biography meaning in sociology

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1.6: History and Biography

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• Page ID 43077

• Vera Kennedy
• West Hills College Lemoore

Every person analyzes and evaluates the world from a subjective perspective or viewpoint. Subjective concerns rely on judgments rather than external facts. Personal feelings and opinions from a person’s history and biography drive subjective concerns. The time period we live ( history ) and our personal life experiences ( biography ) influence our perspectives and understanding about others and the social world. Our history and biography guide our perceptions of reality reinforcing our personal bias and subjectivity.

Attribution: Copyright Vera Kennedy, West Hills College Lemoore , under CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license

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Definition of biography

Did you know.

So You've Been Asked to Submit a Biography

In a library, the word biography refers both to a kind of book and to a section where books of that kind are found. Each biography tells the story of a real person's life. A biography may be about someone who lived long ago, recently, or even someone who is still living, though in the last case it must necessarily be incomplete. The term autobiography refers to a biography written by the person it's about. Autobiographies are of course also necessarily incomplete.

Sometimes biographies are significantly shorter than a book—something anyone who's been asked to submit a biography for, say, a conference or a community newsletter will be glad to know. Often the word in these contexts is shortened to bio , a term that can be both a synonym of biography and a term for what is actually a biographical sketch: a brief description of a person's life. These kinds of biographies—bios—vary, but many times they are only a few sentences long. Looking at bios that have been used in the same context can be a useful guide in determining what to put in your own.

Examples of biography in a Sentence

These examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'biography.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

Word History

Late Greek biographia , from Greek bi- + -graphia -graphy

1665, in the meaning defined at sense 2

Dictionary Entries Near biography

biographize

Cite this Entry

“Biography.” Merriam-Webster.com Dictionary , Merriam-Webster, https://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/biography. Accessed 8 May. 2024.

Kids Definition

Kids definition of biography, more from merriam-webster on biography.

Nglish: Translation of biography for Spanish Speakers

Britannica English: Translation of biography for Arabic Speakers

Britannica.com: Encyclopedia article about biography

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The Intersection of Biography and History

The sociological imagination enables us to grasp history and biography and the relations between the two within society

I couldn’t help but think of Mills’ words when I came across this video at Crooked Timber .  In it, French children are asked to interpret technologies that, though just a few years out of date, pre-date their biography. While their guesses are creative and humorous, they also neatly demonstrate that, no matter how unique we are, we are also products of our time.

Comments 22

Ellipsisknits — january 24, 2011.

Interesting that the recognized almost all of the items as some sort of technology (media, camera, pay card, video player), as opposed to say, a kitchen appliance, or a decorative item.

I wonder if the children were primed for that sort of response, or if they were picking up in design similarities through our technological past.

(btw, the video is subtitled in english, and is therefore viewable without the audio)

Camille — January 24, 2011

I first saw this video here http://bigbrowser.blog.lemonde.fr/2011/01/05/retour-vers-le-futur-des-enfants-face-aux-disquettes/ and they say the kids are Canadian (which rely fits with their accent). Not that this changes any interpretation you can make about the video.

Angela — January 24, 2011

Interesting. I'm 18, and these mostly pre-date me, or were close to obsolete when I was a young child. Yet I still recognized them. Maybe when these kids are my age they will have learned about older technology? Or is the new generation not learning about it at all?

Chlorine — January 24, 2011

... I'm 24 and have no idea what that first yellow thing is.

Also, the YouTube comments are pretty terrifyingly racist and basically imply that the one kid knew how to "scratch" the record player -because- he is black, as though this is some inborn ability of his or something.

Nissi — January 24, 2011

Youtube... pffff... sometimes I just wish the hole bunch of those comment writers were trolls.

We watched this http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZGIZ-zUvotM in my cultural anthropology tutorial for freshman students as an example of rituals but ended up talking about the comments underneath. That´s almost hate those comments transmit. Makes me shiver...

Erin — January 24, 2011

I found it interesting that while many of the technologies were reframed as modern things (eg it's for an iPod), a number of the kids suggested 'cassette' as a possibility. Perhaps cassette tapes are more ubiquitous than I'd assumed - I certainly had considerable trouble trying to find some blank ones for my outdated car stereo last year!

Stephanie — January 24, 2011

Tres chouette!

April — January 25, 2011

Psst: those kids are actually Quebecois.

A. Helin — January 25, 2011

I love the kid who starts scratching the vinyl on the player and you can tell he's having an epiphany of where that sound comes from when it's used in music (that doesn't even come on vinyl anymore).

Andrew Lane — January 10, 2012

I've always wanted a rotary telephone.  I don't mind that it takes longer to dial the number.  I feel like that is the best vintage "artifact" around.

Also, when the kid starts playing the record like a DJ, I laughed.

Alte Technik, von jungen Menschen erklärt | Funktionsstelle — October 22, 2012

[...] Socological Images) Dieser Eintrag wurde veröffentlicht in Posts und verschlagwortet mit devices, geräte, history, [...]

T. Sanchez — October 27, 2013

http://youtu.be/gdSHeKfZG7c

The video with english subtitles, thanks for this post great video to show in class when discussing the sociological imagination

Jackie — June 17, 2014

Wow. My husband is a DJ. He previously used the record player like the little boy had. When he began to scratch it brought back so many memories.

