social facts

Examples of social facts in the following topics:

• Durkheim and Social Integration

  • In modern society, collective effervescence continues to play a role in cementing social solidarity.
  • The collective consciousness binds individuals together and creates social integration.
  • Society is a social product created by the actions of individuals that then exerts a coercive social force back on those individuals.
  • According to Durkheim, the collective consciousness is formed through social interactions.
  • To stress the importance of this concept, Durkheim talked of the "cult of the individual. " However, he made clear that the cult of the individual is itself a social fact, socially produced; reverence for the individual is not an inherent human trait, but a social fact that arises in certain societies at certain times .

• Defining Boundaries

  • Social groups are defined by boundaries.
  • Cultural sociologists define symbolic boundaries as "conceptual distinctions made by social actors…that separate people into groups and generate feelings of similarity and group membership. " In-groups, or social groups to which an individual feels he or she belongs as a member, and out-groups, or groups with which an individual does not identify, would be impossible without symbolic boundaries.
  • Where group boundaries are considered impermeable, and where status relations are considered reasonably stable, individuals are predicted to engage in social creativity behaviors.
  • Symbolic boundaries are a "necessary but insufficient" condition for social change.
  • He saw the symbolic boundary between the sacred and the profane as the most profound of all social facts, and the one from which lesser symbolic boundaries were derived.

• Social Epidemiology and Health

  • Social epidemiology studies the social distribution and social determinants of health.
  • Overall, Durkheim treated suicide as a social fact, explaining variations in its rate on a macro level, considering society-scale phenomena such as a lack of connections between people (group attachment) and a lack of regulations of behavior, rather than the feelings and motivations of individuals.
  • The book pioneered modern social research and served to distinguish social science from psychology and political philosophy.
  • Social epidemiology may focus on individual-level measures, or on emergent social properties that have no correlation at the individual level.
  • Social epidemiology overlaps with fields in the social sciences, such as medical anthropology, medical sociology, and medical geography.

• Stages in Social Movements

  • Blumer, Mauss, and Tilly, have described different stages social movements often pass through.
  • In fact, one of the difficulties in studying social movements is that movement success is often ill-defined because movement goals can change.

• The Stages of Social Movements

  • For Tilly, social movements are a major vehicle for ordinary people's participation in public politics.
  • He specifically distinguishes social movements from political parties and advocacy groups.
  • Social movements are not eternal.
  • In fact, one of the difficulties in studying social movements is that movement success is often ill-defined because the goals of a movement can change.
  • Discuss the process and purpose of social movements, defined by Blumer, Mauss and Tilly

• Social Exclusion

  • Social exclusion is a concept used in many parts of the world to characterize forms of social disadvantage.
  • It is quite difficult to measure social exclusion quantitatively, as social exclusion is relative, sensitive, and variable.
  • The causes of social exclusion vary from country to country, but there are general causes that social scientists have identified.
  • Growing crime rates may reflect the fact that an increasing number of people do not feel valued or included in the societies in which they live.
  • Punk social groups are often considered marginal and are excluded from certain mainstream social spaces.

• Mead

  • For Mead, the self arises out of the social act of communication, which is the basis for socialization.
  • For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't accord with the facts (and is therefore not true).
  • For example, to believe my cheating spouse is faithful may help me feel better now, but it is certainly not useful from a more long-term perspective because it doesn't align with the facts (and is therefore not true).
  • Mead's concept of the social act is relevant, not only to his theory of mind, but also to all facets of his social philosophy.
  • Discuss Mead's theory of social psychology in terms of two concepts - pragmatism and social behaviorism

• Strain Theory: How Social Values Produce Deviance

  • Social strain theory was developed by famed American sociologist Robert K.
  • The theory states that social structures may pressure citizens to commit crimes .
  • In this sense, according social strain theory, social values actually produce deviance in two ways.
  • First, an actor can reject social values and therefore become deviant.
  • Critics point to the fact that there is an ample amount of crime/delinquent behavior that is "non-utilitarian, malicious, and negativistic" (O'Grady, 2011), which highlights that not all crimes are explicable using Merton's theory.

• Theories of Gender Differences

  • Sociologists and other social scientists generally attribute many of the differences between genders to socialization (note that even physiological differences mirror existing gender socialization processes).
  • As discussed in the chapter on socialization, socialization is the process of transferring norms, values, beliefs, and behaviors to future group members.
  • Preparations for gender socialization begin even before the birth of the child.
  • In fact, this approach - in combination with Evolutionary Psychological and Sociobiological perspectives on sex / gender has thus far only found empirical validation when gender inequalities are assumed to be natural and/or appropriate conditions, and only received legitimacy within anti-feminist social movements, religious organizations, and scientific communities promoting the "male/female" or "XX/XY" mythology.
  • Rather, it means that the primary social focus in a given social context favors males and those perceived to be men while granting all men - regardless of their intentions or their recognition of this fact - unearned privileges within and between existing social institutions.

• Class Structure in the U.S.

  • American society is stratified into social classes based on wealth, income, educational attainment, occupation, and social networks.
  • Most social scientists in the U.S. agree that society is stratified into social classes.
  • In spite of debate, most social scientists do agree that in the U.S. people are hierarchically ranked in a social class structure.
  • This critique is somewhat mitigated by the fact that income is often closely aligned with other indicators of status; for example, those with high incomes likely have substantial education, high status occupations, and powerful social networks.
  • Thus social classes form social groups so large that they feature considerable internal diversity and any statement regarding a given social class' culture should be seen as a broad generalization.