What are social facts? How do we recognise them?
Social facts are like things that are external to the individual but constrain their behaviour. They are collective representations which emerge from the association of people. Social facts are not particular to a person but are of a general nature, independent of the individual. Institutions like law, education and religion constitute social facts. Attributes like beliefs, feelings or collective practices are examples. They are aspects of social reality related to collective patterns of behaviour and beliefs, which are not created by individuals but exert pressure on them and influence their behaviour.
Although social facts are not directly observable, they can be indirectly observable through patterns of behaviour. Social facts can be observed via social behaviour, and specially aggregated patterns of social behaviour. For example, the average rate of suicide aggregated across thousands of individuals in a community is a social fact. By observing behaviour patterns, it is possible to identify the norms, codes and social solidarities which govern them. The existence of otherwise 'invisible' things like ideas, norms, values can be empirically verified by studying the patterns of social behaviour of people as they relate to each other in a society.
Explanation
This question tests understanding of Emile Durkheim's concept of social facts from the NCERT Class 11 Sociology textbook. Part (i) requires defining social facts with their key characteristics - externality, constraint, and generality. Part (ii) requires explaining the method of recognising social facts through observable behaviour patterns. The textbook uses suicide rates as Durkheim's famous example to illustrate how aggregated social behaviour reveals underlying social facts.