Ok sociology, what do you think are genuine breakthroughs that our field has made. Contributions that might convince skeptical but sympathetic *academics* (not the public) of the value of our field? I'll brainstorm some of mine in the thread - I treat sociology very broadly
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Character and Social Structure
Situated Actions and Vocabularies of Motive
Granovetter: Getting a job
Schelling: Segregation Models.
Arendt - Eichmann in Jerusalem
More disciplinedly..
Hochschild - Second Shift
@ericklinenberg.bsky.social - Heatwave
Also at methods-theory interface, understanding length-biased sampling as structuring populations. Preston 1976 on family sizes (see also Song & Mare; me & Feehan)
Sorokin Man and society in calamity - what happens when society breaks down during famine, disease, revolution and war
Sorokin sociology of revolution
Parsons Sick role
Garfinkel Agnes and gender
Sacks, Schegloff, Jefferson Conversation Analysis - huge practical applications in professional and service work.
- Durkheim : social facts.
- Goffman : Face.
Merton: self-fulfilling prophecy
Merton: unintended consequences
Merton: reference group
[Sometimes when teaching intro I used to just list all the Merton coinages until the students understood how much sociology already was in their understanding of the world.]
I did a quick search online & other than social network analysis, most results seem to be abt applying computing to soci and not vice versa :(
Foucault - Biopower, Biopolitics, Carceral State, Governmentatlity, etc.
Polanyi - Double Movement
Weber - Iron Cage
Block - Habitation
Baudrillard - Hyperreality
Domhoff. Who Rules America? https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Rules_America%3F
etc.
But, given the recent US election, I can't say that we've learned much.
Peter Blau: Exchange theory
Georg Simmel: Cultural sociology
Niklas Luhmann: System theory
Émile Durkheim: Everything on sociology and why its fundamental for understanding society. Also: About suicide.
Max Weber: Protestant ethics and the spirit of capitalism in Germany.
Garfinkel: morality of everyday life
Sacks: membership categorization
Burawoy- extended case method
Rodney - underdevelopment
Erikson- collective trauma
Mills- "Cheerful Robots" From White Collar
Alicia Walker: Masculinity misinterprets Human empathy as sexual attraction from Chasing Masculinity
- Centola: tipping points
- Becker: Becoming a Marijuana User
- Merton: The Matthew Effect
- Schelling Point
- Milgram: on obedience (oooh a controversial one)
- Lareau: Unequal Childhoods
+
- Du Bois: double consciousness
- Latour: ANT (sorry not sorry)
- Bourdieu: distinction and habitus (sorry not sorry)
- Gramsci: hegemony
- Althusser: interpellation (oof actually maybe not this one)
And Bourdieu may cause some amusement, given how his style of writing (at least in his big treatises) may be perceived as a form of distinction ("hey I'm from ENS I'm not one of these peons"). Very different from Becker.
Blumbergs general theory of gender inequality
Emerson’s power dependency model
Lenski’s theory of power
Hannan/freeman’s org ecology
Abrutyns theory of affective motivation
- Maurice Halbwachs: collective memory.
- Garfinkel and Lunckman: social constructivism.
- Norbert Elias: civilizing process.
- Lazarsfeld: on the scarring effects on unemployment
- Lazarsfeld: opinion leader
- Bourdieu: field theory
- Crenshaw: intersectionality
- Coleman: social capital