6.2 Western thinkers notes

1. 6.2.1Emile Durkheim: social facts, solidarity, suicide and anomie

   Durkheim, the French founder of academic sociology, held that society is a reality of its own, made of "social facts" that constrain individuals, and showed even suicide to be shaped by how strongly society integrates and regulates people.

   Standard · 9 min · Full course
2. 6.2.2Max Weber: social action, ideal types, authority and bureaucracy

   Weber, the German sociologist, made the meaning people give to their actions the subject of sociology, and explained the modern world as a process of rationalisation seen most clearly in capitalism and bureaucracy.

   Standard · 7 min · Full course
3. 6.2.3Karl Marx: historical materialism, class struggle and alienation

   Marx explained society through its economic base: the way people produce shapes their classes, ideas and institutions, and history moves through the struggle between classes.

   Standard · 8 min · Full course
4. 6.2.4Functionalism: Malinowski, Radcliffe-Brown, Parsons and Merton

   Functionalism sees society as a system of interrelated parts, each of which contributes to keeping the whole stable; Malinowski and Radcliffe-Brown built it in anthropology, Parsons made it a grand theory and Merton refined it.

   Standard · 8 min · Full course
5. 6.2.5Interactionist and other perspectives: Cooley, Mead, Goffman, Simmel, Tönnies, Pareto and Mills

   Interactionists study how people build the self and social reality through everyday interaction and symbols; alongside them stand thinkers on community (Tönnies), forms of interaction (Simmel), elites (Pareto, Michels, Mills) and the city, consumption and knowledge.

   Standard · 8 min · Full course

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