Classical Sociology Theorists
Classical sociology theorists refer to influential thinkers such as Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and Max Weber, who laid the foundation for the discipline of sociology. Their theories and perspectives on society, economy, and culture continue to shape sociological inquiry and provide valuable insights into understanding social structures and dynamics.
6 Key excerpts on "Classical Sociology Theorists"
eBook - ePub- William C Cockerham(Author)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...In this regard, sociology is much like the practice of case law in which the precedence set by prior court decisions is taken into account in determining present-day legal verdicts. Since Talcott Parsons, sociologists in all specialties have used the classics as authoritative foundations for new theories. “Underlying this intellectual genre,” states Baert (2007:121), “is the assumption that the classics need to be consolidated, combined, recycled and built upon—as if sociologists have taken on board Newton’s aphorism that ‘if I have seen farther, it is by standing on the shoulders of giants.’” It is therefore pertinent to review the work of the canonized theorists before jumping ahead to the present because their influence remains. This chapter reviews the theories of Émile Durkheim and Max Weber that remain relevant for contemporary medical sociology. They were the first to be canonized and accomplished more than anyone else in establishing sociology as an academic discipline in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Their work will be examined here as it applies to medical sociology in the twenty-first century, beginning with Durkheim. The relevance of doing so is evident in the comment of Talcott Parsons (1981:183) as the leading sociologist of his time, who said: And here is a methodological or procedural point I want to leave with you. If the works in question really belong in the category of great human achievements—and this is certainly true of a great deal of Weber’s and Durkheim’s work—you can never exhaust their meaning and their influence for your work in a single reading. If you go back to them, you always find something new you did not understand before...
eBook - ePub- Steven Loyal, Sinisa Malesevic(Authors)
- 2020(Publication Date)
- SAGE Publications Ltd(Publisher)
...Most contemporary sociologists would agree that this type of groupism is deeply problematic as it attempts to homogenise diverse individual experiences and also treats individuals as mere representatives of fixed and essentialist group identities. Thus, in this book we treat sociological theorists as individuals who are influenced by their social, political, economic and historical environments and as such are inevitably shaped by their class, gender, ethnicity, sexuality and other identity categories but are never determined by such influences. In addition, our aim was to zoom in on scholars who have moulded sociological thought and who still remain the most influential figures within the discipline. Though the thinkers we have chosen are by no means exhaustive partly reflecting our circumscribed knowledge, academic interests, as well as publisher's and reviewers’ comments. This book focuses on modern and contemporary sociological theorists. We start with the highly influential sociological perspectives that have dominated twentieth-century American sociology: structural functionalism (Parsons and Merton), social interactionism and phenomenology and ethnomethodology (Goffman, Schutz and Garfinkel). The next three chapters examine the key Marxist theorists (Gramsci, Lukács and Althusser), who, together with the Frankfurt School (Marcuse, Adorno and Horkheimer), dominated intellectual debates in twentieth-century Europe. We then zoom in on the sociological approaches that have developed in dialogue with, and in opposition to, structural functionalism, interactionism and Marxism: exchange and rational choice theory (Homans, Coleman and Boudon), structuralism and post-structuralism (Lévi-Strauss, Barthes and Butler)...
eBook - ePubClass Stratification
Comparative Perspectives
- Richard Breen, David B. Rottman(Authors)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...CHAPTER 2 STRATIFICATION THEORISTS Introduction The study of stratification boasts an enviable pedigree within sociology. Virtually all the central figures in the development of the discipline were concerned to some degree with stratification, and for many it was the primary focus of their work. And today stratification and social class remain the objects of a great deal of theoretical and empirical endeavour on the part of sociologists. Later chapters of this book examine the application of approaches to the study of social class derived from current theorizing. In this chapter we begin to lay the groundwork for that by considering the work of a number of theorists of social stratification, selected on the basis of their relevance to the core issues around which debates in the area currently revolve. Thus we deal first with the so-called ‘classical’ theorists – Marx and Weber – and then with such contemporary writers on the topic of stratification as Michael Burawoy, Anthony Giddens, John Goldthorpe, Frank Parkin, Richard Scase, and Erik Olin Wright. The classical theorists: Karl Marx One characteristic of late capitalism is the explosion of choice that it offers to the consumer. This phenomenon is rarely better illustrated than in the vast array of books and articles that present, explain and interpret the writings of Karl Marx and, to a lesser extent, Max Weber. We do not wish to widen this wealth of choice by providing a comprehensive review of their work. Rather, our aim is to present a summary of the ideas of Marx and Weber as they have been carried forward to influence contemporary approaches to stratification, and, especially, class. We do this because, to a very considerable degree, these two writers established the context that continues to shape contemporary debate. In particular, we want to draw out two issues that retain particular importance in the study of stratification...
