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:
“Opera once was an important social instrument—especially in Italy. With Rossini and Verdi people were listening to opera together and having the same catharsis with the same story, the same moral dilemmas. They were holding hands in the darkness. That has gone. Now perhaps they are holding hands watching television.”
—Luciano Berio (b. 1925)
“But the ocean was the grand fact there, which made us forget both bayberries and men.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)