Key Sociologists and Concepts

Flashcards covering the foundational sociologists including Harriet Martineau, C. Wright Mills, Robert Merton, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, and Gerhard Lenski, along with their key theories and terminology.

Harriet Martineau

Known as the first woman sociologist, she wrote over $1,600$ articles and many books, believing that social reform was the only way to create a more equal and better-functioning society.

Auguste Comte

A sociologist whose French work was translated into English by Harriet Martineau to further the study of sociology.

C. Wright Mills

A social-conflict sociologist who studied the power structure within the United States and authored the work The Power Elite.

The Power Elite

A concept used by C. Wright Mills to explain how a few individuals within the government, military, and corporate worlds held most of the wealth and power in the country.

Sociological Imagination

A term coined by C. Wright Mills meaning the awareness between one's self and the broader social world around them.

Robert Merton

A functionalist sociologist who viewed society as a system of functioning parts or structures that work together to create stability.

Manifest Functions

Social structure functions categorized by Robert Merton as being intended and obvious.

Latent Functions

Social structure functions categorized by Robert Merton as being not-so-obvious or unintended consequences.

Dysfunctions

Any social element that disrupts the stability of a society and causes it not to run smoothly, as defined by Robert Merton.

Karl Marx

A German economist who studied the poor working-class and saw the world divided into two classes: the rich and the poor.

Marx's View on Religion

Described as a system of illusions and superstitions that served as a powerful conservative force to perpetuate the domination of one social class at the expense of others.

Herbert Spencer

A major contributor to the structural-functionalist perspective who used Darwin's theory of evolution to explain that society was like a living organism.

Survival of the Fittest

A term coined by Herbert Spencer and applied in the idea of social Darwinism to describe how society evolves and changes over time.

Gerhard Lenski

A macrosociologist who studied sociocultural evolution, focusing on how the level of technology and information determines a society's advancement.

Sociocultural Evolution

The term used by Gerhard Lenski to describe how societies evolve and change based on technology and information.

Lenski's Levels of Development

The five major levels of development describing types of societies: hunting and gathering, horticultural, pastoral, agricultural, and industrial.