Obsolete Tech | pollygon — June 23, 2014

[…] current pace of technological advancement is staggering. This video I saw on Sociological Images is a great example of how fast the technology our society uses is changing. Children from Quebec […]

charles wright mills biography – QBXS — May 21, 2019

[…] The Intersection of Biography and History – Sociological […]

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Module 1: Foundations of Sociology

The sociological imagination, learning outcomes.

• Define the sociological imagination
• Apply the sociological imagination

Figure 1.  The sociological imagination enables you to look at your life and your own personal issues and relate them to other people, history, or societal structures.

Many people believe they understand the world and the events taking place within it, even though they have not actually engaged in a systematic attempt to understanding the social world, as sociologists do. In this section, you’ll learn to think like a sociologist.

The sociological imagination , a concept established by C. Wright Mills (1916-1962) provides a framework for understanding our social world that far surpasses any common sense notion we might derive from our limited social experiences. Mills was a contemporary sociologist who brought tremendous insight into the daily lives of society’s members. Mills stated: “Neither the life of an individual nor the history of a society can be understood without understanding both” [1] .  The sociological imagination is making the connection between personal challenges and larger social issues. Mills identified “troubles” (personal challenges) and “issues” (larger social challenges), also known as biography, and history, respectively. Mills’ sociological imagination allows individuals to see the relationships between events in their personal lives (biography), and events in their society (history). In other words, this mindset provides the ability for individuals to realize the relationship between their personal experiences and the larger society in which they live their lives.

Personal troubles are private problems experienced within the character of the individual and the range of their immediate relation to others. Mills identified that we function in our personal lives as actors and actresses who make choices about our friends, family, groups, work, school, and other issues within our control. We have a degree of influence on the outcome of matters within this personal level. A college student who parties 4 nights out of 7, who rarely attends class, and who never does his homework has a personal trouble that interferes with his odds of success in college. However, when 50% of all college students in the United States never graduate, we label it as a larger social issue.

Larger social or public issues are those that lie beyond one’s personal control and the range of one’s inner life. These pertain to broader matters of organization and process, which are rooted in society rather than in the individual. Nationwide, students come to college as freshmen who are often ill-prepared to understand the rigors of college life. They haven’t often been challenged enough in high school to make the necessary adjustments required to succeed in college. Nationwide, the average teenager text messages, surfs the Net, plays video games, watches TV, spends hours each day with friends, and works at least part-time. Where and when would he or she get experience focusing attention on college studies and the rigorous self-discipline required to transition into college?

The real power of the sociological imagination is found in how we learn to distinguish between the personal and social levels in our own lives. This includes economic challenges. For example, many students do not purchase required textbooks for college classes at both 2-year colleges and 4-year colleges and universities. Many students simply do not have the money to purchase textbooks, and while this can seem like a “choice,” some of the related social issues include rising tuition rates, decreasing financial aid, increasing costs of living and decreasing wages. The Open Educational Resource (OER) movement has sought to address this  personal trouble  as a  public issue  by partnering with institutional consortia and encouraging large city and state institutions to adopt OER materials. A student who does not purchase the assigned textbook might see this as a private problem, but this student is part of a growing number of college students who are forced to make financial decisions based on structural circumstances.

A majority of personal problems are not experienced as exclusively personal issues, but are influenced and affected by social norms, habits, and expectations. Consider issues like homelessness, crime, divorce, and access to healthcare. Are these all caused by personal choices, or by societal problems? Using the sociological imagination, we can view these issues as interconnected personal and public concerns.

For example, homelessness may be blamed on the individuals who are living on the streets. Perhaps their personal choices influenced their position; some would say they are lazy, unmotivated, or uneducated. This approach of blaming the victim fails to account for the societal factors that also lead to homelessness—what types of social obstacles and social failings might push someone towards homelessness? Bad schools, high unemployment, high housing costs, and little family support are all social issues that could contribute to homelessness. C. Wright Mills, who originated the concept of the sociological imagination, explained it this way: “the very structure of opportunities has collapsed. Both the correct statement of the problem and the range of possible solutions require us to consider the economic and political institutions of the society, and not merely the personal situation and character of a scatter of individuals.”

Watch the following video to see an example of how the sociological imagination is used to understand the issue of obesity.

• Mills, C. W.: 1959, The Sociological Imagination, Oxford University Press, London. ↵
• Modification, adaptation, and original content. Authored by : Sarah Hoiland for Lumen Learning. Provided by : Lumen Learning. License : CC BY: Attribution
• The Sociological Imagination. Provided by : College of the Canyons. Located at : https://www.canyons.edu/Offices/DistanceLearning/OER/Documents/Open%20Textbooks%20At%20COC/Sociology/SOCI%20101/The%20Sociological%20Imagination.pdf . Project : Sociology 101. License : CC BY: Attribution
• People graphic. Authored by : Peggy_Marco. Provided by : pixabay. Located at : https://pixabay.com/en/network-society-social-community-1019778/ . License : CC0: No Rights Reserved

The Future of Sociology’s History: New Voices in the History of Sociology

• Published: 01 July 2021
• Volume 52 , pages 247–253, ( 2021 )

Cite this article

• Laura Ford 1 &
• Gillian Niebrugge-Brantley 2  

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This special issue of The American Sociologist brings to fruition a plan that was first formulated and discussed during the 2019 ASA Annual Meeting in New York. As the incoming chair for the ASA’s History of Sociology (HoS) Section, Jill Niebrugge-Brantley issued an invitation and challenge. At the most practical level, the invitation and challenge were to find ways of drawing new members into the Section. But, at a more conceptual level, the invitation and challenge were to lend greater dynamism and relevance to the history of sociology among U.S. sociologists.

