---
title: "History of sociology"
chunk: 11/11
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_sociology"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:00:24.100525+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

== 21st century sociology ==
The increase in the size of data sets produced by the new survey methods was followed by the invention of new statistical techniques for analyzing this data. Analysis of this sort is usually performed with statistical software packages such as R, SAS, Stata, or SPSS.
Social network analysis is an example of a new paradigm in the positivist tradition. The influence of social network analysis is pervasive in many sociological sub fields such as economic sociology (see the work of J. Clyde Mitchell, Harrison White, or Mark Granovetter, for example), organizational behavior, historical sociology, political sociology, or the sociology of education. There is also a minor revival of a more independent, empirical sociology in the spirit of C. Wright Mills, and his studies of the Power Elite in the United States of America, according to Stanley Aronowitz.
Critical realism is a philosophical approach to understanding science developed by Roy Bhaskar (1944–2014). It combines a general philosophy of science (transcendental realism) with a philosophy of social science (critical naturalism). It specifically opposes forms of empiricism and positivism by viewing science as concerned with identifying causal mechanisms. Also, in the context of social science it argues that scientific investigation can lead directly to critique of social arrangements and institutions, in a similar manner to the work of Karl Marx. In the last decades of the twentieth century it also stood against various forms of 'postmodernism'. It is one of a range of types of philosophical realism, as well as forms of realism advocated within social science such as analytic realism and subtle realism.

== See also ==

Bibliography of sociology
List of sociologists
Outline of sociology
Subfields of sociology
Timeline of sociology
Philosophy of social science

== Notes ==

== References ==

== Further reading ==
Coser, Lewis A. (1976). "Sociological Theory From the Chicago Dominance to 1965". Annual Review of Sociology. 2: 145–160.
Gerhard Lenski. 1982. Human societies: An introduction to macrosociology, McGraw Hill Company.
Nash, Kate. 2010. Contemporary Political Sociology: Globalization, Politics, and Power. Wiley-Blackwell Publishers.
Samuel William Bloom, The Word as Scalpel: A History of Medical Sociology, Oxford University Press 2002
Raymond Boudon A Critical Dictionary of Sociology. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989
Craig Calhoun, ed. Sociology in America. The ASA Centennial History. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.
Deegan, Mary Jo, ed. Women in Sociology: A Bio-Bibliographical Sourcebook, New York: Greenwood Press, 1991.
A. H. Halsey, A History of Sociology in Britain: Science, Literature, and Society, Oxford University Press 2004
Martindale, Don (1976). "American Sociology Before World War II". Annual Review of Sociology. 2: 121–143.
Barbara Laslett (editor), Barrie Thorne (editor), Feminist Sociology: Life Histories of a Movement, Rutgers University Press 1997
Levine, Donald N. (1995). Visions of the Sociological Tradition. University Of Chicago Press. ISBN 978-0-226-47547-9.
Moebius, Stephan: Sociology in Germany. A History, Palgrave Macmillan 2021 (open access), ISBN 978-3-030-71866-4.
T.N. Madan, Pathways : approaches to the study of society in India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1994
Sorokin, Pitirim. Contemporary Sociological Theories  (1928)  online free guide to major scholars
Guglielmo Rinzivillo, A Modern History of Sociology in Italy and the Various Patterns of its Epistemological Development, New York, Nova Science Publishers, 2019
Sorokin, Pitirim and Carle C Zimmerman. Principles of Rural-Urban Sociology (3 vol 1927) online free
Steinmetz, George. 'Neo-Bourdieusian Theory and the Question of Scientific Autonomy:  German Sociologists and Empire, 1890s–1940s', Political Power and Social Theory Volume 20 (2009): 71–131.
Wiggershaus, Rolf (1994). The Frankfurt School : its history, theories and political significance. Polity Press. ISBN 978-0-7456-0534-0.
Kon, Igor, ed. (1989). A History of Classical Sociology (DOC, DjVu, etc.). Translated by H. Campbell Creighton. Moscow: Progress Publishers. ISBN 978-5-01-001102-4.