The functions of society, social facts, and the collective life according to Emile Durkheim.

Originally appeared on Medium.com

Summary: What does it mean to exist? Emile Durkheim proposed that humans don’t exist, they belong. We are social beings. This began the field of sociology under the premise that society functions to offer belonging and becoming while being a dominant force for human existence and understanding. This is important because it means humans are formed by society. It also means that society can be impacted by humans who intend on paying attention.

Overview:

The premise of sociology — the social nature of human beings.
The functions of society — belonging and becoming (including George Herbert Mead’s “The Social Self,” Urie Bronfenbrenner’s “Bio-Ecological Systems Theory,” and Scott Poole’s “Adaptive Structuration Theory”).
Social Facts — the importance of studying the process of a society.
Two implications on societal existence.

Introduction — Human Meaning & the Origins of Sociology

Being alive is a tricky thing. What does it mean to exist and how do we do it? While there is no simple or conclusive answer, there are a variety of perspectives intent on making sense of the conundrum of being alive. From existentialism to phenomenology to psychological and physiological answers, the human person is complicated and fascinating and each of those disciplines has their merit.

Yet, what if being alive involves more than the human person?

What if a core component to existence involves many human persons, together?

The idea that human beings are inherently social was the foundation of the work of Emile Durkheim (pronounced ‘Eh-meal’), a 19th and 20th-century scholar hailing from France. Durkheim’s core assessment was that human beings are social by nature — they exist interdependently with other human beings.

Further, Durkheim believed that if you want to understand human beings, your best approach would be to examine all of the elements of human life through their social manifestation.

Essentially, humans are not simply individuals.

They exist within society.

Is this social dynamic the only factor to determine what it means to exist and how to do it? Absolutely not. Is this approach a lively adventure that can inform how we understand life? Most certainly.

You can study the anatomy and individual behavior of an ant and you will have some understanding of what an ant is. Yet, without analyzing the ant within the context of its colony, you may miss a large portion of an ant’s existence.

Because of this conception and analysis, Emile Durkheim became known as the ‘Father of Sociology’ and in articulating the essence and function of society, Durkheim left us with many considerations for what it means to exist as a human being because he drew attention to the possibility that society plays a role in shaping every dimension of human thought and behavior.

Essentially, all elements of human life are social.

Part One — Functions of Society: Belonging

The sociological angle begins with the premise that the primary condition of being alive is that you are a social being.

An expression of Durkheim is that humans do not exist, they belong.

He called this solidarity — that we are intrinsically bound to and dependent on the social context and sphere that makes our life what it is. We are bound to our families, our interpersonal relationships, our communities and towns, our clans, and even to shared ideological groups. Our existence is wrapped up in all of these layers of society that are larger than just ourselves.

A social psychologist from the same time period — George Herbert Mead — conceived that a person exists as a product of their sociological situation. He called this the ‘Social Self’ — human persons exist as influenced by their social experience.

Essentially, society is like a mirror — it is how we understand and see ourselves with respect to what exists around us.

We are who we are based on the conditions we are in.

For Durkheim, this was a primary function of society. We exist as a plurality of people who create and form various relationships, dynamics, and structures to aid our interdependent existence.

To be alive is to belong to society.

Part Two — Functions of Society: Becoming

Why, though, do we create these increasingly complex structures and webs of relationships?

This marks one of Durkheim’s notable influences on the field of sociology. A society is not just a way to demarcate a particular group or territory. A society, to Durkheim, was its own entity comprised of a multitude of smaller entities.

Therefore, a society has its own existence and can be studied and analyzed as such.

One of the primary marks of this societal entity, therefore, was that a society is the conglomeration of various relationships, dynamics, and structures that develops the pieces of said society.

Groups of people exist by belonging together and, in their belonging, develop various formulations for what it means to exist which then impact how the various parts of that society will function.

This was the emphasis of George Herbert Mead; that our identities as individuals are formed by society.

Durkheim, however, was even more adamant about this reality. For Durkheim, society shapes every dimension of existence.

