Give me 5 Sociologists and their brief contribution in Sociology?

Question

Thanks guys!

Answer 1

Auguste Comte-coined the phrase Sociology (as we know it today).  His studies included the “law of three phases” and a focus on positivism.  Believed we need to understand society as it is rather than as it should be.  

Emile Durkheim-established ideology behind social solidarity.  Author of “Suicide”.  Bonds/functions hold society together (social integration).  

Karl Marx-focused on class power struggles in a capitalistic system.  Wrote The Communist Manifesto.  History can only change through class conflict between workers and owners.

Georg Simmel-pioneer of the concept of social structure.  Author of “The Metropolis”.

Herbert Spencer-survival of the fittest (social darwinism).

Max Weber-focused on rationale.  Wrote “The Protestant Ethic”.

Answer 2

If you want to include sociologists other than the usual classical DWM (dead white males) you could also cite:

Frederick Du Bois   (19th century USA):  concept of 'double consciousness'; significance of 'race' in USA society.

Simone de Beauvoir (post WWII, France) social production of sexual difference and gendered consciousness

M. Foucault (late 20th century france):   Modern society is distinctinctively based on dispersed discourses of power  - medicalised discourses in 19th and early 20th periods that focused on the modern construction of 'the soul (the modern self) through control of the body' and now in the 21st century ......(see Beck below)



R.W. Connell: (contemporary, Australia): social construction of masculinity; varieties of masculinities of contemporary society; power and masculinity

Patricia Hill-Collins (1990s USA): post-colonial analyses of  intersections of class, gender and ethnicity

Ulrick Beck (contemporary Germany)the  late 20th century is characterised as Risk Society.

By this he means that the most  powerful contemporary discourses are those based on the futile and conflicting attempts to control the uncontrollable risks created within our globalised stage of modernity.

Because these risks  - for example terrorism, global diseases, environmental  disasters -

a)affect the whole world so no one can escape them

b) are created by science but we still look to science to remedy them....

... we are faced with a key contradiction:  increasingly global power  derives from the base that created the problem - technology and science.