optional · CSS study notes
🔗 Concepts & Their Originators
A quick-fire MCQ-prep table: concept → who introduced/is associated with it. Cross-reference the linked theorist/topic page for full detail.
| Concept | Originator/Thinker | See page |
|---|---|---|
| Asabiyyah, Ilm al-Umran, cyclical civilizational theory | Ibn-e-Khaldun | Theorist — Ibn-e-Khaldun |
| Law of Three Stages, Positivism, "Father of Sociology" | Auguste Comte | Theorist — Auguste Comte |
| Social facts, Anomie, Mechanical/Organic solidarity, Theory of Suicide | Émile Durkheim | Theorist — Émile Durkheim |
| Dialectical materialism, Alienation, Base/Superstructure, Surplus value | Karl Marx | Theorist — Karl Marx |
| Organicism, Social Darwinism, "Survival of the fittest" | Herbert Spencer | Theorist — Herbert Spencer |
| Verstehen, Protestant Ethic thesis, Bureaucracy, Types of authority | Max Weber | Theorist — Max Weber |
| AGIL scheme, Pattern variables, Social equilibrium | Talcott Parsons | Theorist — Talcott Parsons |
| Mind, Self (I/Me), Generalized other | George Herbert Mead | Theorist — G.H. Mead |
| Symbolic Interactionism's 3 principles | Herbert Blumer | Theorist — G.H. Mead |
| Looking-glass self | Charles Horton Cooley | 1. Individual page |
| Sociability as "play-form" | Georg Simmel | 1. Individual page |
| Manifest/latent functions, Strain theory, Middle-range theory | Robert K. Merton | Additional Theorists |
| Power Elite, Sociological Imagination | C. Wright Mills | Additional Theorists |
| Habitus, Cultural capital | Pierre Bourdieu | Additional Theorists |
| Biopower, Panopticon/discipline | Michel Foucault | Additional Theorists |
| Culture industry, Critical theory | Frankfurt School (Adorno & Horkheimer) | Additional Theorists |
| Ideological/Repressive State Apparatuses | Louis Althusser | Additional Theorists |
| Double hermeneutics | Anthony Giddens | Additional Theorists |
| World-Systems Theory (core/semi-periphery/periphery) | Immanuel Wallerstein | Additional Theorists |
| Cultural lag | William F. Ogburn | 2. Culture page |
| Culture of poverty | Oscar Lewis | Social Interaction · Social Problems — Poverty |
| Davis-Moore thesis (functional necessity of stratification) | Kingsley Davis & Wilbert Moore | Social Interaction page |
| Urbanism as a way of life | Louis Wirth | Community page |
| Folk vs. urban society continuum | Robert Redfield | Society page |
| Primary/secondary deviance | Edwin Lemert | Social Problems — Deviance & Street Crime |
| Labeling theory | Howard Becker | Social Control · Social Problems — Deviance & Street Crime |
| White-collar crime, Differential Association Theory | Edwin Sutherland | Social Problems — Deviance & Street Crime |
| Sex vs. gender (social constructionism) | Ann Oakley | Social Problems — Women's Issues in Pakistan |
| "Second Sex" / woman as "Other" | Simone de Beauvoir | Social Problems — Women's Issues in Pakistan |
| Push-pull migration theory | Everett Lee (classic formulation) | Social Problems — Rural-Urban Migration |
| Dual-sector model (rural-urban labour transition) | W. Arthur Lewis | Social Problems — Rural-Urban Migration |
Revision checklist
- Cover this table cold — name the concept when given the thinker, and the thinker when given the concept (MCQs test both directions)
- Group by "classical" (Ibn-e-Khaldun through Parsons) vs. "contemporary/additional" theorists for faster recall under time pressure