RULES OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

²Rules of sociological method are as considered as a methodological orientation of Emile Durkheim. This work written between 1893 to 1894 and was published in 1895. In fact the primary aim of this work is to outline the nature and subject matter of sociology and discuss various steps or rules of sociological investigation.

The major thrust of Durkheim methodology is on the concept of social facts according to Durkheim social facts are the subject matter of sociology. According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly objective observation" in this sense may never be attained. A social fact must always be studied according to its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it. Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of singular independent facts.

For him, facts had no intellectual meaning unless they were grouped into types and laws. He claimed repeatedly that it is from a construction erected on the inner nature of the real that knowledge of concrete reality is obtained, a knowledge not perceived by observation of the facts from the outside. He thus constructed concepts such as the sacred and totemism exactly in the same way that Karl Marx developed the concept of class.

DEFINITION:

Social facts consist of manners of acting, thinking and feeling external to the individual, which are invested with a coercive power by virtue of which they exercise control over him.

A social fact is identifiable through the power of external coercion which it exerts or is capable of exerting upon individuals.

"A social fact is every way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint; or again, every way of acting which is general throughout a given society, while at the same time existing in its own right independent of its individual manifestations."

DIFFERENT RULES OF SOCIOLOGICAL METHOD

1. Rules of observation

2. Rules of distinguishing different trends of social fact

a) Normal

b) Pathological

3. Rules of classification of various social types

a) Simple

b) Complex

4 . Rules of explanation

a) Causal

b) Functional

1. RULES OF OBSERVATION

The basic rule for observation of social facts is that a social fact is a thing or object. A social fact is not material, yet it is a reality external to the subjective and is therefore a “thing”. Whatever is subjective is a concept or an idea, but the thing is objective. The “thing” is outside the mind and in order to understand it and the impact or causal effect it may have requires observation of reality. For example, a social group may have an understanding of appropriate behavior, not because the individuals of the group determined the understanding, but because earlier group affiliations may have established certain religious belief that focused upon the particular behavior as appropriate. In short, the group follows the prior social fact, not because they or any individual established the behavior as appropriate in its own right, but because the behavior comes from a previous external order, which in this instance is the thing called the institution of religion. In turn, the current group may adjust by adding to or taking from the “thing” and in this way become an effect upon other or later groups. An example may be a campus demonstration that starts passive for most members which later escalates in the heat of the “crowd”, the members then caught up in the current or flow do things that individual members before and after felt incapable of perpetrating. Yet in the current, they were capable of the accusatory actions.

Social Fact comes to exist in part through previous fact, but is in part also established through interaction of individuals within groups. This inter-group interaction provides plurality and leads to adjustment, or synthesis of the social institution, such as religion. Being objective is the key to understanding this synthesis and the evolving effects.

2. RULES OF DISTINGUISHING DIFFERENT TRENDS OF SOCIAL FACT

Social facts regulate human social action and act as constraints over individual behaviour and action. They may be enforced with law, with clearly defined penalties associated with violation of the sentiments and values of the group. Sanctions may be associated with social facts, for example as in religion, where resistance may result in disapproval from others or from spiritual leaders. Individuals may be unaware of social facts and generally accept them. In this case, individuals may accept the values and codes of society and accept them as their own. Two types of social facts are material and non-material social facts. Material social facts are features of society such as social structures and institutions. These could be the system of law, the economy, church and many aspects of religion, the state, and educational institutions and structures. They could also include features such as channels of communication, urban structures, and population distribution. While these are important for understanding the structures and form of interaction in any society, it is nonmaterial social facts that constitute the main subject of study of sociology.

Social facts can also be divided into normal and pathological social facts. Normal social facts are the most widely distributed and useful social facts, assisting in the maintenance of society and social life. Pathological social facts are those that we might associate with social problems and ills of various types. Suicide is one example of this, where social facts ought to be different. For Durkheim, the much greater frequency of the normal is proof of the superiority of the normal.

3. RULES OF CLASSIFICATION OF VARIOUS SOCIAL TYPES

History and philosophy fail to examine the social for a number of reasons. Historians according to Durkheim establish only nominal data who categorize society by individual groups, according to sequential events that have heterogeneous relationships that are unique. To the historian each society is unique and is not comparable. The other extreme, the philosopher is pure realist which views groups of tribes, cities and nations as contingent aggregates of people that are held together by general laws and thereby creating a continuum for all humans. Durkheim intercedes with sociology which is the intermediate. He firmly states that there are many social species, but held together in unity, and distinguishable in diversity. Therefore, society is the same overall, but with difference in relation to social facts. Durkheim moves forward to discuss the importance of the definition and establishes the horde as the simplest form of social specie in relation to the method of study. No doubt the 19^th century reader would ask the following question. If society is many species and if it is established that in order to study the whole the parts must be studied fully it is important to read Durkheim’s discussion of selecting proper variables for analysis of society. As he discusses the proper classification of social types, social morphology, it is easy to visualize the creation of frames and samples. This discussion is interesting reading because it is the concept we can visualize, not tainted by the sterile definition of a variable. In his description, Durkheim states that the sociologist must clearly define the simple unit or part of the whole. In this instance, the simple society which is the basic unit of study must not include others simpler than itself, and must contain only a single segment.

