Durkheim's 'Social Fact With Mauss' Total Social Fact

Compare and contrast Durkheim''s ''social fact'' with Mauss'' ''total social fact''.

"A social fact is any way of acting, whether fixed or not, capable of exerting over the individual an external constraint; or: which is generally over the whole of a given society whilst having an existence of its own, independent of its individual manifestations"( Durkheim, Émile (1982). The discipline of Sociology should be understood as the empirical study of social facts. In sociology, social facts consist of manners of acting, values, cultural norms, and social structures that transcend the individual and can exercise social control. French sociologist Émile Durkheim

Defined the term, and argued that the discipline should be understood as the empirical study of

He considered social facts to "consist of representations and actions" which meant that "they cannot be confused with organic phenomena, nor with physical phenomena, which have no existence save in and through the individual consciousness (Durkheim, Émile (1982). Durkheim says that a social fact is a thing that many people do very similarly because the socialized community that they belong to has influenced them to do these things(Emile Durkheim, 1982). His studies are also an entry point into the study of social meaning and the way that apparently identical individual acts often cannot be classified empirically. Social acts such an apparently private and individual act such as suicide, in this modern view, are always seen and classified by social actors. Discovering the social facts about such acts, it follows, is generally neither possible nor desirable, but discovering the way individuals perceive and classify particular acts is what offers insight. After all, don't such "discoveries" also reflect socially embedded practices of classification? But if the alleged discoveries of perceptions of social facts aren't therefore dubious, it is hard to