The Rules of Sociological Method

Émile Durkheim’s 1895 book argues that sociology should study social facts as objective phenomena, using methods distinct from psychology and philosophy.

Social fact: A way of acting, thinking, or feeling external to individuals and endowed with coercive power. The book’s central object of study, defined by its externality and constraint.
Collective conscience: The shared beliefs and sentiments that bind members of a society. It exemplifies social reality that exceeds any single individual.
Émile Durkheim: French sociologist who helped establish sociology as an academic discipline through studies of social facts and institutions. He authored the book and developed its methodological program.
Methodological individualism: An approach that explains social phenomena through the actions and intentions of individuals. Durkheim rejects reducing social facts to individual motives.
Treat social facts as things: A methodological rule requiring social phenomena to be examined as observable realities rather than preconceptions. Durkheim’s starting instruction for replacing assumptions with systematic observation.
Social institution: An established pattern of rules and practices that organizes collective life. Durkheim defines sociology broadly as the science of institutions and their genesis and functioning.
Auguste Comte: French philosopher who coined sociology and promoted a science of society modeled on the natural sciences. Durkheim inherited Comte’s ambition for scientific sociology while sharpening its methods.
Psychologism: The reduction of social or logical phenomena to psychological processes. The book argues that social facts require explanations at the social level, not only in psychology.
Normal and pathological: A distinction between phenomena typical of a society at a given stage and those that indicate an atypical condition. Durkheim uses this distinction to classify social forms without treating every harmful outcome as abnormal.
Social constraint: The pressure exerted by social rules and expectations on individual conduct. Constraint helps distinguish social facts from purely personal habits.

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