The following is a listing of the classic theorists and contemporary perspectives (in
alphabetical order) from which students are to choose two (from each) to read and study
in more depth.
Note: the “perspectives” from which students are to choose are listed to the far left, the
ones listed underneath are variants within each perspective. Also, the theorists listed
after each perspective are merely meant to be illustrative; they do not comprise an
exhaustive list.
Classic Theorists (choose at least two)
Emile Durkheim
Karl Marx
George H. Mead
Georg Simmel
Max Weber
Contemporary Perspectives (choose at least two perspectives)
Conflict Theory (Dahrendorf, Collins, Mills)
Critical Theory (Horkheimer, Adorno, Marcuse, Kellner, Habermas)
Exchange Theory (Homans, Blau, Emerson, Cook, Molm)
Legitimacy Theories (Berger, Zelditch, Ridgeway)
Rational Choice (Homans, Coleman, Emerson, Gray)
Network Theory (Granovetter, Wellman, Burt, Mizruchi)
Status Characteristics Theory (Berger, Zelditch, Ridgeway)
Feminist Social Theories (Smith, Harding, Hirsch and Keller)
Cultural (Gilligan, Ruddick)
Liberal (Acker, Bem, England)
Marxian (Shelton and Agger)
Psychoanalytic (Chodorow, Dinnerstein, O’Brien)
Radical (Rich, Lorde, French, Frye, Dworkin)
Socialist (Harmann, Bartsky, Eisenstein, Fraser, Harstock, Mackinnon, Smith)
Third-Wave (P. Hill Collins, Haraway, Lorde, hooks, Anzaldua, Lamphere, Glenn,
Stacey &
Thorne)
Functionalism/Neo-Functionalism (Parsons, Merton, Alexander, Colomy, Münch)
Neo-Marxisms (Burawoy, Burris, Milliband)
Hegelian (Lukács, Gramsci)
Analytical (Cohen, Roemer, Elster, Wright)
World Systems/Historical Marxism (Wallerstein)
Neo-Weberianism (Bourdieu, Parkin)
Phenomenology/Ethnomethodology (Garfinkel, Berger and Luckmann, Schutz,
Zimmerman)
Postmodernism (Derrida, Baudrillard, Rorty, Foucault, DeLeuze, Guattari, Lyotard,
Lacan,
Bauman, Harvey, Bell, Jameson)
Post-Structuralism (Foucault, Bourdieu)
Structuralism (i.e., French) (de Saussure, Gottdiener, Barthes, Levi-Strauss, Godelier,
Althusser)