KEY PEOPLE

Review the major theoretical contributions or research findings of these theorists and thinkers.

Jane Addams: Addams was the founder of Hull House—a settlement house in the immigrant community of Chicago. She invited sociologists from nearby University of Chicago to visit. In 1931, she was a winner of the Nobel Peace Prize. (7)

Mario Brajuha: During an investigation into a restaurant fire, officials subpoenaed notes taken by this sociologist in connection with his participant observation research on restaurant work. He was threatened with jail but would not turn over his notes. (26)

Auguste Comte: Comte is often credited with being the founder of sociology because he was the first to suggest that the scientific method be applied to the study of the social world. (3)

Lewis Coser: Coser pointed out that conflict is likely to develop among people in close relationships because they are connected by a network of responsibilities, power, and rewards. (15)

W. E. B. Du Bois: Du Bois was the first African American to earn a doctorate at Harvard University. For most of his career, he taught sociology at Atlanta University. He was concerned about social injustice, wrote about race relations, and was one of the founders of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. (7–8, 9)

Emile Durkheim: Durkheim was responsible for getting sociology recognized as a separate discipline. He was interested in studying how social forces shape individual behavior. (5)

Laud Humphreys: The sociologist carried out doctoral research on homosexual activity. To obtain information, he misrepresented himself to his research subjects. When his methods became widely known, a debate developed over his use of questionable ethics. (26–27)

Harriet Martineau: An Englishwoman who studied British and United States social life and published Society in America decades before either Durkheim or Weber was born. (6)

Karl Marx: Marx believed that social development grew out of conflict between social classes; under capitalism, this conflict was between the bourgeoisie—those who own the means to produce wealth—and the proletariat—the mass of workers. His work is associated with the conflict perspective. (4)

Robert Merton: Merton contributed the terms manifest and latent functions and latent dysfunctions to the functionalist perspective. (13)

C. Wright Mills: Mills suggested that external influences—or a person’s experiences—become part of his or her thinking and motivations and explain social behavior. In the 1950s, he urged U.S. sociologists to get back to social reform. He argued that research without theory is of little value, simply a collection of unrelated facts, and theory that is unconnected to research is abstract and empty, unlikely to represent the way life really is. (8)

Talcott Parsons: Parsons’ work dominated sociology in the 1940s and 1950s. He developed abstract models of how the parts of society harmoniously work together. (8)

Herbert Spencer: Another early social philosopher, Spencer believed that societies evolve from barbarian to civilized forms. He was the first to use the expression “the survival of the fittest” to reflect his belief that social evolution depended on the survival of the most capable and intelligent and the extinction of the less capable. His views became known as social Darwinism. (4)

Max Weber: Among Weber’s many contributions to sociology were his study of the relationship between the emergence of Protestant belief system and the rise of capitalism. He believed that sociologists should not allow their personal values to affect their social research and objectivity should become the hallmark of sociology. (5–6)