Quote:
“When we wish to learn how society is divided up politically, in what its divisions consist and the degree of solidarity that exists between them, it is not through physical inspection and geographical observation that we may come to find this out; such divisions are we can study such political organization, because this law is what determines its nature, just as it determines our domestic and civic relationships. The organisation is no less a form of compulsion”.

According to Durkheim, social facts are ‘external constraints’ that exercise upon individuals, they are expectations that not coming from individuals themselves but that come from the broader social community which socializes its members. Although we might embrace the normative community behaviours and share its values, we are constrained by its very existence, in other words, successful socialization may results in a lack of perceived coercion since social facts are well internalized. For instance, using legal currency and speak French are well-accepted social norms that everyone in French society follows. The way of seeing organization as a form of compulsion reveals Durkheim’s determination of finding out the impact of the larger social structure and society itself on the thoughts and behaviours of individuals. This essentially means that social facts are ways of controlling individual behaviours that take away individual rights of free choice in a legal sense. As what Durkheim explains, individual experiences social facts as carrying out duties that external to themselves, both in laws and in customs, social acts of being a family member, a friend, a citizen or even a religious believer, there are social facts constituted through behaviours and thoughts that attached to each role. Here, what Durkheim argues further, is that, one social fact for one particular society might be completely