As recent movements to “decolonize” sociology provocatively attest, the history of the discipline remains of vital relevance to academic sociology. And yet, unfortunately, the history of sociology is rarely presented to undergraduate and graduate students as a vital field of study. To the extent that history of sociology is taught, this is often in theory courses, which are today especially stretched by pressing calls to diversify the canon. Some prominent U.S. sociologists have successfully established their careers on the basis of history of sociology research, but, without additional encouragement, it is likely that early career scholars will see history of sociology as a risky proposition for significant intellectual investment.

The papers published in this special issue of The American Sociologist accordingly represent the fruits of a concerted effort to encourage “new voices” in the history of sociology. Nearly all of these papers were first presented as part of a New Voices Symposium, held on August 11, 2020, in pursuance of the plan hatched in August 2019. In our view, these now-published articles amply attest to the intellectual enrichment that U.S. sociology will glean by supporting and encouraging history of sociology scholarship on the part of graduate students and early career scholars, as well as from established scholars who are willing to take new turns in their scholarly endeavors.

In the remainder of this brief introductory essay, we retrospectively review the steps leading to development of what is now a flourishing New Voices Initiative for the history of sociology, an Initiative that is being actively carried forward by graduate students and early career scholars in the ASA HoS Section (which is now the History of Sociology and Social Thought (HoSST) Section). We also offer a survey of opportunities and needs for history of sociology scholarship, with examples and illustrations drawn from a widening terrain of developing research in this vibrant field.

The New Voices Initiative – A Retrospective Sketch

A vague conception of what would become the New Voices Initiative was floated by Laura, at the 2019 HoS Section Council meeting, held in the early morning of August 10, in a tiny basement conference room of the Sheraton Hotel. The plan drew on experience from the ASA’s 2013 Annual Meeting, which was also held in New York City. Inspired by the Theory Section’s now multi-year Junior Theorists Symposium, the HoS Section had hosted a mini-conference, aided by the generous support of The New School for Social Research and The American Sociologist , which offered a strong incentive for participation by holding out the opportunity for publication. Volume 46, Issue 2 of The American Sociologist (June 2015) showcases the results of that 2013 HoS conference, including the lessons learned by the conference organizers.

In early 2020, amid news reports of a coronavirus outbreak in China, the plans started to crystallize. A working group was formed to organize what was then being called a Junior Historians of Sociology Symposium. In addition to Jill and Laura, the working group included Anne Eisenberg, Simonetta Falasca-Zamponi, Gary Jaworski, and Larry Nichols, in an advisory capacity. Jill was in close contact with ASA Annual Meeting organizers, and, mindful of HoS’s limited budget, proposed a roundtable structure, to be hosted as part of an ASA opportunity for pre-conference meetings. A Call for Proposals was finalized in February, with a deadline for proposals set in June.

In the meantime, COVID-19 was spreading around the world, and it soon became clear that the August meeting in San Francisco would be transformed into a virtual event. The possibilities for a video conference alternative to the in-person Symposium began to present themselves, as we all were rapidly acquiring new facilities with video-conference technologies, like Zoom.

It was at this point that graduate student organizers, Hannah Waight and Taylor Winfield, stepped in to assume increasing responsibilities for hosting what was to be a Zoom-based Symposium. The New Voices Symposium, held in August 2020, represents the fruits of their labors, together with those of the Working Group, and it led into monthly Zoom meetings extending throughout the fall semester, in which history of sociology research by rising scholars received commentary and encouragement from more established scholars. The momentum generated by this New Voices Initiative is today being carried forward by Kerby Goff, Hannah Waight and Taylor Winfield, with support from Kevin Anderson and the HoSST Section, in the planning for a second New Voices Symposium, to be held on August 5, 2021.

In all these efforts, Larry Nichols and The American Sociologist have played a crucially important role of encouragement and support. While additional institutional supports are needed to enable generative scholarship in the history of sociology to move forward, journals like The American Sociologist and associations like the ASA are clearly vital in providing the publication opportunities and social capital that enable history of sociology scholarship to flourish.

The Future of Sociology’s History – Assessments of Ongoing Opportunities and Needs

Both historical record and current dynamics suggest that the twenty-first century may prove to be the history of sociology’s moment. In 2000, the HoS Section attained full section- status in the ASA—the first time there had been such a section in the association. Section status has offered scholars interested in the history of sociology a base from which to launch significant initiatives, including the New Voices project described above, which, begun as an activity to mark the Section’s 20th anniversary, has grown in a year to become a vehicle for both scholarly dialogue among members and outreach for new members.

