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Sociology vocabulary · Theories and Thinkers

Social fact

Meaning in sociology, with examples

nounCommon term

In sociology, social fact means: In Durkheim's sociology, a way of acting, thinking or feeling that exists outside individuals and puts pressure on them, such as laws, customs or suicide rates.

In Turkish: toplumsal olgu, sosyal olgu

How it is used

Introduced in Durkheim's The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), where he said that social facts should be treated as things and explained by other social facts. It appears in theory exams and in debates about positivism.

Example sentences

  1. Durkheim treated the suicide rate as a social fact rather than a set of individual decisions.

  2. Language is a social fact: it exists before we are born and we have to follow its rules.

Common collocations

  • treat social facts as things
  • Durkheim's social facts
  • external and constraining
  • anomieA condition in which the norms that guide behaviour become weak, unclear or contradictory, often during rapid social change, leaving people without direction.
  • functionalismA theoretical approach that sees society as a system of connected parts, each of which performs a function that helps keep the whole stable.
  • societyA large group of people who live in a shared territory, interact with one another and share institutions, rules and, to some degree, a common culture.
  • social structureThe relatively stable pattern of social relationships, institutions and positions in a society, which shapes and limits what individuals can do.

More terms: Theories and Thinkers

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