eBook - ePub- H. Scott Gordon(Author)
- 2002(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...Their most notable aspirant to this was Karl Marx but we should also include James Frazer, Herbert Spencer, and historians such as Oswald Spengler and A.J.Toynbee as non-Marxist practitioners of Grand Sociology. Émile Durkheim and Max Weber did not have quite so large a view of sociology but the discipline did not really commence to lose its grandeur of scope until the twentieth century. Today, Marxists again excepted, sociologists emphasize empirical research and, to the extent that they use theoretical constructs which are more than ad hoc empirical research instruments, they employ what Robert K.Merton has aptly called ‘theories of the middle range’. The social theory we will examine in this chapter belongs to a period in the history of Western Europe that witnessed a climactic transition between two worlds: from an old world of small agriculture, handicraft industry and limited trade, social localism and intimate community, and the confinement of political power to a small hereditary oligarchy; to a new world of large-scale machine industry, ubiquitous commerce, urbanization and the proletarianization of labour, a social psychology of nationalism, and the emergence of new classes to positions of political influence and power. Without excessive exaggeration it may be claimed that the social sciences are the products of social change, being intellectual responses to great and rapid alterations in traditional modes of social organization and the disorder, often punctuated by violence, that accompanied them...
eBook - ePubAn Introduction to the Sociology of Religion
Classical and Contemporary Perspectives
- Inger Furseth, Pål Repstad(Authors)
- 2017(Publication Date)
- Routledge(Publisher)
...3 Classical sociologists and their theories of religion The aim of this chapter is to give an introduction to the classical sociologists and their theories of religion. Although Freud was a psychologist, he is included here because his theory of religion had a major impact on the sociology of religion. The chapter is organized chronologically and covers from 1850 to around 1950 – even if a few of the writers lived and wrote beyond 1950. We have attempted to organize each subsection by using a consistent scheme. After a brief presentation of a particular theorist, we describe his theory of individual and society, before we take a look at religion and refer to some of the critique that has been raised. We also attempt to offer suggestions as to how different theories may be used in empirical studies of religion. In this chapter and the following, we will in some instances look at possible connections between the context of the theorist under consideration, his Sitz im Leben, and his sociological interpretations. It should be noted that our review of sociologists only includes men: sociology of religion has, until recently, been a massively masculine affair. Towards the end of the chapter, we will attempt to relate the theorists to each other. In particular, focus is directed on the distinction between structural and actor-oriented theories and its consequences for the view of religion. 3.1 Karl Marx: Religion as projection and illusion Karl Marx (1818–83) was born the son of a lawyer in Trier, Germany. His parents were Jewish, although his father later converted to Protestantism. In 1841 Marx finished his doctorate in philosophy at the University of Berlin. During the following decade, he moved between Cologne, Brussels, Berlin, and Paris. In Paris, he and Friedrich Engels participated in revolutionary groups. The Communist Manifesto was published here in 1848. Marx had to flee the following year, and he settled in London, where he lived the rest of his life...
- Wayne Morrison(Author)
- 2014(Publication Date)
- Routledge-Cavendish(Publisher)
...Is it really the case that underdeveloped countries can only develop by allowing the exploitation of their workers? In the west, exploitation in real hard conditions is actually returning. In reply the influence of Marx lives on in three areas at least: • An idealist commitment to Marxism which claims that it is only by remaining faithful to Marx that we can fully understand the nature of the state and its regulation of society. • A left realist approach which keeps the moral intuition and some of the critical approach but works within the structures of liberal democratic society. This is committed to a grass-roots democraticising of the institutions and taking seriously issues such as the victimisation effects of crime. • Many Marxists have become fashionable post-modern scholars ; particularly fond of deconstructive strategies. The humanist sentiment and the critique of exploitation lives on … but the methodology varies. Emile Durkheim (1858–1917) Durkheim and modernity The work of Emile Durkheim has left a large legacy for criminological writings. There are a number of themes in Durkheim’s work which we shall bring out: • the idea of sociological positivism, and the argument that sociology could provide a master-discourse as well as have its own special province; • social solidarity as the glue to society, and the division between mechanical and organic solidarity; • the use of law as an index of social solidarity; • the normalcy of crime in any society which has power centres; • the openness of human nature and the vast range of human desire; • the ever present possibility of anomie or a state of normlessness overtaking social life; • the necessity to construct a moral individualism to counter utilitarianism as the basis of social solidarity in modern societies. Sociological positivism Durkheim specified that sociology should use the methods of observation and hypothesis testing with which the natural sciences operate...
