In the United States, White Anglo-Saxon Protestants or Wealthy Anglo-Saxon Protestants (WASP) is a sociological term which is often used to describe white Protestant Americans of British descent, who are generally part of the white dominant culture or upper-class and historically often the Mainline Protestant elite. Historically or most consistently, WASPs are of British descent, though the definition of WASP varies in this respect. It was seen to be in exclusionary contrast to Catholics, Jews, Irish, immigrants, southern or eastern Europeans, and the non-White. WASPs have dominated American society, culture, and politics for most of the history of the United States. Critics have disparaged them as "The Establishment". Although the social influence of wealthy WASPs has declined since the 1960s, the group continues to play a central role in American finance, politics, and philanthropy.
Conflict theories are perspectives in political philosophy and sociology which argue that individuals and groups within society interact on the basis of conflict rather than agreement, while also emphasizing social psychology, historical materialism, power dynamics, and their roles in creating power structures, social movements, and social arrangements within a society. Conflict theories often draw attention to power differentials, such as class conflict, or a conflict continuum. Power generally contrasts historically dominant ideologies, economies, currencies or technologies. Accordingly, conflict theories represent attempts at the macro-level analysis of society.
Political sociology is an interdisciplinary field of study concerned with exploring how governance and society interact and influence one another at the micro to macro levels of analysis. Interested in the social causes and consequences of how power is distributed and changes throughout and amongst societies, political sociology's focus ranges across individual families to the state as sites of social and political conflict and power contestation.
Sociology as a scholarly discipline emerged, primarily out of Enlightenment thought, as a positivist science of society shortly after the French Revolution. Its genesis owed to various key movements in the philosophy of science and the philosophy of knowledge, arising in reaction to such issues as modernity, capitalism, urbanization, rationalization, secularization, colonization and imperialism.
Āstika and Nāstika are concepts that have been used to classify the schools of Indian philosophy by modern scholars, as well as some Hindu, Buddhist and Jain texts. The various definitions for āstika and nāstika philosophies have been disputed since ancient times, and there is no consensus. One standard distinction, as within ancient- and medieval-era Sanskrit philosophical literature, is that āstika schools accept the Vedas, the ancient texts of India, as fundamentally authoritative, while the nāstika schools do not. However, a separate way of distinguishing the two terms has evolved in current Indian languages like Telugu, Hindi and Bengali, wherein āstika and its derivatives usually mean 'theist', and nāstika and its derivatives denote 'atheism'. Still, philosophical tradition maintains the earlier distinction, for example, in identifying the school of Sāṃkhya, which is non-theistic, as āstika (Veda-affirming) philosophy, though "God" is often used as an epithet for consciousness (purusha) within its doctrine. Similarly, though Buddhism is considered to be nāstika, Gautama Buddha is considered an avatar of the god Vishnu in some Hindu denominations. Due to its acceptance of the Vedas, āstika philosophy, in the original sense, is often equivalent to Hindu philosophy: philosophy that developed alongside the Hindu religion.
Social movement theory is an interdisciplinary study within the social sciences that generally seeks to explain why social mobilization occurs, the forms under which it manifests, as well as potential social, cultural, political, and economic consequences, such as the creation and functioning of social movements.
Steven Shapin is an American historian and sociologist of science. He is Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at Harvard University.
Harrison Colyar White was an American sociologist who was the Giddings Professor of Sociology at Columbia University. White played an influential role in the “Harvard Revolution” in social networks and the New York School of relational sociology. He is credited with the development of a number of mathematical models of social structure including vacancy chains and blockmodels. He has been a leader of a revolution in sociology that is still in process, using models of social structure that are based on patterns of relations instead of the attributes and attitudes of individuals.
Robert John Wuthnow is an American sociologist who is widely known for his work in the sociology of religion. He is the Gerhard R. Andlinger Professor of Sociology Emeritus at Princeton University, where he is also the former chair of the Department of Sociology and director of the Princeton University Center for the Study of Religion.