4. RULES OF EXPLANATION

Grouping of social facts and units help to improve interpretation of phenomenon. However the interpretation of phenomenon requires the examination of the cause of the phenomenon as well as the analysis of its function. The concept called function may be best understood as the effect of the cause, or “the relationship that it bears to some social end”. This is the causal relationship which allows meaning to be given to the analysis of facts. In this step the essence of proof is looking for combinations of cases in which there is evidence that one case depends upon another. The ability of the observer to artificially reproduce the phenomenon at will is the method of experimentation proper, but when phenomenon are reproduced beyond the will of the observer it is indirect experimentation, or comparative method. Of these two methods comparative method is preferred because it allows the observer to determine sequence of events. Comte preferred experimentation proper since it establishes general direction of change or progress. Mill rejected sociological experimentation all together. Durkheim rejects both because effect is not always the result of antecedents. Only by controlled and isolated conditions may variable cause and effect be determined. The discussion of concomitant method is excellent. The procedure on page 152 introduces the concepts of cause and effect relationships affected by control and other variables. This fits nicely with a discussion on bivariate and multivariate analysis and exemplifies the need to be critical in analysis of findings. Not only must the sociologist be critical and unbiased of his/her own findings, but he/she must question the information used in study of society. There are many parallel and uninterrupted transformations within society. This transformation is continuous. The study of the variations within society must be thorough, methodical, and serial in that study must follow the successions of societies or species. In this way sociologists may confirm findings through repetition and isolation of specific variables.³

Durkheim’s Theory Of Suicide

In Suicide (1897), Durkheim explores the differing suicide rates among Protestants and Catholics, arguing that stronger social control among Catholics results in lower suicide rates. According to Durkheim, Catholic society has normal levels of integration while Protestant society has low levels. There are at least two problems with this interpretation. First, Durkheim took most of his data from earlier researchers, notably Adolph Wagner and Henry Morselli. Who were much more careful in generalizing from their own data. Second, later researchers found that the Protestant-Catholic differences in suicide seemed to be limited to German-speaking Europe and thus may always have been the spurious reflection of other factors. Durkheim's work on suicide has influenced proponents of control theory, and is often mentioned as a classic sociological study.

Durkheim's study of suicide has been criticized as an example of the logical error termed the ecological fallacy. Indeed, Durkheim's conclusions about individual behaviour (e.g. suicide) are based on aggregate statistics (the suicide rate among Protestants and Catholics). This type of inference, explaining micro events in terms of macro properties, is often misleading, as is shown by examples of Simpson's paradox.

However, diverging views have contested whether Durkheim's work really contained an ecological fallacy. Van Poppel and Day (1996) have advanced that difference in suicide rates between Catholics and Protestants were explicable entirely in terms of how deaths were categorized between the two social groups. For instance, while "sudden deaths" or "deaths from ill-defined or unspecified cause" would often be recorded as suicides among Protestants, this would not be the case for Catholics. Hence Durkheim would have committed an empirical rather than logical error. Some, such as Inkeles (1959), Johnson (1965) and Gibbs (1968), have claimed that Durkheim's only intent was to explain suicide sociologically within a holistic perspective, emphasizing that "he intended his theory to explain variation among social environments in the incidence of suicide, not the suicides of particular individuals."

Durkheim’s theory of suicide is divided into two explanatory terms.

1. Social integration- Social integration refers to degree to which collective sentiments are shared or the strength of the social bonds between the individual and society.

2. Social regulation- in contrast to integration refers to restraints imposed by society or individual need and wants that the degree of external constraints on individual.

Durkheim stated that there are four types of suicide:

· Egoistic suicides- are the result of a weakening of the bonds that normally integrate individuals into the collectivity: in other words a breakdown or decrease of social integration. Durkheim refers to this type of suicide as the result of "excessive individuation", meaning that the individual becomes increasingly detached from other members of his community. Those individuals who were not sufficiently bound to social groups (and therefore well-defined values, traditions, norms, and goals) were left with little social support or guidance, and therefore tended to commit suicide on an increased basis. An example Durkheim discovered was that of unmarried people, particularly males, who, with less to bind and connect them to stable social norms and goals, committed suicide at higher rates than married people.

