Part 2

Chapter 2: Rules for the Observation of Social Facts

Section 1. Treat Social Facts as Things

The first rule, and the most fundamental, is to consider social facts as things.

People inevitably think about what is going on in their environment.  They form concepts about such things as marriage, the state, the relationships between parents and children.  The problem is that we can mistake these concepts for the things themselves.  Thus, two people can argue about the definition of marriage without actually examining marriage in reality.  Sociologists have to do better than talk about the concepts – they have to study the actual existing social facts.  This is what it means to treat social facts as things, with their own reality, and not as concepts in our minds only.

Such it is that reflection occurs before science, while science makes use of this reflection in a methodical manner.

The goal of the rest of this book is to describe what that methodical manner is.  Up until now, sociology has really only dealt with concepts, not with the things themselves.  Anyone who looks at society teleologically, for example, trying to discover how progress evolves, takes things quite backwardly.  This is what Comte tried to do.  How can one look at a perfect future society when it doesn’t yet exist?  How can one be scientific about that?  Or consider those concerned with ethics.  Here, one is discussing ideas (what is good?  What is just?) but not things in reality.

Putting all that aside, I have to reiterate that social phenomena are actual things and they should be treated as things when we study them.  Social facts as things are the unique subject matter of sociological study.  They are our data. 

To treat phenomena as things, as data, is the point of departure for the science of sociology.

We can’t study the idea people have of what is valuable, but we can study the values they establish. We can’t grasp the concept of goodness or rightness in the abstract, but we can examine the rules put in place for governing good or right behavior.  We can’t study the concept of wealth itself, but we can look at the details of how our economy is organized.

We must consider social phenomena in themselves, not the ideas people have of them; we must study them objectively, from the outside, for it is that quality that presents itself to us as sociologists.

How do we do this?  If we want to study law, we can look at the codes. If we want to understand daily life, we can look at all the recorded facts and figures about our attitudes and behaviors.  We can see and evaluate fashion through costume, “taste” in works of art.  Compared to psychology, the data we study as sociologists might be more difficult to analyze because of their complexity, but they are much easier to get hold of.

Section 2. Guidelines for Sociologists

The fundamental rule for sociologists is to treat social things as things, but there are several corollary rules and guidelines for how to do that.

First, systematically rid yourself of all preconceived ideas.

You are a human being yourself and hold ideas and prejudices about the world. When you are a sociologist, however, you have to be objective, neutral about the facts you are studying. Really, that is the essence of the scientific method.

Second, operationalize your data in advance and then examine all cases that fit your definition.

For example, we group together all those acts which produce a certain social reaction, punishment, and call them crimes.  We don’t pick and choose what is or is not a crime based on what we personally think should be one.  By doing this we assure ourselves that we are grounded in reality.

Third, consider social facts from a point distinct from their individual manifestations.

Section 3. Rules on the distinction between Normal and Pathological

We must be careful to distinguish between observing things that are as they ought to be and observing things that are not as they ought to be – what I am calling “normal” and “pathological” phenomena.  Some people say that it is not the place of science to say whether something is as it ought to be or otherwise.  There is no “good and evil” in science.   But if science cannot help us in selecting the best goals to pursue, how it can it help us arrive at the goal?

Here is my solution to the problem.  Just as with individual people, societies can be healthy, or they can be sick. Sociology can help us distinguish the two.  We can’t say what is healthy for any one individual, of course, but we can find out what is healthy for society as a whole.  Health, we can say, is that which is most adaptive to the particular environment and sickness is that which upsets that adaptation.  Or, health is that state in which our chances of survival (as a society) are greatest.  We do not mean the health of any one particular individual.

Two examples:  old age is not a sickness, because it is a normal stage of the species.  Menstruation is not a sickness, because it is a normal activity of women.  The absence of either of these two normal phenomena would not mark “health,” but rather sickness!

How are we to recognize sickness then?  We should look for some notable external sign (again, treating social facts as things). Those facts which appear common among a society (or a group thereof, such as women), we shall call normal, and the rest we can call pathological.  Just as the physiologist looks at the average organism, so too does the sociologist. Furthermore, a social fact is normal in a given group in relation to particular context (temporal and spatial).

Why is the normal considered healthy?  It would be surprising if the most widespread phenomena were not beneficial, at least at the aggregate level.  Why else would they exist and persist for so long?  The greater frequency of normal phenomena can be taken as proof of their health.  During times of transition, however, what is normal is often hard to pin down.  So, it is also important to take the following steps: (1) find a widespread social fact; (2) trace back the conditions of the past, the environmental context, which gave birth to this fact; and (3) investigate whether the environmental context has shifted.  If the conditions that gave rise to it are still the same, and it is general, we can consider it normal.  If not, it may be maladapted to the present circumstances and in need of change.

The Example of Crime.  It would seem that crime would be pathological.  Who would doubt that?  But let us use our method and examine the question more closely.  Crime is observed everywhere, in every society.  It would indeed be hard to find a social fact that is more general.  It is thus normal, and must be doing something for society, else it would not be normal for so long and in so many different places.  It is normal because it is absolutely impossible for a society to exist without it.  Crime offends our individual and collective notions about what is right.  To have no crime means that every single person would agree what those notions are (which seems impossible, given that we are individuals).  It would also mean that nothing would ever change, because no one would be doing anything against the collective will.  To have no crime means we would have no originality, no thinking against the herd, and we must have some of this because nothing is good at all times without limits.  Sometimes, too, crimes of today prepare the way for moralities of the future.

Looked at this way, the criminal must be seen a playing a normal role in society.  We can follow the crime rate and be alarmed if it gets too high, or even if it gets too low – because something is out of balance then, and we may be stifling individuals too much.   It may be that we are viewing punishment all wrong.  If crime is not a sickness, then we can’t “cure” it through punishment.  We have to look elsewhere.

No longer should we desperately pursue an end which we might never grasp, but rather should we work diligently to keep things going and to recalibrate when necessary, and to recover our health when things change.  The leader should not push us violently toward an ideal only she might hold, but be more like a doctor, who checks in on our health, and seeks to cure our illnesses when they are discovered.

Definitional Concepts

Social Fact

Normal vs. Pathological

Sociology