This volume of The American Sociologist, under the leadership of long-time Editor Larry Nichols, reaffirms the journal’s position as “the go-to” site for scholars in the history of sociology. In 2005 Section members were significant participants in ASA’s activities marking the one hundredth anniversary of its founding, with Section member Craig Calhoun (later Section Chair) editing the key centennial publication, Sociology in America—a History (2007) , to which many HoS members contributed, and which served to confirm to a wide range of audiences the significance of the subfield, history of sociology. Twenty-first century ASA Presidents’ Presidential Addresses have drawn on and celebrated the work of scholarship in the history of sociology, including Joe Feagin’s 2000 Address “Social Justice and Sociology in the 21 st Century” and Mary Romero’s 2019 Address “Sociology Engaged in Social Justice,” (both of which pointed to the long history of sociology’s social justice tradition), to current President Aldon Morris’s theme for the 2021 annual meeting “Emancipatory Sociology: Rising to the Du Boisian Challenge.” In part because of the work of scholars in the history of sociology, Du Bois and Jane Addams are being increasingly incorporated into the teaching of sociology and sociology’s understanding of itself. In 2020, the Section answered a call from ASA leadership to supervise the revision of the online ASA Presidential biographies—a project now underway and seeking authors.

The dynamics surrounding the field also suggest prospects for vitality. Sociology now has a history of nearly 200 years—sociology keeps happening and there is more of it at this moment than there has ever been. That very increase brings challenges to the HoSST Section, the New Voices initiative, and the ASA itself, and rising to meet these will create new opportunities. The writing of this history continues to be important because the story it tells helps recruit new members to sociology by suggesting the kinds of work that can be done and successes that can be won within the boundaries of the discipline. The field is being energized by new insights and methods for doing “history of sociology.” One of the most exciting developments is the possibility of new ways to communicate about the history of sociology—notably, virtual conferences using technologies like Zoom can cast a wider net for scholars, moving beyond “the brown bag department symposium” to convene a global conversation. This is especially important to a field like history of sociology which as yet has no institutionalized base in departmental curricula. Equally important is an openness to thinking about and allowing for a variety of answers to the question of what it means to produce “a history of sociology.”

In a personal effort at history of sociology, the late National Institute of Mental Health and Johns Hopkins sociologist Mel Kohn (who died while this volume was in press) wrote the memoir Adventures in Sociology: My Life as a Cross-National Scholar, which offered the provocative disclaimer, “the true hero of this tale is not Mel Kohn, but an academic field, Sociology” (Kohn, 2016 : 7). Footnote 1 What follows here both rejoices in Mel’s statement and attempts to unpack it—for the future of the history of sociology lies in part in our ability to capitalize on the nuances buried in that seemingly straightforward name “the history of sociology.”

Sociology is not only an academic discipline, as Kohn experienced it, that is, an organized body of ideas and practices; it is also a profession, “a system of relational ties that give body and form to and come to represent the interests of practitioners of the discipline, which shapes sociology’s place in the society it seeks to study” (Niebrugge-Brantley, 2020 : 2). And the combination of those two elements—discipline and profession—gives sociology its third important character for the historian, that of an institutional actor in the world it seeks to study. In any individual history, these three qualities can be treated separately or as intertwined factors. Typically, “the history of sociology is . . . told as the history of its theorists and their theories. This is a choice . . . and there are sound reasons for choosing to study sociology as a history of its theories, as long as we remember we are making a choice” (Lengermann & Niebrugge-Brantley, 1998/2007 : 2). That sociology is most frequently conceived as an academic discipline—that is a set of ideas and practices, usually embedded in texts--is attested to by the recent name change the HoS Section effected in 2021 to “The Section on the History of Sociology and Social Thought.” It is also shown in the number of papers in this volume that share this focus on the history and effects of disciplinary ideas Footnote 2 (e.g., Stefan Bargheer looks at how C. Wright Mills’ promotion of the 2 × 2 table as a method for practicing “the sociological imagination” affected thinking across disciplines in social science; Ryan Parsons traces the rise, fall and reconsideration of caste as a concept in the sociology of race and race relations; Alec McGail applies a demographic interpretation to citation practices to arrive at generalizations about sociologists’ relationship to their past; Hannah Waight argues for the recovery of John Dewey’s original vision for social science by comparing it to the way his pragmatist philosophy is being used by contemporary sociologists; Taylor Winfield builds on her earlier study of Durkheim to think about the tracing of a theorist’s thought model as a general method for the history of sociology, showing how features of the thought model survive in the theoretical text).

And opportunities still await scholars who find alternative ways for patterning the history of the discipline--as, for instance, a history of major empirical works [e.g., Kalasia Daniels and Earl Wright II “‘An Earnest Desire for the Truth despite Its Possible Unpleasantness’: A Comparative Analysis of the Atlanta University Publications and American Journal of Sociology , 1895 to 1917” (Daniels & Earl Wright, 2018 ); Jennifer Platt, A History of Sociology Research Methods in America, 1920–1960 (Platt, 1996 ); Shulamit Reinharz Feminist Methods in Social Research (Reinharz, 1992 )]; or the development of specialized fields [e.g. Pamela Barnhouse Walters, “Betwixt and Between Discipline and Profession: A History of Sociology of Education” (Walters, 2007 ); Howard Winant, “The Dark Side of the Force: One Hundred Years of the Sociology of Race” (Winant, 2007 )] or because sociology is, for reasons explainable by its history, primarily a teaching discipline, that history could also be told in terms of the alumni produced by sociology departments.

