Social Fact
In sociology, social facts are the values, cultural norms, and social structures which transcend the individual and are capable of exercising a social constraint. French sociologist Émile Durkheim, who put the term into broad circulation, states that in the study of society, "The first and fundamental rule is to consider social facts as things." These "things" form the distinctive subject matter of sociology.
Read more about Social Fact: Durkheim's Social Fact, Mauss's Total Social Fact
Famous quotes containing the words social and/or fact:
“According to our social pyramid, all men who feel displaced racially, culturally, and/or because of economic hardships will turn on those whom they feel they can order and humiliate, usually women, children, and animals—just as they have been ordered and humiliated by those privileged few who are in power. However, this definition does not explain why there are privileged men who behave this way toward women.”
—Ana Castillo (b. 1953)
“The sun rarely shines in history, what with the dust and confusion; and when we meet with any cheering fact which implies the presence of this luminary, we excerpt and modernize it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)