Alfred Reginald Radcliffe-Brown’s The Andaman Islanders: A Study in Social Anthropology (1922) represents a transformative milestone in the field of anthropology, heralding the emergence of structural-functionalism as a dominant theoretical framework. This work was not just an ethnographic account of the Andamanese people but a bold reimagining of how societies could be understood—as cohesive systems […]
Bronisław Malinowski’s Argonauts of the Western Pacific is a landmark in anthropology, offering a vivid account of the Trobriand Islanders of Papua New Guinea. Published in 1922, this work serves as a foundational text for modern ethnographic studies, emphasizing participant observation and meticulous fieldwork. The book broke new ground in the discipline by moving beyond
Madness and civilization by Foucault critically examines the concept of madness in West, its cultural perceptions, from confinement to treatment.
Foucault’s concept of biopower highlights how modern states govern life, health, and populations through subtle, pervasive control.
Karl Marx was born in Trier, Prussia, on May 5, 1818 (Beilharz, 2005e). His father, a lawyer, provided the family with a fairly typical middle-class existence. Both parents were from rabbinical families, but for business reasons the father had converted to Lutheranism when Karl was very young. In 1841 Marx received his doctorate in philosophy
Auguste Comte was born in Montpelier, France, on January 19, 1798. His parents were middle class, and his father eventually rose to the position of official local agent for the tax collector. Although a precocious student, Comte never received a college-level degree. He and his whole class were dismissed from the Ecole Polytechnique for their
Alexis de Tocqueville was born on July 29, 1805, in Paris. He came from a prominent though not wealthy aristocratic family. The family had suffered during the French Revolution. Tocqueville’s parents had been arrested but managed to avoid the guillotine. Tocqueville was well educated, became a lawyer and judge (although he was not very successful
Ibn-Khaldun was born in Tunis, North Africa, on May 27, 1332. Many modern scholars, particularly Islamic scholars consider him the first Sociologist.
Georg Simmel (1858-1918) Among the great early sociologists, Simmel was the most interested in identifying universal patterns in human behavior. Whereas Marx and Weber wanted to understand what made a particular society operate, Simmel concentrated on developing what is almost a mathematics of society: a collection of statements about human relationships and social behavior that
Michel Foucault’s Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (1975) is a profound and transformative work that interrogates the evolution of punishment and the mechanisms of power in modern societies. Foucault, a French philosopher and historian, explores the transition from public spectacles of punishment in pre-modern times to the more insidious and pervasive systems
Introduction to Herbert Marcuse Herbert Marcuse was a German philosopher closely associated with the Frankfurt school (Radical intellectuals) Marcuse was more of a Marxist wing of the school. First published in 1964, the book was one of the most important works of that time and was recognized as a significant critical diagnosis of the present
Introduction Talcott Parsons (1902-1979) was a prominent American Sociologist of twentieth century. He served on the faculty of Harvard University from 1921 to 1973. Parsons made a rapid academic progress. He was made chairman of the Harvard Sociology department in 1944; in 1946, he set up and chaired the innovative department of Social relations; in
The Introduction (The Archaeology of Knowledge) In France, a country that awards its intellectuals the status other countries give to their rockstars, Michel Foucault (1926–1984) was part of a glittering generation of thinkers. One of the great intellectual heroes of twentieth century, Foucault was a man whose passion and reason were at the service of
