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Sociology Optional PYQ Solutions · Model answer

Write short note: Social facts.

  • UPSC 2007, 1995
  • Sociological Thinkers

Émile Durkheim, in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895), defined a social fact as "every way of acting, fixed or not, capable of exercising on the individual an external constraint", which is general across a society and exists in its own right, independent of individual manifestations. By giving sociology this subject matter, he separated it…

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What the full answer covers

  • Defining features
  • Kinds of social facts
  • Rules for studying them
  • Illustration from India
  • Limits
  • Conclusion

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