“A social fact is 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.”

Source: Rules of Sociological Method, 1895, p. 10

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Émile Durkheim 43
French sociologist (1858-1917) 1858–1917

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