How Society Can Be Both Internal and External to Human Beings
Many different people, from many different backgrounds can define society in many different ways. To some it is the community they live in, to others it is the entity that shapes their lives, and yet to others, it is an exclusive club in which they're are a member of. To Emile Durkheim, the world's first official Sociologist, society is a complex structure in which each separate part is responsible for its own function for the benefit of the whole. This essay will not only explain how society can be both internal and external to human beings, but also three characteristics of the social fact concept, and three of Durkheim's sociologically significant concepts.
According to Durkheim, society comes in two forms: internal and external. First, the internal society forms the 'collective moral conscious' (Farganis, pg. 58). In other words, it is the defining mechanism in shaping our beliefs and attitudes for survival in the world. If society does not conform to the internal society, then social isolation, ridicule, and other forms of punishment could occur. Examples of internal society are the Bible, education, and laws. Society uses these devices to attempt to keep social order and construct a socially acceptable individual.
External to society is the actual pressures from the community to conform to the collective. For example, ways of thinking, acting and feeling are external to society. Social facts exist externally to us and compel people to behave in a unified way, with norms that are constructed by society. These facts are recognizable through power that the external persuasion has, which can be exercised over an individual.
In his early works, Durkheim ...
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... the social fact concept. Three of Durkheim's sociologically significant concepts, social organization, anomie, and religion in society are important in the realm of Sociology. In summary, the following quote from the mouth of the original father of Sociology, Emile Durkheim, "Society is not a mere sum of individuals. Rather, the system formed by their association represents a specific reality which has its own characteristics."
Bibliography:
Coser, Emile Durkheim: The Work. 1977. Pp. 129-132.
http://www.runet.edu/~iridener/DSS/Durkheim/DURKWRK.HTML (28 Jan. 2000).
Farganis, James, "Readings in Social Theory." 3rd ed. 2000. Pp. 58-69.
Jones, Robert Alum. Emile Durkheim: An Introduction to Four Major Works. Beverly Hills, CA: Sage Publications, Inc., 1986. Pp. 123-124.
http://www.lang.uiuc.edu/durkheim/Summaries/forms.html (2 Feb. 2000).
Durkheim Emile Durkheim (1858 - 1917), believed individuals are determined by the society they live in because they share a moral reality that we have been socialised to internalise through social facts. Social facts according to Drukhiem are the “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 [or her].” Social facts are external to the individual, they bind societies together because they have an emotional and moral hold on people, and are why we feel shame or guilt when we break societal convention. Durkheim was concerned with maintaining the cohesion of social structures. He was a functionalist, he believed each aspect of society contributes to society's stability and functioning as a whole.
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