Jürgen Habermas is a German philosopher and social theorist in the tradition of critical theory and pragmatism. His work addresses communicative rationality and the public sphere.
Social theories are analytical frameworks, or paradigms, that are used to study and interpret social phenomena. A tool used by social scientists, social theories relate to historical debates over the validity and reliability of different methodologies, the primacy of either structure or agency, as well as the relationship between contingency and necessity. Social theory in an informal nature, or authorship based outside of academic social and political science, may be referred to as "social criticism" or "social commentary", or "cultural criticism" and may be associated both with formal cultural and literary scholarship, as well as other non-academic or journalistic forms of writing.
Anthony Giddens, Baron Giddens is an English sociologist who is known for his theory of structuration and his holistic view of modern societies. He is considered to be one of the most prominent modern sociologists and is the author of at least 34 books, published in at least 29 languages, issuing on average more than one book every year. In 2007, Giddens was listed as the fifth most-referenced author of books in the humanities. He has academic appointments in approximately twenty different universities throughout the world and has received numerous honorary degrees.
S. Barry Barnes was Professor of Sociology at the University of Exeter.
In social science, antipositivism is a theoretical stance which proposes that the social realm cannot be studied with the methods of investigation utilized within the natural sciences, and that investigation of the social realm requires a different epistemology. Fundamental to that antipositivist epistemology is the belief that the concepts and language researchers use in their research shape their perceptions of the social world they are investigating and seeking to define.
Philosophy in this sense means how social science integrates with other related scientific disciplines, which implies a rigorous, systematic endeavor to build and organize knowledge relevant to the interaction between individual people and their wider social involvement.
Neil Joseph Smelser (1930–2017) was an American sociologist who served as professor of sociology at the University of California, Berkeley. He was an active researcher from 1958 to 1994. His research was on collective behavior, sociological theory, economic sociology, sociology of education, social change, and comparative methods. Among many lifetime achievements, Smelser "laid the foundations for economic sociology."
Claus Offe is a German political sociologist of Marxist orientation.
There are varying interpretations of Max Weber's liberalism due to his well-known sociological achievements. Max Weber is considered an eminent founder of modern social sciences, rivaled by the figures of Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx. Some students of Weberian thought have paid less attention to Weber's extensive and often passionate engagement with the politics of his day, particularly in the United States. However, European intellectuals have given more attention to his political thought. Most of Weber's political writings have not been published in translation, or have been translated only recently in a piecemeal form.
The sociology of law, legal sociology, or law and society is often described as a sub-discipline of sociology or an interdisciplinary approach within legal studies. Some see sociology of law as belonging "necessarily" to the field of sociology, but others tend to consider it a field of research caught up between the disciplines of law and sociology. Still others regard it as neither a subdiscipline of sociology nor a branch of legal studies but as a field of research on its own right within the broader social science tradition. Accordingly, it may be described without reference to mainstream sociology as "the systematic, theoretically grounded, empirical study of law as a set of social practices or as an aspect or field of social experience". It has been seen as treating law and justice as fundamental institutions of the basic structure of society mediating "between political and economic interests, between culture and the normative order of society, establishing and maintaining interdependence, and constituting themselves as sources of consensus, coercion and social control".
Mark Bevir is a British philosopher of history. He is a professor of political science and the Director of the Center for British Studies at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently teaches courses on political theory and philosophy, public policy and organisation, and methodology. He is also a Professor in the Graduate School of Governance, United Nations University (MERIT) and a Distinguished Research Professor in the College of Arts and Humanities, Swansea University.
Laurent Thévenot is a French sociologist Professor at the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (Paris).
Comparative historical research is a method of social science that examines historical events in order to create explanations that are valid beyond a particular time and place, either by direct comparison to other historical events, theory building, or reference to the present day. Generally, it involves comparisons of social processes across times and places. It overlaps with historical sociology. While the disciplines of history and sociology have always been connected, they have connected in different ways at different times. This form of research may use any of several theoretical orientations. It is distinguished by the types of questions it asks, not the theoretical framework it employs.
The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1990s.
Mark Olssen, FAcSS, a political theorist, is Emeritus Professor of Political Theory and Education Policy in the Department of Politics within the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Surrey.
Alessandro Ferrara is an Italian philosopher, Professor Emeritus of Political Philosophy at the University of Rome Tor Vergata and former President of the Italian Association for Political Philosophy. He is currently Adjunct Professor of Legal Theory at Luiss Guido Carli University in Rome.
Patrick Baert is a Belgian sociologist and social theorist, based in Britain. He is a professor of Social Theory at the University of Cambridge and Fellow of Selwyn College, Cambridge.
Peter Frederick Taylor-Gooby has been Professor of Social Policy at the University of Kent since 1990.
(R.) Andrew Sayer is Emeritus Professor of Social Theory and Political Economy at Lancaster University, UK. He is known for significant contributions to methodology and theory in the social sciences.
Hall Thomas Wilson is an American and Canadian social and political theorist and political scientist who is Emeritus Professor of Social and Political Thought at York University, Toronto. He has taught in the Department of Political Science at Rutgers University (1963–1967) and at York in the Faculties of Graduate Studies and Liberal Arts and Professional Studies (1996–2017) and, earlier, in the Faculties of the Schulich School of Business (1967–1996) and Osgoode Hall Law School (1967–2006). He received his undergraduate degree in Government from Tufts University in 1962 and his Masters and Ph.D. in Political Science from Rutgers University in 1964 and 1968. He was a former director of the Social and Political Thought Program at York University(1988–1991), has supervised or been a member of numerous examining committees in ten graduate programs and is or was on the editorial boards of nine scholarly journals in the fields of political, social and legal theory and the social sciences. He has also been a visiting or adjunct professor at universities in the United Kingdom, Ireland, The Netherlands, Germany, Denmark, Sweden, Australia, Japan, Hong Kong and the United States. Adam Smith, Karl Marx, Max Weber, Thorstein Veblen, Alfred Schutz, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Herbert Marcuse, Theodor W. Adorno, Hannah Arendt and Ivan Illich are among Wilson's main intellectual influences.
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