Sociology & Criminology for a Changing World
Norbert Elias was a German sociologist whose work bridged historical sociology, social theory, and psychology. Born in 1897 in Breslau (now Wrocław, Poland), Elias studied under Alfred Weber and Karl Mannheim before fleeing the Nazi regime and settling in the United Kingdom. His academic career spanned several decades, though much of his influence emerged posthumously.
Max Weber is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of modern sociology. His work profoundly shaped sociological theory, methodology, and the understanding of modernity, bureaucracy, and authority. Trained in law and economics, Weber brought a multidisciplinary approach to the study of society, emphasizing both historical specificity and theoretical abstraction. One of Weber’s most
Georg Simmel was a pioneering German sociologist and philosopher whose work laid crucial foundations for symbolic interactionism, urban sociology, and the sociology of culture. Although marginalized during his academic career due to his Jewish heritage and non-traditional academic appointments, Simmel’s ideas have gained wide recognition posthumously for their originality and enduring relevance. Simmel’s approach was
Émile Durkheim is widely regarded as one of the founding figures of sociology and a key architect of its development as a rigorous, empirical discipline. His work laid the groundwork for structural functionalism and introduced core sociological concepts such as social facts, collective conscience, and anomie. Durkheim’s methodological approach emphasized the study of society as
Ferdinand Tönnies is best known for his distinction between Gemeinschaft (community) and Gesellschaft (society), a foundational sociological concept that captures the transformation of social bonds in the context of modernization. Published in his seminal work Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft (1887), this dichotomy explores the shift from close-knit, emotionally bound relationships typical of traditional societies to impersonal,
Ausguste Comte is widely regarded as the father of sociology and one of the most important figures in the early development of positivist philosophy. He introduced the term “sociology” and envisioned it as a rigorous scientific discipline grounded in empirical observation and governed by the laws of social evolution. Comte’s “law of three stages”—the theological,