The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to the discipline of sociology:
A social class or social stratum is a grouping of people into a set of hierarchical social categories, the most common being the working class, middle class, and upper class. Membership of a social class can for example be dependent on education, wealth, occupation, income, and belonging to a particular subculture or social network.
Social mobility is the movement of individuals, families, households or other categories of people within or between social strata in a society. It is a change in social status relative to one's current social location within a given society. This movement occurs between layers or tiers in an open system of social stratification. Open stratification systems are those in which at least some value is given to achieved status characteristics in a society. The movement can be in a downward or upward direction. Markers for social mobility such as education and class, are used to predict, discuss and learn more about an individual or a group's mobility in society.
John Harry Goldthorpe is a British sociologist. He is an emeritus Fellow of Nuffield College, Oxford. His main research interests are in the fields of social stratification and mobility, and comparative macro-sociology. He also writes on methodological issues in relation to the integration of empirical, quantitative research and theory with a particular focus on issues of causation.
Social stratification refers to a society's categorization of its people into groups based on socioeconomic factors like wealth, income, race, education, ethnicity, gender, occupation, social status, or derived power. It is a hierarchy within groups that ascribe them to different levels of privileges. As such, stratification is the relative social position of persons within a social group, category, geographic region, or social unit.
Theodor Julius Geiger was a German socialist, lawyer and sociologist who studied Sociology of Law, social stratification and social mobility, methodology, and intelligentsia, among other things. He was Denmark's first professor of sociology, working at the University of Århus (1938–1940).
Otis Dudley Duncan was an American sociologist and statistician. According to sociologist and statistician Leo Goodman he was "the most important quantitative sociologist in the world in the latter half of the 20th century". His book The American Occupational Structure, which received the American Sociological Association's Sorokin Award, documented how parents transmit their societal status to their children. Duncan compiled his thoughts on the major issues of the field into Notes on Social Measurement, which he considered his greatest work.
André Beteille, is an Indian sociologist, writer and academician. He is known for his studies of the caste system in South India. He has served with educational institutions in India such as Delhi School of Economics, North Eastern Hill University, and Ashoka University.
John Richard Urry was a British sociologist who served as a professor at Lancaster University. He is noted for work in the fields of the sociology of tourism and mobility.
Sociology is the scientific study of human society that focuses on society, human social behavior, patterns of social relationships, social interaction, and aspects of culture associated with everyday life. Regarded as a part of both the social sciences and humanities, sociology uses various methods of empirical investigation and critical analysis to develop a body of knowledge about social order and social change. Sociological subject matter ranges from micro-level analyses of individual interaction and agency to macro-level analyses of social systems and social structure. Applied sociological research may be applied directly to social policy and welfare, whereas theoretical approaches may focus on the understanding of social processes and phenomenological method.
Robert Mason Hauser is an American sociologist. He is the Vilas Research and Samuel F. Stouffer professor of sociology emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he served as director of the Institute for Research on Poverty and the Center for Demography of Health and Aging.
International Review for the Sociology of Sport is a peer-reviewed academic journal that publishes papers in the field of Sociology. The journal is edited by Lawrence Wenner, Von der Ahe Professor of Communication & Ethics at Loyola Marymount University, who replaced John Sugden in 2012. Dominic Malcolm took over as editor in 2018. It has been in publication since 1966 and is currently published by SAGE Publications in association with International Sociology of Sport Association.
Homogamy is marriage between individuals who are, in some culturally important way, similar to each other. It is a form of assortative mating. The union may be based on socioeconomic status, class, gender, caste, ethnicity, or religion, or age in the case of the so-called age homogamy.
Fiona Devine CBE FAcSS is a professor of sociology at the University of Manchester and Vice-President and Dean of the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester.
Arne Lindeman Kalleberg is a Kenan Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and a Faculty Fellow at the Carolina Population Center. He is also an adjunct professor in the Kenan-Flagler Business School, the Department of Public Policy, and the Curriculum in Global Studies. Kalleberg served as the secretary of the American Sociological Association from 2001 to 2004 and as its president from 2007 to 2008. He has been the editor-in-chief of Social Forces, an international journal of social research for over ten years. He was elected a fellow of the National Academy of Sciences in 2024.
Jennie E. Brand is an American sociologist and social statistician. She studies stratification, social inequality, education, social demography, disruptive events, and quantitative methods, including causal inference. Brand is currently Professor of Sociology and Statistics at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), where she directs the California Center for Population Research and co-directs the Center for Social Statistics.
Frank Lancaster Jones is an Australian sociologist specialising in social inequality, social stratification, social mobility, and national identity. He was Head of the Department of Sociology in the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University (1972–2001) and has been the editor (1970–1972) and a co-editor (1990–1993) of the Australian and New Zealand Journal of Sociology. He was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1974. During his career he played a pioneering role in the establishment and development of sociology in Australia.
Ettore Recchi is an academic and Director of the MA and PhD program in Sociology at Sciences Po Paris as well as a part-time professor at the Migration Policy Centre of the European University Institute in Florence. His research focuses on human mobility, social stratification, elites and European integration.
Taissa S. "Tess" Hauser was an American sociologist and demographer. She was a Senior Scientist Emeritus in the College of Letters and Science/Sociology and the Administrative Director of the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study (WLS) of the Department of Sociology at the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where she worked from 1970 to 2011.
Robert Denis Mare (1951–2021) was an American sociologist and demographer best known for research on social stratification. He received numerous prestigious awards and had his research covered in the popular press. Mare served as president of the Population Association of America (PAA) in 2010 and was a fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the National Academy of Sciences. At the time of his death, he had recently retired from a position as distinguished professor of sociology at the University of California, Los Angeles.
