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1.1 Examples of Social Facts
1.1 Examples of Social Facts
French sociologist Émile Durkheim defined the term, and argued that the
discipline of Sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social
facts. For Durkheim, social facts "...consist of manners of acting, thinking
and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive
power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.
1.1 Examples of social facts:
1 Laws
2 Morals
3 Beliefs
4 Customs
5 Fashions
Durkheim was concerned with the systems of symbols particularly the norms,
values, and beliefs that humans create and use to organize their activities.
In the course of his analysis of the collective conscience, Durkheim
conceptualized its varying states as having four variables:
Volume
Denotes the degree to which the values, beliefs, and rules of the
collective conscience are shared by the members of a society.
Intensity
Indicates the extent to which the collective conscience has power
to guide a person’s thoughts and actions.
Determinateness
Denotes the degree of clarity in the components of the collective
conscience.
Content
Pertains to the ratio of religious to purely secular symbolism in
the collective conscience.