While the history of sociology as a profession has received less attention than the history of the discipline and is an area ripe for more work, it produces studies that direct the reader to think about how the operations of the profession may ultimately affect the content of the discipline. Histories of the professional workings of sociology may focus on ways the profession operates [e.g., John Pease and Barbara Hetrick “Association for Whom—The Regionals and the American Sociological Association” (Pease & Hetrick, 1977 ); Lawrence J. Rhoades, A History of the American Sociological Association, 1905–1980 (Rhoades, 1981 )]; or on moments of crisis in these operations [e.g., the rebellion at the 1935 meeting of the American Sociological Society—Patricia Lengermann “The Founding of the American Sociological Review: The Anatomy of a Rebellion” (Lengermann, 1979 ); Don Martindale The Romance of a Profession: A Case History in the Sociology of Sociology (Martindale, 1976 )] .

Study of the history of sociology as a combination of discipline and profession may lead to issues of sociology as an institutional actor on the world stage— [e.g., Charles Camic “On the Edge: Sociology-- During the Great Depression and the New Deal,” (Camic, 2007 ) and “Everywhere and Nowhere Remarks for History of Sociology Session on American Sociology in the 1930s” (Camic, 2020 ); Mike Forrest Keen Stalking the Sociological Imagination—J. Edgar Hoover’s FBI Surveillance of American Sociology (Keen, 1999 ); Patricia Lengermann “On the Edge” and at the Margins—An Appreciation of and Response to Charles Camic’s Study of Sociology in the 1930s” (Lengermann, 2020 ); Anne Rawls “The wartime narrative in US sociology, 1940–1947: stigmatizing qualitative sociology in the name of ‘science’” (Rawls, 2018 ); Stephen Turner and Dirk Käsler S ociology Responds to Fascism (Turner & Käsler, 1992 )]. These works treating sociology as an institutional actor, the product of discipline and profession, may also make a different argument, showing how sociology is affected by conditions in the world it studies. Mary Jo Deegan’s Jane Addams and the Men of the Chicago School (Deegan, 1988 ) and Aldon Morris’s The Scholar Denied: W. E. B. DuBois and the Birth of Modern Sociology (Morris, 2017 ) both show the ways sociology was shaped by stratificational practices in the society it sought to study. Current calls (e.g., in this volume, Angela Fillingim and Zawadi Rucks-Ahidiana’s proposal for a for a reconsideration of the ways the classical canon has been patterned) may have the same effect of making sociology a more inclusive discipline, not only in its study of society but in its own understanding of itself.

Within the history of sociology, biography has been a rich form for capturing this combination of discipline, profession, and institutional actor—from full life histories [e.g. Steven Lukes’s Emile Durkheim: His Life and Work: A Historical and Critical Study ( 1973 ), Marcel Fournier’s Emile Durkheim—A Biography (Fournier, 2012 )], to a specific moment in the life of a major thinker, [e.g., Lawrence Scaff’s Max Weber in America (Scaff, 2011 ),] to comparisons of biographies of a subject written at different times [e.g., Randall Collins’s “Durkheim: via Fournier, via Lukes” (August 2014)]. By extension, biography may also take a collective actor as its subject, as in the case of a school of thought [e.g. Andrew Abbott Department and Discipline—Chicago Sociology at One Hundred (Abbott, 1999 ); Thomas Wheatland The Frankfurt School in Exile (Wheatland, 2009 ); Joyce Williams and Vicky McLean Settlement Sociology in the Progressive Years (Williams & McLean, 2015 )]. In this volume, Francesco Ranci argues that the biographical focus has been overused in current interpretations of Erving Goffman.

The future of sociology will depend on the ability of emerging historians both to encourage action by sociology as a profession and to refine and enlarge the tools and concepts available for the practice of the history of sociology as a discipline. Professionally, two goals seem especially important, both of which require arguing with vigor for allocation of resources: one, to preserve the records of the profession’s history and two, to act creatively to inject history of sociology into the standard curriculum. Alan Sica and Roberta Spalter Roth have worked to preserve records of the reviewing process for ASA journals and many scholars have worked to preserve the history of specific sociology departments [e.g., Andrew Abbott, 1999 ; Anthony Blasi and Bernard F. Donohoe A History of Sociological Research and Teaching at Catholic Notre Dame University, Indiana (Blasi & Donohoe, 2002 ); Michael Hill The Bureau of Sociological Research at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln (Hill, 2016 ) among others] but in this area there is so much more to be done. Right at this moment that history is both being made and lost—lost through the destruction of departmental records because of lack of storage space; there is an opportunity here right now to join with HoSST in its Departmental History Project. The advent of digital recordkeeping makes the possibility of preservation realizable if we can find ways to leverage the necessary resources.

The last word here belongs to Larry Nichols, though he has not asked for it to be so.

Larry, an invaluably astute student of the sociology of sociology, ruminated, in an email to Laura and Jill, “I wonder if the authors, and other participants in the 2020 HoS event, feel they have developed as historical scholars as a result of the process. In other words, do they now have a clearer idea of what it means to be a “working historian,“ to apply some historical method and gather data and illumine events, perhaps by discovering surprises or by grappling with contradictory evidence or by learning that some of their initial assumptions need to be adjusted.. .. There are no perfect journal articles; it’s enough to make some significant contribution, which might mean simply advancing a particular scholarly conversation.”

A fitting conclusion, by way of a question, which directs our attention to the ongoing project of scholarly research. We are honored and proud to introduce the articles published in this special issue, articles which advance the conversation, and offer significant contributions, to the dynamic scholarly conversation that is the history of sociology and social thought.

