1940s in sociology

• 1930s
• 1940s in sociology
• 1950s

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The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1940s. In particular, this was a critical decade for the publication of a number of important works, including both during World War II and its aftermath. A number of notable sociologists were born during the Baby Boom Generation that started in 1945.

1940

• Marc Bloch's Feudal Society is published.
• Marc Bloch's Strange Defeat; a Statement of Evidence is published.
• Franz Boas's Race, Language and Culture is published.
• Sir Edward Evans-Pritchard's The Nuer is published.
• Meyer Fortes's African Political Systems is published.
• David V. Glass's Population Policies and Movements in Europe is published.
• Walter Benjamin's On the Concept of History is published. ^[1]
• Robert M. MacIver serves as president of the ASA.

Births

• March 16: Claus Offe ^[2]
• October 14: George Ritzer

Deaths

• September 27: Walter Benjamin

1941

• Melville Jean Herskovits' The Myth of the Negro Past is published.
• George Homans' English villages in the Thirteenth Century is published.
• Harold Lasswell's The Garrison State is published.
• Herbert Marcuse's Reason and Revolution is published.
• Karl Marx's Grundrisse is published.
• Pitirim Sorokin's Social and Cultural Dynamics is published.
• William Lloyd Warner's Social Life of a Modern Community is published.

1942

• William Beveridge's Social Insurance and Allied Services is published.
• James Burnham's The Managerial revolution is published
• Stuart C. Dodd's Dimensions of Society is published.
• Georges Gurvitch's Sociology of Law is published.
• Siegfried Frederick Nadel's A Black Byzantium is published.
• Franz Leopold Neumann's Behemoth: The Structure and Practice of National Socialism is published.
• Wilhelm Reich's The Mass Psychology of Fascism is published.
• Joseph Schumpeter's Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is published.
• Dwight Sanderson serves as president of the American Sociological Association.

Births

• Michael Mann
• February 9: Manuel Castells

Deaths

• May 16: Bronislaw Malinowski
• December 22: Franz Boas

1943

• Jean-Paul Sartre's Being and Nothingness is published.

1944

• William Beveridge's Full Employment in a Free Society is published.
• W. E. B. Du Bois' Jacob and Esau is published.
• Morris Ginsberg's Moral Progress is published.
• Friedrich Hayek' The Road to Serfdom is published.
• Clyde Kluckhohn' Navajo Witchcraft is published.
• Alfred Louis Kroeber' Configurations of Cultural Growth is published.
• Paul Felix Lazarsfeld' The People's Choice is published.
• Helen Merrell Lynd' England in the Eighteen Eighties: Toward a Social Basis for Freedom is published.
• Gunnar Myrdal's An American Dilemma: The Negro Problem and Modern Democracy is published.
• Karl Polanyi' The Great Transformation is published.
• Rupert B. Vance serves as president of the ASA.

Births

• July 19: Karin Knorr Cetina
• Donna Haraway
• Edmund Wnuk-Lipinski
• Ulrich Beck

Deaths

• February 7: Robert E. Park

1945

• Ruth Fulton Benedict' The Chrysanthemum and the Sword is published.
• Helen Merrell Lynd' Field Work in College Education is published.
• Maurice Merleau-Ponty' Phenomenology of Perception is published.
• Sir Karl Raimund Popper' The Open Society and its Enemies is published.

1946

• Morris Janowitz's The Professional Soldier is published.
• C. Wright Mills and Hans.H Gerth's From Max Weber is published.
• Viola Klein's The Feminine Character: History of an Ideology is published.
• Carl C. Taylor serves as president of the American Sociological Association.
• Activities of the German Society for Sociology are resumed and Leopold Von Weise becomes chairperson.

Births

• April 12: Richard Machalek
• September 7: Francisco Varela

1947

• Theodor Adorno's The Stars down to Earth is published.
• Theodor Adorno's and Max Horkheimer's Dialectic of Enlightenment is published.
• Fei Xiaotong's Shengyu zhidu 《生育制度》 (The institutions for reproduction) is published.
• Max Horkheimer's The Eclipse of Reason is published.
• George Lundberg's Can Science Save Us? is published.
• George Elton Mayo's The Social Problems of Industrial Civilization is published.
• Thomas Humphrey Marshall's Sociology at the Crossroads is published.
• Robert Morrison MacIver's The Web of Government is published.

1948

• Chester Barnard's Organisation and Management is published.
• Oliver Cox's Caste, Class and Race is published.
• Kingsley Davis' Human Society is published.
• Fei Xiaotong's Xiangtu chongjian 《鄉土重建》 (Rural recovery) is published.
• Alfred Kinsey' Sexual Behaviour in the Human Male is published. ^[3]
• Robert Lowie' Social Organisation is published.
• C. Wright Mills' The New Men of Power: America's Labor Leaders is published.
• E. Franklin Frazier serves as president of the ASA.

Births

• January 9: Claude S. Fischer

Deaths

• September 17: Ruth Benedict ^[4]

1949

• Marc Bloch's The Historian's Craft is published. ^[5]
• Simone de Beauvoir's The Second Sex is published. ^[6]
• Meyer Fortes' The Web of Kinship among the Tallensi is published.
• E. Franklin Frazier's The Negro in the United States is published.
• Robert K. Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure is published.
• Max Weber's General Economic History is published (posthumously).
• International Sociological Association is founded.

References

1. Lilla, Mark (May 25, 1995). "The Riddle of Walter Benjamin" . The New York Review of Books .
2. "Curriculum Vitae - Claus Offe" (PDF). Hertie School of Governance. Archived (PDF) from the original on 2 October 2018. Retrieved 3 November 2025.
3. Sexual Behavior in the Human Male, ISBN   978-0-253-33412-1.
4. Bailey, Martha J. (1994). American Women in Science:A Biographical Dictionary. ABC-CLIO, Inc. ISBN   978-0-87436-740-9.
5. Spang, Rebecca. "Marc Bloch: His Life and Legacy". Project Muse. Retrieved 4 July 2014.
6. Thurman, Judith (2011). The Second Sex. New York: Random House. p. 13.