In philosophy, political science and sociology, elite theory is a theory of the state that seeks to describe and explain power relations in society. In its contemporary form in the 21st century, elite theory posits that (1) power in larger societies, especially nation-states, is concentrated at the top in relatively small elites; (2) power "flows predominantly in a top-down direction from elites to non-elites"; and (3) "the characteristics and actions of elites are crucial determinants of major political and social outcomes".
William Bradford Wilcox is an American sociologist. He serves as director of the National Marriage Project and professor of sociology at the University of Virginia, senior fellow at the Institute for Family Studies, and a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. He is author of Get Married: Why Americans Must Defy the Elites, Forge Strong Families, and Save Civilization
Oyèrónkẹ́ Oyěwùmí is a Nigerian gender scholar and full professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. She acquired her bachelor's degree in political science at the University of Ibadan in Ibadan, Nigeria and went on to pursue her graduate degree in Sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. Oyěwùmí is the winner of the African Studies Association's 2021 Distinguished Africanist Award, which recognizes and honours individuals who have contributed a lifetime of outstanding scholarship in African studies combined with service to the Africanist community.
Symbolic violence is a term coined by Pierre Bourdieu, a prominent 20th-century French sociologist, and appears in his works as early as the 1970s. Symbolic violence describes a type of non-physical violence manifested in the power differential between social groups. It is often unconsciously agreed upon by both parties and is manifested in an imposition of the norms of the group possessing greater social power on those of the subordinate group. Symbolic violence can be manifested across different social domains such as nationality, gender, sexual orientation, or ethnic identity.
Stephanie A Kelton is an American heterodox economist and academic, and a leading proponent of modern monetary theory. She served as an advisor to Bernie Sanders's 2016 presidential campaign and worked for the Senate Budget Committee under his chairmanship. She is also the author of The Deficit Myth, a New York Times bestseller, on the subject of modern monetary theory.
Shamus Rahman Khan is an American sociologist. He is a professor of sociology and American studies at Princeton University. Formerly he served as chair of the sociology department at Columbia University. He writes on elites, inequality, gender/sexuality, and American culture. His work has appeared in numerous national and international media outlets.
Christopher J. Schneider is an American sociologist and professor of sociology at Brandon University.
Karen A. Cerulo is an American sociologist specializing in the study of culture, communication and cognition. Currently, she is a Professor Emeritus of Sociology at Rutgers University and working as an active consultant and mentor. She is the former editor of Sociological Forum, the flagship journal of the Eastern Sociological Society. From 2009 to 2010, she served as the Chair of the American Sociological Association's Culture section, and since 1999, she has directed the section's Culture and Cognition Network. Her book Identity Designs: The Sights and Sounds of a Nation won the section's award for the best book of 1996 and her article "Scents and Sensibilities: Olfaction, Sense-making and Meaning Attribution" won the section's 2019 Clifford Geertz Prize for Best Article. Her co-authored book Dreams of a Lifetime: How Who We Are Shapes How We Imagine Our Future won the section's Mary Douglas Best Book Award in 2023. Cerulo is a former Vice President of the Eastern Sociological Society. In 2013, she was named the Robin M. Williams Jr. Lecturer by the Eastern Sociological Society; she won that organization's Merit Award in the same year. In 2019, she was elected to the Sociological Research Association.
Richard Lachmann was an American sociologist and specialist in comparative historical sociology who was a professor at University at Albany, SUNY.
Duane Rousselle is a Canadian sociological theorist, Lacanian psychoanalyst, and Professor of Sociology. He works in several academic fields including Social Movement Studies, Lacanian Psychoanalysis, Cultural Sociology, Gender and Sexuality Studies, Anarchist Studies, and Continental Philosophy. His work attempts to introduce an alternative to scholarly discourses that aim to produce consistent and coherent bodies of knowledge. It also offers a counterpoint to what Jacques Lacan has called "capitalist discourse."
Tanzina Vega is an American journalist whose positions have ranged from weekday host of The Takeaway, a public radio show, to CNNMoney national reporter for race and inequality in America, to staff reporter at The New York Times, where she created and covered a beat on race and ethnicity for the national desk, as well as reporting for the metro section and business desk.
