SOCI 210 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Sui Generis, Social Fact, Determinism

• School: McGill University
• Department: Sociology
• Course: SOCI 210
• Professor: Matthew Lange

Document Summary

Founder of sociology (and anthropology) as disciplines: wrote four sociological classics: the division of labour in society (1892), the rules of sociological. Methods (1895), suicide (1897), the elementary forms of religious life (1912: helped to reform french education. Focuses on all social relations, especially rituals and symbols. Social facts: durkheim claimed social facts are what sociologists must study. The social structures and cultural norms and values that are external to, and coercive of, actors . Social: can"t be reduced to individual we need to study social relations to understand their effects on individual. Fact: strange choice of term likely used to suggest it"s concrete and can be studied scientifically: his methodological work focuses on how to study them, clearly distinguishes sociology from psych. Famous book written by durkheim that exemplifies his thoughts about social facts. Tries to look at what appears to be the most individual act possible and show that it is determined by social relations.