Change history

07 july 2021.

The original version of this paper was updated to present the correct author name of Alec McGail mentioned in the text.

Mel Kohn’s memoir, Adventures in Sociology: My Life as a Cross-National Scholar, is available for a limited time from the DC bookstore Politics and Prose https://www.politics-prose.com/book/9781624290749

In the survey of opportunities below, we use full titles of many exemplar publications as the shortest way to give the reader a beginning sense of the breadth of possibilities that exist for meaningful work in the history of sociology.

Abbott, A. (1999). Department and discipline—Chicago sociology at one hundred . University of Chicago Press.

Blasi, A., & Donohoe, B. F. (2002). A history of sociological research and teaching at Catholic Notre Dame University, Indiana . Edwin Mellen Press.

Camic, C. (2007). On the edge: Sociology during the great depression and the new Deal. In C. Calhoun (Ed.), Sociology in America: A History, pp 225–280 . University of Chicago Press.

Camic, C. (2020). Everywhere and nowhere--remarks for history of sociology session on American sociology in the 1930s. Timelines Issue 31 pp. 5–13.

Daniels, K., & Earl Wright, I. I. (2018). “An Earnest desire for the truth despite its possible unpleasantness”: A comparative analysis of the Atlanta University publications and American Journal of Sociology , 1895 to 1917. Sociology of Race and Ethnicity., 4 (1), 35–48. https://doi.org/10.1177/2332649217706519 .

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Ford, L., Niebrugge-Brantley, G. The Future of Sociology’s History: New Voices in the History of Sociology. Am Soc 52 , 247–253 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12108-021-09503-2

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1.1 What Is Sociology?

Learning objectives.

By the end of this section, you should be able to:

• Explain concepts central to sociology.
• Describe how different sociological perspectives have developed.

What Are Society and Culture?

Sociology is the scientific and systematic study of groups and group interactions, societies and social interactions, from small and personal groups to very large groups. A group of people who live in a defined geographic area, who interact with one another, and who share a common culture is what sociologists call a society .

Sociologists study all aspects and levels of society. Sociologists working from the micro-level study small groups and individual interactions, while those using macro-level analysis look at trends among and between large groups and societies. For example, a micro-level study might look at the accepted rules of conversation in various groups such as among teenagers or business professionals. In contrast, a macro-level analysis might research the ways that language use has changed over time or in social media outlets.

The term culture refers to the group’s shared practices, values, and beliefs. Culture encompasses a group’s way of life, from routine, everyday interactions to the most important parts of group members’ lives. It includes everything produced by a society, including all the social rules.

Sociologists often study culture using the sociological imagination , which pioneer sociologist C. Wright Mills described as an awareness of the relationship between a person’s behavior and experience and the wider culture that shaped the person’s choices and perceptions. It’s a way of seeing our own and other people’s behavior in relationship to history and social structure (1959). One illustration of this is a person’s decision to marry. In the United States, this choice is heavily influenced by individual feelings. However, the social acceptability of marriage relative to the person’s circumstances also plays a part.

Remember, though, that culture is a product of the people in a society. Sociologists take care not to treat the concept of “culture” as though it were alive and real. The error of treating an abstract concept as though it has a real, material existence is known as reification (Sahn, 2013).

Studying Patterns: How Sociologists View Society

All sociologists are interested in the experiences of individuals and how those experiences are shaped by interactions with social groups and society. To a sociologist, the personal decisions an individual makes do not exist in a vacuum. Cultural patterns , social forces and influences put pressure on people to select one choice over another. Sociologists try to identify these general patterns by examining the behavior of large groups of people living in the same society and experiencing the same societal pressures.

Consider the changes in U.S. families. The “typical” family in past decades consisted of married parents living in a home with their unmarried children. Today, the percent of unmarried couples, same-sex couples, single-parent and single-adult households is increasing, as well as is the number of expanded households, in which extended family members such as grandparents, cousins, or adult children live together in the family home. While 15 million mothers still make up the majority of single parents, 3.5 million fathers are also raising their children alone (U.S. Census Bureau, 2020). Increasingly, single people and cohabitating couples are choosing to raise children outside of marriage through surrogates or adoption.

Some sociologists study social facts —the laws, morals, values, religious beliefs, customs, fashions, rituals, and cultural rules that govern social life—that may contribute to these changes in the family. Do people in the United States view marriage and family differently over the years? Do they view them differently than Peruvians? Do employment and economic conditions play a role in families? Other sociologists are studying the consequences of these new patterns, such as the ways children influence and are influenced by them and/or the changing needs for education, housing, and healthcare.

Sociologists identify and study patterns related to all kinds of contemporary social issues. The “Stop and Frisk” policy, the emergence of new political factions, how Twitter influences everyday communication—these are all examples of topics that sociologists might explore.

Studying Part and Whole: How Sociologists View Social Structures

A key component of the sociological perspective is the idea that the individual and society are inseparable. It is impossible to study one without the other. German sociologist Norbert Elias called the process of simultaneously analyzing the behavior of individuals and the society that shapes that behavior figuration .

