SOC 2112 Lecture Notes - Lecture 4: Altruistic Suicide, Social Fact, Sui Generis
2 Mar 2016
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
His study of suicide to prove" that there is a pre-existing social reality that must be accounted for. We are not entirely free as individuals: society influences our behavior. Social facts exist prior to or a priori the individual. The whole is greater than the sum of its parts and society is an order sui generis" or self-generating. Social facts must be studied as things, as a reality external to the individual . Sociology can and must be objective since it confronts realities which are a definite and substantial as the realities that concern the psychologist or biologist . If there is nothing more than individuals or individual forces in society then sociology is defunct as a discipline. Each social fact is real, something that is constraining on the individual and external to the actor. The social fact is not just in the mind of the individual that is, these facts are more than psychological facts.
