Dead White Men

1
Dead White Men

• Thumbnail sketches of three important
  sociological theorists, Emile Durkheim, Max
  Weber, and Karl Marx

2
Dead White Men

• Durkheim
• Weber
• Marx
• Actually, well discuss these theorists
  chronologically Marx, Durkheim, then Weber.

3
Founding Fathers

• Marx, Durkheim, and Weber are often considered
  the founding fathers of Sociology. Sociology
  began as a European discipline and, as was
  typical of the times, women and men of color were
  not included.
• Still, I find that I keep going back to these
  three dead white men because what they had to say
  is still relevant today.

4
Karl Marx

• Marx was born in Germany in 1818 and died in
  England in 1883.

5
Marx in a nutshell

• Economic arrangements determine the nature of
  society.
• Throughout history, class struggle has determined
  these arrangements.
• Capitalism represents a new arrangement that grew
  out of private ownership of property.

6
Marxs nutshell continued

• Capitalists, the owners of the means of
  production, revolutionized society, forming the
  proletariat class for alienated labor.
• All social arrangements are dialecticthesis,
  antithesis, and synthesis. Capitalism is the
  thesis, proletariat revolution is the antithesis,
  and a communist society is the synthesis.

7
Clay Feet

• Marx never worked for wages. He was supported by
  handouts from his friend and writing partner,
  Frederich Engels. Engels got the money from his
  father, a capitalist who owned textile mills.

8
Emile Durkheim

• Emile Durkheim was a man. His first name is
  pronounced Emeel. He was born in 1858 and died
  in 1917 in France.
• Durkheim founded the first ever department of
  sociology.

9
Durkheim in a nutshell

• The shared morals of society, social facts, are
  bigger than the sum of the individuals who make
  up that society.
• Because of these social facts, society continues
  to exist in the face of extreme change. Societies
  can be understood and ranked by the degree and
  type of social cohesion.

10
Durkheims nutshell continued

• When individuals in a society are extremely
  similar, they experience mechanical solidarity
  when there is a greater division of labor,
  organic solidarity arises.
• Individuals also react to conditions of social
  cohesion, as seen through suicide rates.

11
Clay Feet

• Durkheim gathered a group of bright young
  scholars together to create the new discipline of
  sociology. One of these men was his only son.
  When his son was killed in World War I, Durkheim
  stopped producing and died shortly afterward of a
  broken heart.

12
Max Weber

• Webers last name is pronounced Vayber, not
  Weber-like-the-grill.
• Weber was born in 1864 and died in 1920 in
  Germany.

13
Weber in a nutshell

• Society is evolving toward an ever more rational,
  bureaucratic model. This means we are becoming
  more and more routinized.
• Ideology, such as ascetic Protestantism, provides
  the ground on which capitalism and other social
  structures grow.

14
Webers nutshell continued

• Bureaucracy, as the clearest example of
  rationalization, is leaching the creativity out
  of humanity. He called bureaucracy an iron
  cage.
• We need to understand the motivation of actors,
  including their ideology, in order to understand
  the social interactions that construct society.

15
Clay Feet

• Weber married his cousin, Marianne, who was also
  a sociologist.
• Torn between his highly religious mother and his
  atheist father, Weber suffered an emotional
  breakdown when his father died shortly after they
  had argued.
• Weber suffered from terrible depressions after
  his fathers death. This mental illness affected
  his career for the rest of his life.

16
Rediscovered Sociologists

• While our founding fathers are all white men,
  they were not the only sociologists in our
  classical period. European women and women and
  men of color in the United States were also
  important to the foundations of sociology.
• Two examples are Harriet Martineau and W.E.B.
  DuBois

17
Harriet Martineau

• Martineau was born in 1802 and died in 1876 in
  England. She was one of the first women
  sociologists and also one of our first disabled
  scholars. Martineau suffered from a severe
  hearing impairment.

18
Martineau in a nutshell

• She is often credited as the first woman founder
  of sociology. She translated and condensed
  Comtes six-volume tome on Positivism (the idea
  that scientific knowledge is the only true
  knowledge) and wrote extensively about systems of
  inequality and the inexorable movement towards
  scientific rather than religious thought. She was
  an abolitionist and an activist for womens
  rights.

19
W.E.B. DuBois

• DuBois was born in 1868 in the United States and
  died in 1963 in Ghana. He was the first African
  American to earn a PhD in Sociology from Harvard.

20
DuBois in a nutshell

• Race is the most important issue for the 20th
  century. We must understand the conditions under
  which most African Americans live if we are to
  understand why they fail in the world today and
  what must be done to bring African Americans
  fully into American society. For any people to
  wholly realize their potential, they must be
  educated. This education cannot be for material
  gainit must be more than mere skills training.
  Instead, the education that African Americans
  require is intellectual. A talented tenth of any
  population can provide for the uplift of the
  entire group as long as that tenth is educated in
  critical thinking and creative intellectual
  skills.

21
Classical Theory

• These five foundational thinkers set the agenda
  for sociology well into the 21st century.
• What parts of these theories do you find relevant?