Consider religion. While people experience religion in a distinctly individual manner, religion exists in a larger social context as a social institution . For instance, an individual’s religious practice may be influenced by what government dictates, holidays, teachers, places of worship, rituals, and so on. These influences underscore the important relationship between individual practices of religion and social pressures that influence that religious experience (Elias, 1978). In simpler terms, figuration means that as one analyzes the social institutions in a society, the individuals using that institution in any fashion need to be ‘figured’ in to the analysis.

Sociology in the Real World

Individual-society connections.

When sociologist Nathan Kierns spoke to his friend Ashley (a pseudonym) about the move she and her partner had made from an urban center to a small Midwestern town, he was curious about how the social pressures placed on a lesbian couple differed from one community to the other. Ashley said that in the city they had been accustomed to getting looks and hearing comments when she and her partner walked hand in hand. Otherwise, she felt that they were at least being tolerated. There had been little to no outright discrimination.

Things changed when they moved to the small town for her partner’s job. For the first time, Ashley found herself experiencing direct discrimination because of her sexual orientation. Some of it was particularly hurtful. Landlords would not rent to them. Ashley, who is a highly trained professional, had a great deal of difficulty finding a new job.

When Nathan asked Ashley if she and her partner became discouraged or bitter about this new situation, Ashley said that rather than letting it get to them, they decided to do something about it. Ashley approached groups at a local college and several churches in the area. Together they decided to form the town's first Gay-Straight Alliance.

The alliance has worked successfully to educate their community about same-sex couples. It also worked to raise awareness about the kinds of discrimination that Ashley and her partner experienced in the town and how those could be eliminated. The alliance has become a strong advocacy group, and it is working to attain equal rights for lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender, or LGBTQ individuals.

Kierns observed that this is an excellent example of how negative social forces can result in a positive response from individuals to bring about social change (Kierns, 2011).

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In This Article Expand or collapse the "in this article" section Life Course

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Life Course by Deborah Carr LAST REVIEWED: 27 July 2011 LAST MODIFIED: 27 July 2011 DOI: 10.1093/obo/9780199756384-0030

Sociology of the life course is a sophisticated theoretical paradigm designed to understand human lives. Four key assumptions guide life course scholars’ theoretical and empirical work: (1) lives are embedded in and shaped by historical context; (2) individuals construct their own lives through their choices and actions, yet within the constraints of historical and social circumstance; (3) lives are intertwined through social relationships; and (4) the meaning and impact of a life transition is contingent on when it occurs. Life course scholars also rely on rigorous research methods and data sources—including national censuses, sample surveys, in-depth interviews, and historical records—to document human lives. Because a key question of life course research is “how does historical time and place shape lives?” researchers often compare data obtained at different points in time, from different birth cohorts (i.e., individuals born at different points in history), and from different national and cultural contexts. Researchers also rely heavily on longitudinal data, or data obtained from the same person at multiple points in time, so they can track individual-level continuity and change. Life course research is interdisciplinary, incorporating concepts from sociology, history, psychology, demography, gerontology, child development, and—in recent years—behavioral genetics. The specific foci of life course studies range from social psychological outcomes such as stress, self-esteem, occupational values, and cognitive complexity to family roles, marital and fertility patterns, educational and occupational attainment, retirement, and deviance. Although many life course scholars typically specialize in one developmental stage, such as childhood, adolescence, midlife, or older adulthood, most also consider ways that one life course stage influences subsequent experiences. Most life course research has focused on the U.S. context, yet in recent years the collection of longitudinal data—especially in the United Kingdom and western Europe—has fostered a flourishing of life course research in Europe.

Because of its expansive and inherently interdisciplinary nature, life course sociology is not currently well served by textbooks. Rather, most undergraduate college courses—such as Sociology of Childhood and Adolescence, or Social Gerontology—are designed to investigate one stage of the life course. Of the four books described below, only one, Clausen 1986 , provides an introductory foray into life course studies. The others are more methodologically ( Elder and Giele 2009 ) or theoretically ( Settersten 1999 , Shanahan and Macmillan 2007 ) sophisticated overviews, appropriate for graduate students with at least some background in sociological theory or research methods.

Clausen, John A. 1986. The life course: A sociological perspective . New York: Prentice-Hall.

This concise volume provides an excellent overview of the key themes of life course sociology, with chapters dedicated to general principles as well as specific life course stages and outcomes. It has not been revised since 1986, however, so empirical studies—especially those on work and family patterns—are outdated.

Elder, Glen H., and Janet Z. Giele, eds. 2009. The craft of life course research . New York: Guilford.

This edited volume provides information on diverse methodologies used in life course research, including behavioral genetic analysis, cross-national and historical comparisons, and a range of qualitative (life story, ethnography, diary) and quantitative (hierarchical growth, latent class, and group-based trajectory model) approaches.

Settersten, Richard A., Jr. 1999. Lives in time and place: The problems and promises of developmental science . Amityville, NY: Baywood.

The author calls for the creation of a “developmental science” that highlights the importance of age and age structuring, generation and cohort, and social contexts. In doing so, he highlights the distinctive perspectives that sociologists and psychologists bring to the study of human lives.

Shanahan, Michael J., and Ross Macmillan. 2007. Biography and the sociological imagination: Contexts and contingencies . New York: Norton.

Provides an introduction to life course sociology. The authors emphasize “how to think” about changing societies and aging, drawing from the latest research and using stories of real people’s lives.

