Who are the Sociologists

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917)

Sociology as an academic discipline

Belief that society functions logically and protects the interests of its members.

Talcott Parsons (1902 -1979)

All social phenomena and relationships could be explained through their functions in society.

Individuals and specific groups in society could be defined by the purpose that they served.

Karl Marx (1818-1883)

Revolutionary socialist from Germany

Marxism - and individual's position within a class hierarchy is determined by his or her role in the production process.

He also argues that political and ideological consciousness is analyzed and determined by class ranking

C. Wright Mills (1916-1962)

Acknowledges relationships between political, miltary and economic institutions

Dorothy Smith (1926-)

Canadian sociologist

Interests in different sorts of disciplines such as: women's studies, psychology and educational studies.

"notion of standpoint", a male dominated social world, ignoring the women's world of reproduction, children, and household jobs.

Charles Cooley (1864-1929)

Best known for his concept - "looking glass self". This is the concept that a person's self grows out of society's interpersonal interactions and the perceptions of others.

George Herbert Mead (1593-1633)

Known as the "founder" of symbolic interactionism

Mead's work focused on the development of the one's self and the objectivity of the world within the social realm - "the individual mind can exist only in relation to other minds with shared meanings"

Max Weber (1864-1920)

believed that individuals attach to their own actions

But Weber is well known for his thesis of combining sociology and the sociology of religion as he wrote a full book about it