Classical Sociological Theory

This chapter talks about five thinkers whose claim to “permanent” residence in the pantheon of social theory is as firm as can be imagined given current norms of intellectual lineage-formation: Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, Emile Durkheim, Georg Simmel, and Max Weber. Without each of their unique visions of how industrialized society functioned in the mid- to late-nineteenth century, people could hardly speak a line of modern sociology, since they gave them a vocabulary that remains indispensable. Many of their ideas have steadily migrated from the lecture hall to newspapers and then into common parlance, e.g. rationalization, division of labor, anomie, marginality, survival of the fittest, class warfare, the Protestant ethic, and charisma. Taken together, these classical theorists, and their predecessors, set a high standard of insights and ideas for their sociological descendents, which, some would argue, has not yet been surpassed.