· Altruistic suicides- occur in societies with high integration, where individual needs are seen as less important than the society's needs as a whole. They thus occur on the opposite integration scale as egoistic suicide.^[36] As individual interest would not be considered important, Durkheim stated that in an altruistic society there would be little reason for people to commit suicide. He stated one exception, namely when the individual is expected to kill themselves on behalf of society – a primary example being the soldier in military service.

· Anomic suicides- are the product of moral deregulation and a lack of definition of legitimate aspirations through a restraining social ethic, which could impose meaning and order on the individual conscience. This is symptomatic of a failure of economic development and division of labour to produce Durkheim's organic solidarity. People do not know where they fit in within their societies. Durkheim explains that this is a state of moral disorder where man's desires are limitless and, thus, his disappointments are infinite.

· Fatalistic suicides - occur in overly oppressive societies, causing people to prefer to die than to carry on living within their society. This is an extremely rare reason for people to take their own lives, but a good example would be within a prison; people prefer to die than live in a prison with constant abuse and excessive regulation that prohibits them from pursuing their desires.

These four types of suicide are based on the degrees of imbalance of two social forces: social integration and moral regulation. Durkheim noted the effects of various crises on social aggregates – war, for example, leading to an increase in altruism, economic boom or disaster contributing to anomie.

COMPARITIVE METHOD OF DURKHEIIM AND WEBER

One of the few priorities Durkheim and Weber shared was to establish a balance between competing claims of complexity and generality in sociological analysis. They both saw comparative research as the means to do this because such research avoided problems associated with older styles of inquiry. Comparative analysis separated sociology from traditional historical research with it’s a theoretical attention to detail; it also separated sociology from social philosophy and the philosophy of history with their emphasis on sweeping generalizations. These concerns shape Weber's conception of sociology as a science of historical reality. According to Weber, sociology uses ideal types to enable limited generalization about historical divergence. Limited generalizations point to different patterns of process and structure in history, but the scope of such generalizations never approaches that of natural scientific laws. Ideal types thus occupy a middle ground between the uniqueness of historical events and the generality of laws. Comparison between ideal types and empirical cases identifies adequate causes and aids understanding of divergent historical developments. Central to this methodological strategy is Weber's conviction that social reality is sufficiently complex as to be unknowable in the absence of theoretical interests that guide construction of one-sided type concepts

RELEVANCE:

Durkheim was the French sociologist of the nineteenth century whose main aim was to put forth his methodological orientation to sketch out different processes and procedures involved in the investigation of any type of social issue and problem. His view point towards sociology will help us to view society and its components as a social fact and makes the observer of the 21^st century to study society or social phenomena’s without any preconceived notions or in any form of biasness. It also helps to view society as a whole scientifically.

CONCLUSION:

Rules of sociological method is recognized for being the direct result of Durkheim's own project of establishing sociology as a positivist social science. It thus suggests two central theses, without which sociology would not be a science:

It must have a specific object of study. Unlike philosophy or psychology, sociology's proper object of study is the social fact.It must respect and apply a recognized objective, scientific method, bringing it as close as possible to the other exact sciences. This method must at all cost avoid prejudice and subjective judgment.

Durkheim expressed his will to establish a method that would guarantee sociology's truly scientific character. One of the questions raised concerns the objectivity of the sociologist: how may one study an object that, from the very beginning, conditions and relates to the observer? According to Durkheim, observation must be as impartial and impersonal as possible, even though a "perfectly objective observation" in this sense may never be attained. A social fact must always be studied according to its relation with other social facts, never according to the individual who studies it. Sociology should therefore privilege comparison rather than the study of singular independent facts. He also emphasized that society is an individual entity in itself in the form of social facts. The existence of social facts leads to its study in a scientific method.

REFRENCES:

· Giddens Anthomy, (6^th Edition), Sociology Guide.

· Durkheim Emile, Rules Of Sociological Method.

· Mahajan V. D.(2008), Book of Sociology

· Indira Gandhi National Open University School Of Social Sciences, Sociological Thought

· Abraham Francis And Morgan, John Henry, Sociological Thought, Macmillan India Limited,1985

· Shankar Rao C.N (2009), Principles of Sociology with An Introduction To Social Thought.

· Dinesh Chandra Bhattacharya 7^th Edition (2008) Sociology.

Webliography

1. http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/weber.

2. "émile durkheim." encyclopædia britannica

3. papers.ssrn.com

Received on 01.09.2011

Accepted on 29.09.2011