Source
Émile Durkheim (1894), “Qu’est-ce qu’un fait social ?”, Revue philosophique 37, chapter I at pp. 466–475; chapter I of Les Règles de la méthode sociologique (1895). LIT-484, read in full in French in NOTE-391, in the Alcan 1919 book text. Page numbers are that edition’s. English glosses are NOTE-391’s.
What was actually shown
All of it is definition with illustration. There are no data beyond a mention of rates.
- Exteriority (pp. 5–6). Duties of brother, spouse and citizen are defined outside me, “dans le droit et dans les mœurs”. Religious beliefs are found “toutes faites”. Signs, money and credit “fonctionnent indépendamment des usages que j’en fais”.
- Constraint, graded (pp. 6–8). Law prevents, annuls or punishes; moral maxims meet public censure; dress conventions meet ridicule; language and industrial technique make deviation fail. The force is invisible to the one who conforms and shows itself to the one who resists (p. 7).
- A new species (p. 8). Social facts consist of representations and actions, so they are not organic; they are in no individual consciousness, so they are not psychic; so their substrate is the political society or one of its partial groups.
- Not generality (pp. 11–14). A thought in every consciousness is not thereby social. Collective habits precipitate into formulas (rules, proverbs, creeds) that can exist unapplied (pp. 12–13). Where there is no formula, statistical rates let individual circumstances “se neutraliser mutuellement” and isolate the collective current (pp. 13–14).
- General because collective (pp. 14–15). “S’il est général, c’est parce qu’il est collectif (c’est-à-dire plus ou moins obligatoire), bien loin qu’il soit collectif parce qu’il est général.” It is in each part “parce qu’il est dans le tout”.
- Two criteria, one fact (pp. 15–16). External coercive power, or diffusion within the group plus existence independent of individual forms. The second is “une autre forme de la première”, since a way of conduct external to individuals spreads only “en s’imposant”.
- Against Tarde (n. 3). Imitation is a consequence of a fact’s social character, not its definition.
- Structure is consolidated practice (pp. 17–19). Roads, housing and political divisions are “des manières de faire consolidées”, differing from free currents only “dans le degré de consolidation”.
- The formula (p. 19). “Est fait social toute manière de faire, fixée ou non, susceptible d’exercer sur l’individu une contrainte extérieure ; ou bien encore, qui est générale dans l’étendue d’une société donnée tout en ayant une existence propre, indépendante de ses manifestations individuelles.” Identical in the 1894 text.
What could have come out otherwise. A way of acting could have been general and independent of its instances without any constraint behind it, which would split the two criteria. The chapter does not look for one; the equivalence is asserted (C8, weak).
What this does not say
- That the elimination is sound. That social facts are “une espèce nouvelle” needs organic and individual-psychic facts to exhaust the non-social. That is assumed (C3, weak).
- That unfelt constraint has been shown. That constraint shows itself under resistance is illustrated. That it is present all along in the compliant case is the chapter’s main unargued step (C2).
- That constraint is one property. Legal sanction, ridicule and market failure are all “contrainte”. Whether they are one thing is not argued. Later accounts of convention would split the coordination case off (NOTE-391, Open questions).
- That the group is a mind or an agent. “Âme collective” is used once (p. 14), and not in the 1894 text. The claim is that sociology has facts of its own whose substrate is the group. It neither supports nor moves THEORY-043.
- That statistics measures collective states without assumptions. The neutralisation argument assumes individual factors are independent of one another and of the current.
- That this is “not a theory”. Durkheim says the definition summarises observation (n. 3). Its elimination and its equivalence of criteria are theoretical steps (C11).
Connections
- Tomasello (LIT-125, NOTE-185; THEORY-495) locates felt obligation in pressure from a “we” one helped make. Durkheim’s pressure comes from a milieu one was born into, and education turns it into habit until it is not felt (pp. 10–11, 15). Neither cites the other; the contrast is the record’s.
- Rules in equilibrium (THEORY-414). Durkheim’s rules fixed in formulas can exist “sans être actuellement appliquées” (pp. 12–13). Hindriks & Guala’s 1799 trousers ban is such a rule, and for them it is no institution, since no equilibrium holds it. Whether an unapplied formula still constrains is where the two would part. The pairing is the record’s.
- Ritchie (LIT-486, THEORY-575) cites Durkheim for the group as more than a “mere sum of individuals”, from a later chapter.
- Haslanger (THEORY-667). Both locate a category’s reality in social relations rather than in individuals’ properties (NOTE-394).
- “Real Patterns” (LIT-220). The suicide rate as a collective fact isolated by averaging is a pattern real at the aggregate. The pairing is NOTE-391’s.
- Griesemer & Shavit (LIT-188). Roads as the bed the current of exchange “s’est creusé à lui-même” is close to entrenchment. Not cited either way.