A Study On Culture Facing Social Facts

At the end of the 20th century, culture has become the central issue of sociological theory again. In fact, the important intellectual roots in the research of culture of the sociological theory, can be traced back to Emile Durkheim, one of the founders of the sociology. As one of the most famous classical sociologists, Durkheim had dedicated himself to the emergence and development of the sociological theory. In the sociological circles in China, Durkheim has be regarded as a representative figure of the Positivism, thus we has only paid great attention to his analysis of the macroscopic social structure, laid stress on the positivism methodology, but yet overlooked the cultural factors of his sociological thoughtsIn his sociological theory, Durkheim viewed the relationship between individual and society as the subject, analyzed the cultural appearance in the industrial society, and revealed the fundamental relationship between science and religion so that could seek good means to keep social order. He defined research objective of the sociology as the Social Facts. Social Facts, as the key idea in his sociological theory, includes Being of Social Facts and Act of Social Facts. The former discusses the social structure more, and yet the latter discusses the culture. Besides, the Collective Consciousness links the social structure and the culture. He thought the institutional culture, including moral, law, religion etc, all had stemmed from collective consciousness and gave some play to social solidarity. These viewpoints have exerted a profound and lasting influence on the later Functionalism, Structuralism and Symbolism, and even became the theoretical foundation for nowadays cultural analysis.This article does my best to reveal the symbolical significance in Durkheim's sociological thoughts and the influence on the development of the Cultural Sociology through comprehensive understanding his cultural sociological thoughts. Moreover, Durkheim's sociology is the most typical research into the period of social type transformation that views moral standard as the center and places emphasis on the role of the cultural factors in the course of rebuilding social order. Therefore, for the social type transformation during its speedup time in contemporary China, during the process of continuous promoting industrialization and speedup realizing modernization, the prescription proposed by Durkheim can be used for positive reference that solves the modernity by the means of strengthening collective consciousness and moral and setting up career organizations.