sociofact

English

Noun

sociofact (plural sociofacts)

  1. One of the social structures and cultural norms that shape the interactions between individuals in a society.
    • 1953, Irwin Taylor Sanders, editor, Societies Around the World, volume 1: Eskimo, Navajo, Baganda, Dryden Press, page 15:
      A city police department is an example of a sociofact. Behind the sociofacts, however, are traditional ways of looking at things, belief systems, rules of behavior, and values.
    • 1971, Peter Worsley, Ann Allen, Two Blades of Grass: Rural Cooperatives in Agricultural Modernization, Manchester University Press, page 10:
      For it is recognized on all sides that man’s ingenuity in inventing things—artefacts—is much superior to this ability to dream up new ideas—ideofacts—and particularly ideas about how social life mmight be better organized (sociofacts).
    • 2022, Marcel Danesi, editor, Handbook of Cognitive Mathematics, Springer Nature, page 170:
      We pmphasize that artifacts, mentifacts and sociofacts are cultural traits introduced by biologist Julian Huxley (1887-1975) as the bases for a theory of culture.

Derived terms