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A Biography of Erving Goffman

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Erving Goffman (1922–1982) was a major Canadian-American sociologist who played a significant role in the development of modern American sociology.

He is considered by some to be the most influential sociologist of the 20th century, thanks to his many significant and lasting contributions to the field. He is widely known and celebrated as a major figure in the development of  symbolic interaction theory  and for developing the dramaturgical perspective .

His most widely read works include  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life  and  Stigma: Notes the Management of Spoiled Identity .

Major Contributions

Goffman is credited for making significant contributions to the field of sociology. He is considered a pioneer of micro-sociology, or the close examination of the social interactions that compose everyday life.

Through this type of work, Goffman presented evidence and theory for the social construction of the self as it is presented to and managed for others, created the concept of framing and the perspective of frame analysis, and set the foundation for the study of impression management.

Through his study of social interaction, Goffman made a lasting mark on how sociologists understand and study stigma and how it affects the lives of people who experience it.

His studies also laid the groundwork for the study of strategic interaction within game theory and laid the foundation for the method and subfield of conversation analysis.

Based on his study of mental institutions, Goffman created the concept and framework for studying total institutions and the process of resocialization that takes place within them.

Early Life and Education

Goffman was born June 11, 1922, in Alberta, Canada.

His parents, Max and Anne Goffman, were Ukrainian Jews who emigrated to Canada prior to his birth. After his parents moved to Manitoba, Goffman attended St. John's Technical High School in Winnipeg, and in 1939 he began his university studies in chemistry at the University of Manitoba.

Goffman later switched to studying sociology at the University of Toronto and completed his B.A. in 1945.

Goffman enrolled at the University of Chicago for graduate school and completed a Ph.D. in sociology in 1953. Trained in the tradition of the Chicago School of Sociology , Goffman conducted ethnographic research  and studied symbolic interaction theory.

Among his major influences were Herbert Blumer, Talcott Parsons , Georg Simmel , Sigmund Freud, and Émile Durkheim .

His first major study for his doctoral dissertation was an account of everyday social interaction and rituals on Unset, an island among the Shetland Islands chain in Scotland ( Communication Conduct in an Island Community , 1953.)

Goffman married Angelica Choate in 1952 and a year later the couple had a son, Thomas. Angelica committed suicide in 1964 after suffering from mental illness.

Career and Later Life

Following the completion of his doctorate and his marriage, Goffman took a job at the National Institute for Mental Health in Bethesda, Maryland. There, he conducted participant observation research for what would be his second book,  Asylums: Essays on the Social Situation of Mental Patients and Other Inmates , published in 1961.

He described how this process of institutionalization socializes people into the role of a good patient (i.e. someone dull, harmless and inconspicuous), which in turn reinforces the notion that severe mental illness is a chronic state.

Goffman's first book, published in 1956, and arguably his most widely taught and famous work, is titled  The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life .

Drawing on his research in the Shetland Islands, it is in this book that Goffman laid out his dramaturgical approach to studying the minutiae of everyday face-to-face interaction.

He used the imagery of the theater to portray the importance of human and social action. All actions, he argued, are social performances that aim to give and maintain certain desired impressions of oneself to others.

In social interactions, humans are actors on a stage playing a performance for an audience. The only time individuals can be themselves and get rid of their role or identity in society is backstage where no audience is present.

Goffman took a faculty position in the department of sociology at the University of California-Berkeley in 1958. In 1962 he was promoted to full professor. In 1968, he was appointed the Benjamin Franklin Chair in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Goffman’s Frame Analysis: An Essay on the Organization of Experience  was published in 1974. Frame analysis is the study of the organization of social experiences, and so with his book, Goffman wrote about how conceptual frames structure an individual’s perception of society.

He used the concept of a picture frame to illustrate this concept. The frame, he said, represents structure and is used to hold together an individual’s context of what they are experiencing in their life, represented by a picture.

In 1981 Goffman married Gillian Sankoff, a sociolinguist. Together the two had a daughter, Alice, born in 1982.

Goffman died of stomach cancer that same year. Alice Goffman became a notable sociologist in her own right.

Awards and Honors

• Fellow of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (1969)
• Guggenheim Fellowship (1977–78)
• Cooley-Mead Award for Distinguished Scholarship, Second on Social Psychology, American Sociological Association (1979)
• 73rd President of the American Sociological Association (1981–82)
• Mead Award, Society for the Study of Social Problems (1983)
• Sixth most cited author in humanities and social sciences in 2007

Other Major Publications

• Encounters: Two Studies in the Sociology of Interaction (1961)
• Behavior in Public Places (1963)
• Interaction Ritual (1967)
• Gender Advertisements (1976)
• Forms of Talk (1981)
• Famous Sociologists
• Symbolic Interaction Theory: History, Development, and Examples
• 15 Major Sociological Studies and Publications
• Biography of Sociologist George Herbert Mead
• The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life
• Goffman's Front Stage and Back Stage Behavior
• 11 Black Scholars and Intellectuals Who Influenced Sociology
• Major Sociological Theories
• The Major Theoretical Perspectives of Sociology
• Biography of Patricia Hill Collins, Esteemed Sociologist
• Robert K. Merton
• Biography of Journalist C Wright Mills
• Biography of Max Weber
• Studying Race and Gender with Symbolic Interaction Theory
• Sociologist Michel Foucault
• The Sociology of Race and Ethnicity