The Origins of Modern Sociology in France: Emile Durkheim
Sui generis is a Latin phrase that means "of its (or her, his, their) own kind." It's pronounced "SOO-ee JEN-air-us" in English. Durkheim stressed that social facts could not be reduced to psychological or biological facts. By this he meant that social facts (e.g., suicide rates) could be explained only by other social facts (e.g., changes in industry or the economy), and not by individual facts.
sort of solidarity organic solidarity, because society functioned as a complex entity that depended on the proper functioning of a variety of parts, or organs. In premodern society, people had been held together because of likeness; in modern society they were being held together because of their differences.
In The Division of Labor in Society, Durkheim thus articulated and resolved a paradox: However much they may want to be free and autonomous, people in modern society have no choice but to maintain social ties. The structure of society—especially the way labor is divided in modern society—forces people to interact and to maintain social relationships with one another.
In that first book, Durkheim not only made important discov eries about the relationship between the division of labor and social solidarity but also identified the key to understanding things sociologically. The way to understand society was to focus not on the psychological or biological attributes of individuals but on the nature of society itself. This led Durkheim to a fairly star tling conclusion: Society and social phenomena actually do exist.
I call this a startling conclusion because prior to Durkheim, no one had really thought that social phenomena existed. Sure, the word social was used, but it meant little more than a group of individuals. Throughout his life Durkheim continued to explore the social. He claimed that social phenomena have a reality sui generis—that is, a unique reality of their own—and that social facts must be distinguished from individual biological or psychological facts. The discovery of the social provided Durkheim and his follow ers with a whole arsenal of tools with which to explain important
and troubling phenomena. For example, Durkheim discovered that suicide was more than merely a personal thing—suicide rates, at least, were strongly influenced by social factors (the economy or political changes, for example). Likewise, Durkheim would have held that if we want to under stand why the rate of divorce increases or decreases, we should
look for changes not in the psychological attributes of married people but in the wider society: divorce laws, the availability of child care, the economic pressures on family groups, and so on.
15