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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

How does Emile Durkheim conceptualize religion as a ‘social fact’? Explain.

  • UPSC 2026
  • Religion and Society

For Émile Durkheim, a social fact is a way of acting, thinking or feeling that is external to the individual, constraining and general across a society (The Rules of Sociological Method, 1895). In The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912) he treated religion as the model social fact: not a private relation with the supernatural,…

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What the full answer covers

  • Religion defined sociologically
  • How religion meets the tests of a social fact
  • Indian illustration
  • Limits
  • Conclusion

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