Enumerate the pioneers of sociology and anthropology and also their contributions?

Question

tnx!

Answer 1

Hmm..Ok a quick introduction to sociology!

Three "fathers" of sociology: Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Max Weber.  People are writing 600 paged thesis' on these guys so it is really hard to summarize their contributions to sociology!

Let me really really roughly say this; Comte is the one who first used the word "sociology", he adopted a positivist point of view and was the first one asking "how" instead of "why", which is the core of the classical sociology.

Durkheim tried to give a more scientific character to sociology, he was highly influenced by Comte, however Comte's sociology included many metaphysics elements and needed some adjustments in order to be accepted as a "science". That's what Durkheim had done. Durkheim's most important work was the one on suicide, because until his time, suicide was accepted as a psychological thing and the societies effects on the suicide rates was never taken into consideration. Durkheim showed that suicide is not just related to the individual, but also had social reasons.

weber has great contributions on concepts such as bureaucracy, capitalism and their relation to rationalization. Weber had a great impact on the latter sociologist. So if you're going to do a study on concepts such as modernity, you definitely have to mention Weber!

There's also a 4th father, Georg Simmel, whose works influenced the University of Chicago. Simmel have lots of important works on urban life and cities which was a treasure for the sociologists of Chicago School, who was at the time reflecting on the problems that they were facing in Chicago and the rest of the metropolitan cities.

These may be the pioneers, but sociology has evolved a lot since that time! If you ask my opinion, Adorno, Horkheimer, Marcuse of Frankfurt School and Pierre Bourdieu have also contributed a lot to sociology among thinkers from other disciplines such as  philosophy, feminism, q***r theory, pychoanalysis, law..etc.

Let's also not forget the works of Karl Marx, who generally isn't considered as a sociologist, but his influence on sociology and sociologists cannot be denied naturally.