Durkheim, Emile "What is a social fact?" in The rules of the sociological method Tr. by W.D. Halls. New York: The Free Press. [1895] 1968 (pp. 50 to 59)

Strongly recommended for doctoral students
Mauss, Marcel The Gift. Routledge. [1923-24] 2002 (Introduction, Chapters 1 & 2, Conclusion)

1. Durkheim's issues: (social) "facts"

   How does it happen that a given, supposedly stable society always has about the same number of disunited families, of economic catastrophies, etc.? This regular recurrence of identical events in proportions constant within the same population but very inconstant from one population to another would be inexplicable had not each society definite currents impelling its inhabitants with a definite force to commercial and industrial ventures, to behaviour of every sort likely to involve families in trouble, etc. (Suicide: 306)

   1. what do "we" (sociologists or anthropologists) study?
   2. what are some of the issues involved in making observations?
   3. how do we separate what is normal from what is not normal? what might say to those who want something to change?
   4. given two populations that are somehow different (e.g. rate of suicite), how do we account for the differentiation:
      1. do we look for causes?
      2. do we look for motivations?
      3. do we model?
2. Mauss and "Total" (social facts)
   1. from the mundane and yet ubiquitous,
      1. observed in apparently extreme cases,
      2. and then applied to "us" as a kind of proof
      3. for example:
         1. techniques of the body
         2. gift giving
   2. The gift approached as thing to observe and analyze (as per Durkheim)
      1. not looking for causes or motivations (or hypothesizing about them).
      2. but tracing the inter-actional unfolding of a gift as it travels from the giver to the receiver and back to the receiver.
      3. to get an initial sense of what can constrain people who live within some population.
   3. So (a model):
      1. the obligation to give (obligation on person A)
      2. the obligation to receive (obligation on person B)
      3. the obligation to return (obligation on person B)
      4. the obligation to receive the return gift (obligation on person A)
      5. All that under the eyes of the rest of the population
   4. other cases of the same process
      1. insults and honor (Bourdieu 1977 [1972]: 10-15)
      2. turn taking and conversation (Harvey Sacks, Emmanuel Schegloff and Gail Jefferson "A simplest systematics for the organization of turn-taking for conversation." 1974)
   5. DO NOTE THAT MAUSS LIKE DURKHEIM IS TALKING ABOUT A CONSTRAINT OR OBLIGATION. Those constrained or obligated may not do what they are asked to do---but there may be consequences...
3. What to do next with Durkheim (and all "ancestors" in the sciences)?
   1. the language of late 19th century positivism?
   2. translations from the 1950s (Parsons and his students)
   3. is Durkheim still "alive"? (for an answer: see Garfinkel next week)
   4. translation into the language of some 21th century ...ism?
4. Translation: what is still at issue
   1. what do we study;
      1. the social as separate
         1. postulate?
         2. an induction from observation
      2. facts:
         1. that which is already there?
            1. as a positive (platonic?) object?
            2. for any observer or participant?
         2. that which is made up?
      3. society:
         1. a positive object, differentiated and differentiating?
            1. function and organization (the organic metaphor)
         2. a word for the properties of collective or concerted action?
      4. collective representations (ideology)

         But by separating social from individual life in this manner, we do not mean that there is nothing psychical about the former. On the contrary, it is clear that essentially social life is made up of representations. Only these collective representations are of quite another character from those of the individual. .... An example will make the thought perfectly clear. Usually the origin of religion is ascribed to feelings of fear or reverence inspired in conscious persons by mysterious and dreaded beings; from this point of view, religion seems merely like the development of individual states of mind and private feelings. But this over-simplified explanation has no relation to facts. ... Religion is in a word the system of symbols by means of which society becomes conscious of itself; it is the characteristic way of thinking of collective existence. Here then is a great group of states of mind which would not have originated if individual states of consciousness had not combined, and which result from this union and are superadded to those which derive from individual natures. (Durkheim Suicide: 312

   2. Questions of method:
      1. dangers: preconceptions. Which ones?
      2. goal: eliminating preconceptions. How?
      3. practically, if one is interested in suicide, or gender differences in body movement, what might we propose to do:
         1. the rate of suicide: stability within a population and difference across population
         2. cross-historial and cross-cultural comparison
            1. in Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
            2. in the work of his main student: Marcel Mauss (The gift, A theory of magic, Techniques of the body, etc.)