38 thinkers, books, and ideas connected to this field.
Joe Nocera's 1994 social history of how financial products — mutual funds, credit cards, 401(k)s — were introduced to middle-class Americans between 1950 and 1990, reframing financial democratization as a series of chaotic improvisations.
Michael Lewis's podcast examining the changing role of referees, umpires, and arbiters of fairness across American institutions — from sports to finance to medicine.
American sociologist at Berkeley who wrote The Managed Heart and Strangers in Their Own Land — developing the concept of emotional labor (managing one's feelings as part of a job) and conducting a deep sociological investigation of the emotional life of Trump's rural Louisiana supporters.
Auguste Comte was a French philosopher who founded sociology as a discipline and developed positivism, the doctrine that only scientific knowledge is valid knowledge.
American sociologist at Penn who coined the term WASP (White Anglo-Saxon Protestant) — author of The Protestant Establishment and Philadelphia Gentlemen — who studied the American ruling class and argued that its closure to meritocratic talent (Jews, Catholics, Blacks) caused its decline.
French sociologist who co-founded sociology as an academic discipline — writing Suicide (demonstrating that even the most individual act is shaped by social forces) and The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (arguing that religion is society worshipping itself) — and who established the concept of anomie.
British-Czech philosopher and social theorist who wrote Nations and Nationalism — a structural account of nationalism as a product of industrialization — and was a leading critic of Wittgenstein's later philosophy.
The Institute for Social Research at Goethe University Frankfurt — home of Critical Theory, Western Marxism's most influential synthesis of Marx, Freud, and Hegel applied to modern capitalism and culture.
British philosopher who coined 'survival of the fittest,' developed a comprehensive synthetic philosophy extending evolutionary principles across all domains, and was the most widely read philosopher of the late 19th century.
Arab Muslim historian and philosopher — author of the Muqaddimah (Prolegomena) — who created the science of sociology (before the term existed) and the cyclical theory of history through asabiyya (social solidarity) — the most significant social theorist of the medieval world.
American sociologist who wrote Before European Hegemony — arguing that a sophisticated world-system centered on the Islamic Middle East preceded and enabled the rise of European capitalism — challenging Wallerstein's Eurocentric world-systems theory.
British sociologist at the University of Virginia who wrote Visions of Empire, The Making of English National Identity, and 1989: Revolutionary Ideas and Ideals — examining how empires construct and project their identities, particularly the British Empire's self-presentation.
French anthropologist and sociologist who developed the theory of gift exchange — arguing that gifts are never free but operate in a system of reciprocal obligation that is the foundation of social life.
German sociologist and political economist — author of The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Economy and Society, and Science as a Vocation — who created the concepts of ideal types, bureaucracy, legitimacy, and disenchantment — one of the three founders of sociology (with Marx and Durkheim).
Aziz Ansari and sociologist Eric Klinenberg's 2015 examination of modern dating — combining sociological research with comedy — exploring how technology has transformed romantic search and the psychology of modern relationships.
French sociologist who developed the most influential theoretical framework in contemporary sociology — habitus, field, and the forms of capital — and a reflexive sociology that turned its own methods on itself.
Malcolm Gladwell's podcast that re-examines overlooked or misunderstood events and ideas from the past through a social science lens.
American political scientist who popularized social capital — the civic networks and norms of reciprocity that enable collective action — and documented its decline in American life.
Jamaican-British cultural theorist who founded British Cultural Studies and developed the encoding/decoding model of media communication.
Louise Perry's 2022 feminist critique of the sexual revolution — arguing that liberalized sexual norms have primarily benefited men, that women's genuine interests lie closer to traditional norms around sex and commitment, and that feminist sexual liberation was a mistake.
Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson's 2018 book arguing that human behavior is primarily driven by hidden self-interested motives — status, signaling, dominance — that we systematically deny and rationalize as altruistic.
German research institute affiliated with Goethe University Frankfurt, founded in 1923, that became the institutional home of the Frankfurt School of critical theory.
W.E.B. Du Bois's collection of essays — part sociology, part autobiography, part cultural criticism — introducing double consciousness and analyzing the spiritual, political, and cultural life of Black Americans.
Will Storr's 2021 argument — that status-seeking is the fundamental human motivation, operating through three types of games (dominance, virtue, and success), and that understanding this explains tribalism, extremism, cancel culture, and everyday social behavior.
Thorstein Veblen's 1899 satire of upper-class American consumption — which coined 'conspicuous consumption' and 'pecuniary emulation' — and argued that leisure and wasteful spending signal social status to inferior classes, driving economic behavior more than utility.
Melissa Kearney's 2023 argument — that growing up in a two-parent household significantly improves children's economic outcomes and that the decline of two-parent families, particularly among less-educated Americans, is a primary driver of economic inequality.
German philosopher, sociologist, and musicologist who was the most uncompromising critical theorist of the Frankfurt School — developing a negative dialectics that refuses all affirmative synthesis.
Norwegian-American economist and sociologist — author of The Theory of the Leisure Class (1899) — who coined 'conspicuous consumption' and 'conspicuous leisure' — the founder of institutional economics and the most savage social critic in American economic thought.
African-American scholar, activist, and co-founder of the NAACP who developed the concept of double consciousness and produced the first systematic sociological studies of Black American life.
Max Weber's argument that the 'spirit of capitalism' — disciplined, ascetic, rational wealth accumulation as a calling — had its origins in Calvinist Protestant theology.
Bruce Barcott's 2015 journalistic account of the marijuana legalization movement in America, following the political and cultural battles around cannabis policy.
French sociologist who founded sociology as a distinct academic discipline — arguing that social facts are sui generis, irreducible to individual psychology.
Marxism is a systematic theory of history, society, and political economy centred on the claim that material conditions — especially the ownership of the means of production — determine social relations and consciousness. It holds that human history is a succession of modes of production (feudalism, capitalism, etc.) driven forward by class conflict, and that capitalism's internal contradictions will eventually give rise to a classless communist society.
The philosophical and sociological tradition developed by the Frankfurt School — combining Marxist social analysis with Freudian psychology, Hegelian dialectics, and the goal of human emancipation.
Kimberlé Crenshaw's analytical framework (1989) for understanding how multiple systems of oppression (race, gender, class, sexuality, disability) overlap and compound — rather than operating independently.
A legal and academic framework, founded in the 1980s by legal scholars including Derrick Bell, that examines how race and racism are embedded in law and social institutions — and challenges the liberal assumption that color-blind law is sufficient for racial justice.
Tyler Cowen's argument that America has become dangerously risk-averse and complacent — declining dynamism in housing, careers, startups, and personal risk-taking threatens long-term prosperity.
Studs Terkel's oral history of American workers across occupations — what they do, what they think about, and what their work means to them.