The Rules of Sociological Method

Introduction

Durkheim first published the text in 1894 as a series of articles in the Revue philosophique, and in 1895 as a book, two years after The Division of Labour in Society. It is a manifesto for sociology as an independent science. A social fact is any way of acting, thinking or feeling that exists outside individuals and exerts constraint on them; it must be explained by other social facts, not by individual psychology. Durkheim also distinguishes normal from pathological phenomena and provocatively counts crime as normal, since it occurs in every society and helps to clarify and change its norms. The book remains a standard reference in debates about explanation in the social sciences.

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Connections

Builds on

• Course in Positive Philosophy1830 · Auguste Comte

Taken up in

• Suicide1897 · Émile Durkheim
• The Elementary Forms of Religious Life1912 · Émile Durkheim
• The Structure of Social Action1937 · Talcott Parsons
• Social Theory and Social Structure1949 · Robert K. Merton

More works by Émile Durkheim

• 1893The Division of Labour in Society
• 1897Suicide
• 1912The Elementary Forms of Religious Life