Our favorite local university librarian who lunches has requested a list of “classic/core” texts in sociology. I assembled the list below — additions anyone? I’m also compiling a secret subterfuge list of books that should but probably never will be as widely taught. The doors are wide open on that one for suggestions as well.
Marx, Capital, vol 1
Marx-Engels Reader
Weber, Protestant Ethic & Spirit of Capitalism
Durkheim, Suicide
Freud, Civilization & Its Discontents
The Sociology of Georg Simmel
Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk
Hobsbawn, Age of Revolution
Giddens, Capitalism and Modern Social Theory
Mills, The Power Elite
Horkheimer & Adorno, Dialectic of Enlightenment
Habermas, The Public Sphere
Parsons, The Structure of Social Action
Goffman, Asylum
Willis, Learning to Labour
Collins, Black Feminist Thought
Smith, The Everyday World as Problematic: A Feminist Sociology
Bell, The Coming of the Post-Industrial Society
Bourdieu, Distinction
6 Comments
Some more ‘classics’:
Burawoy, Manufacturing Consent
Wilson, Truly Disadvantaged
Berger and Luckmann, Social Construction of Reality
Veblen, Theory of the Leisure Class
Mead, GH, Mind, Self, and Society
Park, McKenzie and Burgess, The City
Garfinkel, Studies in Ethnomethodology
Hochschild, Managed Heart
Great, thanks! And I thought I’d put Managed Heart on, so thanks especially for getting that one on… I think that was the first sociology text I read as an undergrad that really grabbed me.
Dude. I believe they call this ‘harnessing the power of the hive.’ Very helpful, Craig and Peter, and I’m totez subscribing to the comment feed for more.
Adams, The Death & Life of Great American Cities
Hive, eh. In that case, I’ll add more:
Selznick, Philip. TVA and the Grass Roots
Strauss, Anselm. Continual Permutations of Action
Duneier, Mitchell. Slim’s Table
Omi, Michael and Howard Winant. Racial Formation in the US
Thorne, Barrie. Gender Play
Hughes, Everett. The Sociological Eye
Becker, Howard. Art Worlds
Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. Women and Economics
Mills, CW. Sociological Imagination (and here I would say that while most of the book is dated, the first chapter and the methodological appendix are gold and platinum)
and last but not least:
DuBois, WEB. The Philadelphia Negro. For me, the most brute force amazing sociology project ever conceived. He went door to door in 1986 or so, interviewing not a sample, but the entire population of several thousand black residents. Survey, ethnography, mapping. For a year. As his first post-PhD project.
A hive of two, apparently.
Just found this list:
http://www.tulane.edu/~sociol/booklist.html
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