Another scholar, Urie Bronfenbrenner, expressed this reality in his ‘Bio-Ecological Systems Theory’ — that the various layers of societal existence all exist under the umbrella of a macro-system. There are societal forces such as cultural values, economic standards, and political norms that determine the script for how society belongs, but also for how society continues to develop.

This organism of society is consistently seeking out predictability and stability and adapts to circumstances by creating structures to nurture the various parts of society.

Often referred to as Adaptive Structuration Theory (Scott Poole), the idea is that society doesn’t just offer belonging, but also the norms, values, and ideals that will implicate what the society becomes. From politics to ethics to general culture, society is the source, external to individuals, that provides the norms and scripts that form reality for those individuals.

This web of existence is formative and powerful. The scripts determine how you live and how you understand yourself as a result of this dynamic organism called society.

Durkheim referred to this as the collective life — the belonging and becoming that hold society together.

Part Three — Social Facts

Durkheim was also a scientific positivist — he believed that rigorous scientific study using the scientific method would lead to a full knowledge of a subject matter because all things are measurable.

Sociologically, Durkheim was also a Structuralist Functionalist — he believed that abstract, intangible experiences (such as being a part of society) can be measured.

Because all elements of human life are social (belonging) and society shapes every dimension of human life (becoming), if one could examine and understand how these processes work, we could configure the best possible existence for humanity.

As a person who watched France ebb and flow through revolution and tumult, this was a very real concern for Durkheim. He wanted to know what held society together and how it ought to work so that he could keep it from falling apart again.

So, he came up with the term ‘Social Facts.’

Essentially, social facts are the way we relate to society. Durkheim described it this way:

The means of acting, thinking, and feeling external to the individual which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over the person.

The definition can appear a little I, Robot but the basic premise is that the things that shape us and hold us together exist outside of the individual and their consciousness.

Society is an entity in and of itself that influences how you, as an individual, understand the world and how you live.

If society is the collective organism that holds a group of people together and also shapes those people, then we can examine these various parts to improve the function of how we belong and what we become.

For Durkheim — a positivist — social facts were a way for him to make intangible things measurable.

Which he needed to do if he was going to help society do something other than destroy itself.

Durkheim’s hubris aside (he honestly thought all of these intangible things could be quantified and, therefore, solve the world’s problems), the concept of ‘social facts’ is quite debated. Further, the positivist approach has been highly criticized because of its emphasis on progress (which was important in order to avoid another “dark age”). That being said, this approach does offer the contemporary world some helpful implications.

Part Four — Two Implications of Society’s Existence

Is Emile Durkheim’s premise of sociological existence applicable today? Can we benefit from considering that our existence is enmeshed in belonging to a collective whole? Is it worth considering that said collective whole is influencing and forming our identity?

While a lot of Emile Durkheim’s sociological concepts have been transcended by later scholars in the field he helped found, thinking of existence in this way may be a helpful thought exercise in a society that is even more confusing, complicated, and convoluted than 19th century France.

Two main conclusions may be worth elevating in our contemporary conversations:

First, humans are formed by society.

This is Durkheim’s point (and, it is worth noting, a point by many Enlightenment-era philosophers) that society extends to the individual. You do not exist on an island and who you are becoming is, at least, somewhat dependent on what you belong to.

Though not technically a sociologist, Marshall McLuhan warned society of this reality in terms of civilization, progress, and technology. Famously, McLuhan remarked that we create our tools and then our tools create us. Like Bronfenbrenner’s macro-systems, the norms, values, and scripts that we live according to are the water we swim in. The medium of society is creating life as we know it.

The more we pay attention, the more aware we will be aware of the effects.

Second, society is formed by humans.

McLuhan’s hint was that society, while being external to an individual, is made up of individuals who are still creating the tools. The existence of society is a classic chicken and egg scenario, but the reality is that humans generally have some agency in the structure of society.

As Durkheim noted, the individual exists in a network that they help form.

This is why we should be studying and understanding the component parts of the society we are a part of — because we get to determine how we will continue to belong and who we will continue to become.

That which has not yet been realized is enormously possible if our collective life awakens such imaginative possibilities.

But so are lots of other possibilities — dangers that beckon on the horizon of not paying attention to what it means to be a social being or using such agency in an insidious fashion.