Breaking down the question
The question asks you to state and explain what, for Emile Durkheim, constitutes the proper subject matter of sociology. This is a foundational question about disciplinary identity: Durkheim was determined to carve out for sociology a distinct object of study that no other science — neither psychology nor biology nor philosophy — could claim.
His answer is compact and famous: the subject matter of sociology is the social fact. Everything in the answer flows from unpacking that concept — its definition, its distinguishing marks, the rule that we must treat social facts as things, and the way this vision founded sociology as an autonomous, empirical science.
Key elements to unpack:
- Durkheim's definition of the social fact and its two hallmarks, externality and constraint.
- The methodological rule to treat social facts as things and study them by their own kind.
- The substantive domains this opened up — solidarity, the collective conscience, religion, suicide — showing the programme in action.
A high-scoring answer moves from the abstract definition to concrete demonstrations and closes with an appraisal of its strengths and criticisms.
How to approach it
Begin by explaining why Durkheim needed to define a subject matter at all: to establish sociology as a science independent of psychology and to rescue it from armchair speculation. Then give the definition of the social fact precisely, quoting its two criteria, and illustrate each with everyday examples — currency, language, law, religious duty.
Next, present the methodological corollary — considérer les faits sociaux comme des choses — and explain why treating social facts as things enforces objectivity. Move to substantive illustrations: the collective conscience and the two forms of solidarity from The Division of Labour, the social fact explanation of suicide rates, and the collective representations of religious life. This shows the concept doing real analytical work rather than sitting as a definition.
Close with evaluation — the achievement of founding an autonomous empirical science, and the standard criticisms of reification and neglect of individual meaning. Point the reader to our note on Durkheim's social facts and method for the fuller treatment.
Model answer
Emile Durkheim's abiding ambition was to establish sociology as a rigorous, autonomous science with an object of study peculiarly its own. If sociology merely borrowed the individual mind from psychology or the organism from biology, it would have no reason to exist. His solution, set out in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), was to identify a distinct order of reality — the social fact — as the true subject matter of the discipline.
Durkheim defined a social fact as every way of acting, 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. Two hallmarks distinguish social facts from psychological or biological phenomena. First, externality: social facts exist outside and prior to any particular individual. Language, law, moral rules, currency and religious beliefs are given to us ready-made; we are born into them and they outlive us. Second, constraint: social facts exercise a coercive power over the individual, felt most clearly when we try to resist them. Break a law and sanctions follow; flout a custom and disapproval descends; try to transact without the accepted currency and one is helpless. Even where we conform willingly, the constraint is present but disguised, because socialisation has made the external rule feel like an inner inclination.
From this definition Durkheim drew his cardinal methodological rule: treat social facts as things (considérer les faits sociaux comme des choses). To study a social fact as a thing is to approach it from the outside, through observable indicators, laying aside our preconceptions and common-sense notions. It is also to insist that a social fact can only be explained by another social fact, never by reduction to individual psychology or biology. The determining cause of a social fact must be sought among antecedent social facts, and its function in relation to some social end. This ruled out the reductionism of his predecessors and secured sociology's autonomy at a stroke.
The power of this conception appears when Durkheim put it to work. In The Division of Labour in Society he treated social solidarity as the social fact holding societies together, and, because solidarity itself is invisible, he studied it through the external index of law — repressive law revealing the mechanical solidarity of simple societies bound by a strong collective conscience, restitutive law revealing the organic solidarity of complex societies bound by interdependence. Here the collective conscience — the totality of beliefs and sentiments common to the members of a society — is itself a social fact, external to and constraining upon each individual.
In Suicide (1897) Durkheim demonstrated the method most strikingly. He took the most apparently individual and private of acts and showed that suicide rates are social facts, stable and patterned, varying systematically with the degree of social integration and regulation. The Protestant rate exceeded the Catholic; the unmarried exceeded the married; rates rose in times of economic upheaval. Since these regularities could not be explained by the psychology of any single person, they had to be explained by social currents — a triumphant vindication of the claim that social facts are real and sui generis.
Finally, in The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912), Durkheim analysed religion as a system of collective representations — the shared symbols and classifications through which a society represents itself to itself. The sacred, he argued, is society experienced in transfigured form; religious ritual regenerates the collective conscience. Collective representations are the highest expression of social facts, showing that even our categories of thought are socially given.
Across these works the subject matter of sociology is consistently the supra-individual — the moral, normative and representational order that exists between and above individuals and shapes their conduct. This was a genuine intellectual achievement: it gave sociology a clear object, an empirical method and a claim to scientific standing, and it launched the functionalist tradition that Radcliffe-Brown, Parsons and Merton later developed.
The conception is not without difficulties. Critics charge Durkheim with reification — treating social facts as though they had an existence apart from the individuals who sustain them, thereby understating human agency. Interpretive sociologists object that by insisting on externality he neglected the subjective meanings actors give their conduct, the very heart of Weber's sociology. Others find his notion of constraint too coercive, obscuring how individuals negotiate and reshape norms. Yet even these criticisms testify to the seminal power of the idea. In defining the social fact as the subject matter of sociology, Durkheim did more than answer an examination question; he founded a science.
Examiner's perspective
Examiners expect the definition of the social fact to be reproduced accurately, with both criteria — externality and constraint — clearly explained and illustrated. A vague gesture at things being social earns little; the marks lie in the precision.
The best answers do not stop at the definition but show the concept in action across Durkheim's major works — solidarity and the collective conscience in The Division of Labour, suicide rates in Suicide, collective representations in The Elementary Forms. This demonstrates that the candidate grasps the subject matter as a working programme, not a slogan.
Including the methodological rule to treat social facts as things, and the principle that a social fact is explained only by another social fact, signals command of Durkheim's method. A crisp closing evaluation — the founding of an autonomous empirical science set against the charges of reification and neglect of meaning — lifts the script from descriptive to analytical.