Anthropologists

Marcel Mauss (1872-1950) - Include a highly original comparative study of the relation between
forms of exchange and social structure.

Clifford Geertz (1926-2006) - Leading rhetorician and proponent of symbolic anthropology and
interpretive anthropology.

Edward Sapir (1884-1939) - He was one of the founders of the science of linguistic
anthropology. He made significant contributions to general linguistic theory, Amerindian
linguistics, and Indo-European linguistics.

Bronisław Malinowski (1884-1942) - Great influence and contributed to the building of modern
anthropological methodology. ‘Argonauts of the Western Pacific’. This has become one of the
most widely recognized texts in anthropology.

Lewis Henry Morgan (1818-1881) - He developed a particular interest in the way that people
who were related interact and refer to each other and in turn how that affects relationships and
overall society (this is also known as kinship systems).

Eric Wolf (1923-1999) - Studied historical trends across civilizations and argued that individual
cultures must be viewed in the context of global socioeconomic systems. His best-known book,
Europe and the People Without History (1982), is a comparison of the effects of European
expansion on indigenous peoples of Africa, the Americas, and the Far East.

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908-2009) - He applied theories of structural linguistics to the field of

anthropology and gained fame for a new way of thinking called structuralism. He put forward the
idea that there are worldwide unconscious structures, or laws, that exist in everything that we
do.

Ruth Benedict (1887-1948) - American anthropologist whose theories had a profound influence
on cultural anthropology, especially in the area of culture and personality.

Margaret Mead (1901-1978) - Mead received an M.A. in 1924 and a Ph.D. in 1929. In 1925,
during the first of her many field trips to the South Seas, she gathered material for the first of her
23 books, Coming of Age in Samoa (1928; new ed., 2001), a perennial best seller and a
characteristic example of her reliance on observation rather than statistics for data.

Franz Boas (1858-1942) - He contributed to the establishment of an anthropology department

at Columbia University that taught some of the world’s most promising students (including Ruth
Benedict and Margaret Mead). He helped to challenge outdated beliefs and demystified
advanced theories that allowed the development of entirely new and innovative ways of
observing and analysing the human race.
Sociologists

Emile Durkheim (1858-1917) - The first professor of sociology in France, Emile Durkheim is
known as one of the three “fathers of sociology,” and he is credited with helping sociology be
seen as actual science–which we think makes him pretty influential.

Max Weber (1862-1920) - Max Weber is cited as the third founding architect of sociology.
Weber’s primary battle cry was the role of religion–not economics, a theory endorsed by Marx–
as the catalyst of social change.

Charles Wright Mills (1916-1962) - Most famous for coining the phrase “power elite,” a term he
used to describe the people who ran a government or organization because of their wealth and
social status.

Daniel Bell (1919-2011) - best known for his contributions to the study of post-industrialism. He
has been described as "one of the leading American intellectuals of the postwar era."

Erving Goffman (1922-1982) - His best-known contribution to social theory is his study of
symbolic interaction. This took the form of dramaturgical analysis, beginning with his 1956 book,
The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life.

Michel Foucault (1926-1984) - He popularized the idea that institutions can use a combination
of power and knowledge as a form of social control; for example, in the 18th century, unsavory
members of society–the poor, sick, homeless, disagreeable–were described as “mad” and
stigmatized.

Jurgen Habermas (b. 1929) - His theory of communicative rationality states that successful
communication inherently leads to human rationality. It follows that if we come together in the
public sphere and identify how people understand or misunderstand each other, we can reduce
social conflict.

Pierre Bourdieu (1930-2002) - Building on the work of Marx, Durkheim, Weber, and others,
Pierre Bourdieu established what he called the “cultural deprivation theory,” which states that
people tend to think higher class cultures are better than lower class cultures.

Anthony Giddens (b. 1938) - His contributions to sociology as a discipline have been threefold:
In the ‘70s, he helped redefine the field itself through a reinterpretation of classic works on
society.

Gary Alan Fine (b. 1950) - His ethnographies have touched on topics of visual artists, high
school debaters, restaurant establishment culture, and fantasy games like Dungeons &
Dragons–all expressive cultural outlets shaped by our social system.
Political Scientists

Alexander Hamilton (1755/1757-1804) - He helped ratify the Constitution by writing 51 of the

85 installments of The Federalist Papers, which are still used as one of the most important
references for Constitutional interpretation.

William F. Buckley (1925-2008) - He founded the National Review magazine in 1955, which
had a major impact in stimulating the conservative movement. He also wrote a nationally
syndicated newspaper column along with numerous spy novels.

Max Weber (1862-1920) -His ideas profoundly influenced social theory and social research.
Weber is often cited, with Émile Durkheim and Karl Marx, as among the three founders of
sociology. Weber was a key proponent of methodological antipositivism, arguing for the study of
social action through interpretive (rather than purely empiricist) means, based on understanding
the purpose and meaning that individuals attach to their own actions.

Thomas Hobbes (1588-1679) - Hobbes is best known for his 1651 book Leviathan, which
expounded an influential formulation of social contract theory.

Adam Smith (1723-1790) - The Theory of Moral Sentiments. Smith is most famous for his
1776-piece, "The Wealth of Nations," but his first major treatise, "The Theory of Moral
Sentiments," released in 1759 created many ideas still practiced today.

Henry Cabot Lodge (1850-1924) - A recipient of the first Ph.D. in political science awarded by
Harvard University, Lodge served in both the U.S. House of Representatives and Senate, and
served as the first Senate majority leader. Cabot is most remembered for his opposition to the
League of Nations and, thusly, the Treaty of Versailles.

Jeane Kirkpatrick (1926-2006) - Studied internationally and became a political science scholar.
A one-time Democrat, she was foreign policy advisor to President Ronald Reagan and became
the first woman ambassador to the U.N. Favoring right-wing regimes, Kirkpatrick was part of the
Iran-Contra affair and considered a presidential run.

Samuel P. Huntington (1927–2008) - He finished his Ph.D. at Harvard and began teaching by
age 23. An influential political scientist and writer, Huntington's works include Political Order in
Changing Societies and The Clash of Civilizations and the Remaking of World Order.
Huntington founded the journal Foreign Policy in 1970.