The social in social theory?

pp. 22-37

in: Olli Pyyhtinen, Simmel and "the social", Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2010

Abstract

The question of the social lies at the core of sociology. In his famous methodological maxim, Durkheim urges sociologists to explain the social only with itself. According to him, "The determining cause of a social fact should be sought among antecedent social facts and not among the states of individual consciousness" (1982, p. 134). However, when one leafs through the sociological papers and books of today, it is not the social that the texts are solely or even primarily talking about, but rather themes like environmental problems, HIV, science and technology, unemployment, gender inequality, art, consumption, urban spaces, forms of mass protest, criminality, and so on. If the social does appear in these texts, it is above all as an explaining factor that it makes its way to the texts. Whatever phenomena sociologists study, they characteristically try to offer 'social explanations' for them.