This book fills a void by assembling seminal writings from many original works that created the "science of society" -- by Auguste Comte, Emile Durkheim, Karl Marx, Herbert Spencer, George Herbert Mead, Ferdinand Tonnies, Georg Simmel, Thorsten Veblen, Max Weber, and other "founding fathers" of sociology.
The seminal writings in this anthology originally appeared in articles and books published from the mid 19th century to the early 20th century. They are, therefore, primary source documents that allow modern students to see how the authors introduced the paradigm-changing constructs that shattered earlier perceptions of reality. They include social class, conspicuous consumption, division of labor, collective consciousness, social self, survival of the fittest, anomie, culture lag, charisma, social solidarity, and other concepts that dominate how social scientists today think about and study human relationships, institutions, societies, and cultures.
In addition to allowing students to experience the great theorists' thoughts and reasoning processes directly, these primary source documents provide an invaluable research resource because they were written by the theorists in the "first person," as they were undergoing their groundbreaking theoretical insights and discoveries, and while they were recording, reflecting on, witnessing, and living through the phenomena that engaged them as they occurred.
For these reasons and more, Seminal Sociological Writings: From Comte to Weber is an important resource that can serve as either a primary or ancillary text in courses on theory, and will enlighten all scholars and laypersons interested in the birth and development of the social sciences.