50 Fun Facts About Sociology

Which French philosopher coined the term "sociology" and founded the doctrine of positivism?

He had first called it "social physics" until the Belgian statistician Adolphe Quetelet appropriated that phrase.

Which French essayist first wrote down the word "sociology" in 1780, in an unpublished manuscript?

Sieyès is better known for the revolutionary pamphlet "What Is the Third Estate?"

Which institution established the world's first formal Department of Sociology in 1892?

Albion Small founded it, wrote the first sociology textbook and started the American Journal of Sociology in 1895.

Who became France's first professor of sociology in 1895 and wrote The Rules of Sociological Method?

He set up the first European sociology department the same year, at Bordeaux.

Durkheim's 1897 study Suicide compared suicide rates between which two groups?

It pioneered the use of statistics in social research and helped separate sociology from psychology.

Which of Durkheim's four types of suicide reflects a prolonged sense of not belonging to a community?

Altruistic suicide sits at the opposite end of the integration scale, where the group's goals overwhelm the individual.

What term, usually glossed as "normlessness", did Durkheim popularize in Suicide?

He first used it in The Division of Labour in Society and described it as "the malady of the infinite".

Which German sociologist wrote The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism?

He also defined the state by its monopoly on the legitimate use of force and left Economy and Society unfinished at his death in 1920.

Weber classified legitimate authority into three types: charismatic, traditional and what?

Rational-legal authority rests on rules and offices rather than persons or custom, and underpins modern bureaucracy.

Weber's phrase "stahlhartes Gehäuse" was famously translated into English as what?

An American translator chose the phrase in 1930; Weber also called bureaucratization "the polar night of icy darkness".

Which 1848 book opens by claiming that all history is the history of class struggles?

Marx and Engels wrote it on commission for the Communist League as revolutions swept Europe.

In which city was Karl Marx born in 1818?

He earned his doctorate at Jena in 1841 and is buried in London's Highgate Cemetery.

Who coined the phrase "survival of the fittest" in 1864 after reading Darwin?

It appeared in his Principles of Biology; Darwin later adopted the phrase himself.

Which sociologist was the first African American to earn a Harvard doctorate and wrote The Philadelphia Negro?

His 1899 street-by-street mapping of Black Philadelphia prefigured the Chicago School's methods.

Du Bois spent his final years in, and died in, which country?

He died in Accra on August 27, 1963, the day before the March on Washington.

Erving Goffman's dramaturgical approach began with which 1956 book?

He gathered the data for his dissertation on Unst, in the Shetland Islands.

What term did Goffman use for a person's efforts to present an acceptable image to those around them?

He argued it only works when the audience is in sync with the person's self-perception.

Which English writer, often called the first female sociologist, published Society in America in 1837?

She was deaf from childhood and famously carried an ear trumpet.

Which 1959 book by C. Wright Mills was named the 20th century's second most important sociology book?

The International Sociological Association made the ranking in 1998.

Which Columbia sociologist coined the terms "role model" and "self-fulfilling prophecy"?

"Role model" first appeared in his study of medical students; his son won the 1997 Nobel Prize in economics.

The sociologist born Meyer Schkolnick took the name Robert in honor of whom?

Jean-Eugène Robert-Houdin is regarded as the father of modern conjuring, and Merton performed magic as a teenager.

Which French sociologist introduced the concepts of habitus and cultural capital?

His best-known book, Distinction (1979), argues that judgments of taste are acts of social positioning.

What percentage of Milgram's participants went all the way to the 450-volt shock?

The experiments began at Yale in August 1961, three months after Adolf Eichmann's trial opened.

The Stanford prison experiment of 1971 was cut short after how many days?

Philip Zimbardo had randomly assigned 24 screened volunteers to be prisoners or guards.

The "broken windows" theory of policing was introduced in a 1982 article by which two social scientists?

New York police commissioner William Bratton popularized it in the 1990s.

Who coined the term "symbolic interactionism", summarizing the ideas of his teacher George H. Mead?

His summary: people act toward things based on the meanings those things hold, and meanings come from social interaction.

The "looking-glass self" was introduced in 1902 by which American sociologist?

We form a self-image by imagining how we appear to others and internalizing their judgments.

The 1928 Thomas theorem says situations people define as real are real in their what?

W. I. Thomas co-wrote it with Dorothy Swaine Thomas, whose credit was long overlooked.

Which Harvard sociologist is best known for structural functionalism and the AGIL paradigm?

He earned his PhD in economics and helped found Harvard's Department of Social Relations.

Which 14th-century North African scholar's Muqaddimah makes him a forerunner of sociology?

He claimed to have written the book in just six months.

Which group size did the 'social geometry' sociologist argue risks one member becoming subordinate to the other two?

In a dyad each person keeps their individuality, since no third party can shift the balance.

Which settlement did Jane Addams co-found in Chicago in 1889?

In 1931 she became the first American woman awarded the Nobel Peace Prize.

'Six degrees of separation' first appeared in a 1929 story by which Hungarian author?

Milgram's 1967 small-world experiment tried to measure it, and Duncan Watts repeated it by email in 2001.

Robert Putnam's Bowling Alone documents the decline of what in American life?

The 2000 book grew out of his 1995 essay in the Journal of Democracy.

Howard Becker's Outsiders (1963) was central to which approach to deviance?

Frank Tannenbaum had earlier described the same idea as the "dramatization of evil".

Ritzer's "McDonaldization" has four components: efficiency, calculability, predictability and what?

Ritzer treats the fast-food restaurant as today's version of Weber's bureaucracy.

Sociologist Anthony Giddens is known for which political idea associated with Tony Blair?

His book The Third Way appeared in 1998, a year after Blair took office.

The bystander effect was proposed after the 1964 murder of which New York woman?

A newspaper wrongly reported that 37 witnesses did nothing; Darley and Latané then ran the classic experiments.

The Hawthorne effect takes its name from a Western Electric plant in which Illinois town?

Lighting studies there from 1924 to 1927 seemed to raise productivity no matter what was changed.

Which German sociologist wrote the essay "The Metropolis and Mental Life"?

The essay anticipated urban sociology, symbolic interactionism and social network analysis.

Which school hosted the oldest continuing American sociology course, begun in 1890?

Frank W. Blackmar lectured it two years before Chicago's department opened.

Comte's later social theory culminated in a secular faith he called what?

He may also have coined the word "altruism".

Who taught the first US college course entitled 'Sociology', at Yale in 1875?

His laissez-faire sociology was later attacked in Lester Ward's 1,200-page Dynamic Sociology.

Which author of Dynamic Sociology (1883) became the first president of the American Sociological Association?

His book was core reading in many early American sociology courses; the ASA itself was founded in 1905.

Who founded the world's first sociology department in 1892 and published the first sociology textbook?

He also launched the American Journal of Sociology in 1895.

Ferdinand Tönnies built his sociology on which pair of concepts, meaning 'community' and 'society'?

He co-founded the German Sociological Association in 1909 with Weber and Simmel.

The United Kingdom's first sociology department was set up in 1904 at which institution?

It is home to the British Journal of Sociology; Hobhouse and Westermarck were its first lecturers in the field.

Which radical-empirical approach to social order emerged from the work of Harold Garfinkel?

It studies the everyday methods people use to make sense of their social world.

James Coleman's landmark 1966 report on US schooling analysed the performance of over how many students?

It found family background and socioeconomic status mattered more than school resources, and helped spur desegregation busing.

Mark Granovetter is best known for his theory of the strength of what?

His 1985 paper on 'embeddedness' also founded the new economic sociology.