Sociology and Anthropology Monday
April 21, 2014
Lawrence Krader (1919-1998)
Lawrence Krader was born in New York City and died in Berlin, Germany. He was known in Anthropology as one of the world’s leading experts on the peoples of Soviet Central Asia, having both written a leading textbook on the subject and leading many expeditions to that part of the Continue reading Sociology and Anthropology Monday: Lawrence Krader
Franz Boas (1858-1942) – Progenitor of American Anthropology
Franz Boas was a German-Jewish physicist and geographer who, through his studies of Inuit on Baffin Island and of the Kwakiutl in British Columbia under the auspices of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, came to devote himself to the study of anthropology by challenging the predominant fixed stage evolutionism in vogue in the last quarter of the 19th century. It was Boas who defined anew the science of Continue reading Sociology and Anthropology Monday: Franz Boas
Vilfredo Pareto (1848-1923) was a Franco-Italian civil engineer turned economist and sociologist. Prior to 1898 he was a traditional economic liberal and politically a man of the left. He failed at his bid for a career in politics and became disillusioned and somewhat embittered. He began to withdraw from society, and, after having inherited a small fortune he retired to a house in Celigny where he acquired an enormous wine cellar with his companion, Jane Regis, and a legion of Angora cats. In his later years he became increasingly Continue reading Sociology and Anthropology Monday: Vilfredo Pareto
Auguste Comte (1798-1857) was born to conservative, royalist and Catholic parents. A precocious student with a photographic memory he graduated with top honours from the Lycée at Montpellier at the age of 14 ½. He passed the entrance examinations for the EcolePolytechnique with the highest marks in southern and central France, yet he was not yet 16 and had to wait a year to begin his studies at the Ecole. Comte became a student Continue reading Sociology and Anthropology Monday: Auguste Comte
Charles Horton Cooley (1864-1929)
Cooley was one of the leading American sociologists of the second generation who, along with George Herbert Mead (see last week’s column), developed a sociological theory of the self – the looking-glass self – which was probably influenced by Adam Smith’s Theory of Moral Sentiments in which the self was understood to be a construct based on the observation of others in relation to the self. Trained as a mechanical engineer and as an economist, Cooley later gravitated to his minor in Sociology, publishing three major books in that field: Human Nature and the Social Order (1902), Social Organization (1909) and Social Process (1918). He was influenced in Continue reading Sociology and Anthropology Monday: Charles Horton Cooley
Click Here to Read: George Herbert Read on Wikipedia.
Click Here to Read: A large number of Mead’s publications can be found online at The Mead Project developed by Robert Throop and Lloyd Gordon Ward:
Click Here to Read: George’s page on George Herbert Mead.
This installment of Sociology and Anthropology Monday introduces an important figure in American Pragmatism, Social Psychology and the social behaviorist theory of Continue reading Sociology Monday: George Herbert Mead
Click Here to Read: Max Weber on Wikipedia.
Click Here to Read: Max Weber’s Comparative-Historical Sociology Today: Major Themes, Mode of Causal Analysis, and Applications on the Ashgate Press website.
Click Here to Read: The Weber-Rachfahl Debate: Calvinsim and Capitalism in Holland (Part One) by J. I. (Hans) Bakker in the Michigan Sociological Review Volume 17: Fall 2013.
Click Here to Read: Review of: Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo, Reviewed by Ana C. Zimmermann on the University of Nottingham website.
Click Here to Read: Review of: Douglas, Mary. Purity and Danger: an analysis of the concepts of pollution and taboo, Reviewed by Emily on the It Was Evening, All Afternoon. website on August 30, 2013.
