Sociologists from Chapter 1-4

Karl Marx:

• Focus on class struggle and economic inequality.

• Believed that society’s history is driven by class conflict between bourgeoisie (owners) and proletariat (workers).

W.E.B. Du Bois:

• Focus on race and racial inequality.

• Developed the idea of double consciousness (the struggle of African Americans having an identity shaped by racism).

Antonio Gramsci:

• Focus on hegemony (how the ruling class maintains control through culture and ideology, not just politics).

Harriet Martineau:

• Focus on gender, class, and social justice.

• Early feminist and social justice advocate, studying inequality and women’s roles in society.

George Herbert Mead:

• Focus on the self and socialization.

• Introduced "I" and "Me" (active self vs. social self).

Charles Horton Cooley:

• Focus on how we develop our sense of self through social interactions.

• Developed the concept of the looking-glass self (we see ourselves through how others perceive us).

Sigmund Freud:

• Focus on psychological development.

• Introduced the concept of id, ego, and superego (unconscious desires, reality, and moral conscience).

Jean Piaget:

• Focus on cognitive development in children.

• Stages of thinking from sensorimotor to formal operations.

Lawrence Kohlberg:

• Focus on moral development.

• Identified stages of moral reasoning (pre-conventional, conventional, post-conventional).

Émile Durkheim:

• Focus on social cohesion and collective consciousness.

• Studied the role of social facts in maintaining societal order.

Jean Baudrillard:

• Focus on hyperreality and how media/symbols shape perceptions of reality.

Benedict Anderson:

• Focus on imagined communities and how national identities are socially constructed.

George Ritzer:

• Focus on McDonaldization (spread of efficiency, calculability, predictability, and control across society).

Auguste Comte:

• Focus on positivism (applying scientific methods to study society).

• Coined the term "sociology."

Herbert Spencer:

• Focus on social Darwinism (societies evolve like biological organisms, with the fittest surviving).

Max Weber:

• Focus on social action and the role of ideas and values in shaping society.

• Developed the concept of rationalization and studied the role of religion in economic behavior (e.g., Protestant Ethic).

C. Wright Mills:

• Focus on sociological imagination (understanding personal issues in the context of larger social structures).

• Believed in connecting individual experiences with historical and social forces.

Karl Marx:

• Focus on social change through economic forces and class conflict (believed capitalism would eventually lead to socialism).

George Ritzer:

• Focus on how globalization is leading to rationalization in all sectors of society (e.g., fast food principles spreading globally).

Antonio Gramsci:

• Focus on cultural change and the role of ideology in maintaining power structures (how dominant ideologies change over time).