-0-262-13296-1}}. p. 433–34.</ref> Unlike the facts studied in [[natural science]]s, a ''social'' fact thus refers to a specific category of phenomena: "the determining cause of a social fact must be sought among the antecedent social facts and not among the states of the individual consciousness."{{citation needed|date=May 2020}}

Such facts are endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they may control individual behaviors.<ref name="Durkheim_1994_433"/> According to Durkheim, these phenomena cannot be reduced to [[biology|biological]] or [[psychology|psychological]] grounds.<ref name="Durkheim_1994_433" /> Social facts can be material (i.e. physical objects ) or immaterial (i.e. meanings, sentiments, etc.).<ref name="Allan_106"/> Though the latter cannot be seen or touched, they are external and coercive, thus becoming real and gaining "[[facticity]]".<ref name="Allan_106"/> Physical objects, too, can represent both material and immaterial social facts. For example, a flag is a physical social fact that is often ingrained with various immaterial social facts (e.g. its meaning and importance).<ref name="Allan_106"/>

Many social facts, however, have no material form.<ref name="Allan_106"/> Even the most "individualistic" or "subjective" phenomena, such as love, freedom, or suicide, were regarded by Durkheim as ''objective'' social facts.<ref name="Allan_106"/> Individuals composing society do not directly cause suicide: suicide, as a social fact, exists independently in society, and is caused by other social facts—such as rules governing [[behavior]] and group attachment—whether an individual likes it or not.<ref name="Allan_106"/><ref>{{harvp|Allan|2005|p=107}}</ref> Whether a person "leaves" a society does not alter the ''fact'' that this society will ''still contain'' suicides. Suicide, like other immaterial social facts, exists independently of the will of an individual, cannot be eliminated, and is as influential—coercive—as physical laws like gravity.<ref name="Allan_106"/> Sociology's task therefore consists of discovering the qualities and characteristics of such social facts, which can be discovered through a [[Quantitative research|quantitative]] or experimental approach (Durkheim extensively relied on [[Social statistics|statistics]]).<ref group="lower-roman">{{harvp|Hassard|1995|loc=[https://books.google.com/books?id=EjI6Rd-NreYC&dq=Durkheim+suicide+sociological+positivism&pg=PA15 p. 15]}}: "Suicide…is indeed the paradigm case of Durkheim's positivism: it remains the exemplar of the sociological application of statistics."</ref>