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Global Thinkers

Links and Resources about Global Thinkers:

Immanuel Wallerstein is a senior research scholar at Yale University and the former president of the International Sociological Association (1994-1998). His homepage at Yale University is http://www.yale.edu/sociology/faculty/pages/wallerstein/

A useful and accessible resource page is Frank Elwell’s site hosted by Rogers state University which is specifically designed for undergraduates who want to find out more about World System theory: http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Wallerstein/

This site provides access to an extremely useful collection of essays by leading social scientists worldwide which have been compiled by the Social Science Research Council. It includes Wallerstein’s essay America and the World: The Twin Towers as Metaphor
http://www.ssrc.org/sept11/essays/

 

Roland Robertson is one of the world's pioneers in the study of globalization and has been a chair at the University of Aberdeen since 1999. This is his homepage http://www.abdn.ac.uk/socsci/staff/details.php?id=40

In the very complete and user-friendly globalization website there is a section entitled ‘Theories’ which includes a sub-section on world culture theory discusses and summarises Robertson’ ideas very adequately.This is the direct link to this page: http://www.sociology.emory.edu/globalization/theories03.html

An interesting perspective on the Robertson’s theorization of globalization is Bryan Turner’s article: ‘ The Concept of "The World" in Sociology: A Commentary on Roland Robertson's Theory of Globalization’ Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion , Vol. 31, No. 3 pp. 311-318.

 

Max Weber made path-breaking contributions to Sociology, most famous is his work on formal rationality. An educational website celebrating his work and aimed at undergraduate students is again Frank Elwell’s site at Rogers State University, Oklahoma which gives an overview of his work, covering topics such as the protestant work ethic, social action, bureaucracy and societal oligarchy. http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Weber/Whome.htm

For a closer look at a selection of Max Weber’s texts, this site includes full online versions of the "The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism"; Weber's classic essays "Science as a Vocation" and "Politics as a Vocation", and selections from "Economy and Society".
http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/weber_texts.html

This site is a brief collection of Web pages summarising the life and works of Max Weber: it offers an overview of his basic ideas and some excerpts from his key texts. The site is run by Professor Larry Ridener, and is hosted by Pfeiffer University USA. http://www.ne.jp/asahi/moriyuki/abukuma/weber/weber_texts.html

 

Karl Marx was a social scientist as well as a revolutionary. Marxism Made Simple is a good starting point as it provides a basic introduction to concepts and theories of Marxism for politics and sociology students. It contains definitions of the key terms and theories of Karl Marx and other Marxist writers such as Friedrich Engels. http://www.marxismmadesimple.esmartweb.com/mainpage.htm

The Marxist Writers Archive is a useful resource which offers access to the full-text of key Marxist and Socialist writings of the 19th and 20th centuries. All material is arranged in collections by author. And includes the most famous authors such as Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky, as well as less well known political theorists such as Labriola and Shachtman.
http://www.marxists.org/archive/index.htm

The Marxists Internet Archive (MIA) is a volunteer, not for profit organisation: their site contains an astonishingly large amount of material relating to Marx and Marxist writings, a useful introductory section entitled ‘What is Marxism?’ and Encyclopedia of Marxism. It is available in 43 languages and includes both a writer and subject index.
http://www.marxists.org/

 

Anthony Giddens , was Director of the LSE from 1997 to 2003, he is currently a Life Fellow of King’s College, Cambridge and an emeritus professor at the centre for the study of global governance where he has a homepage: http://www.lse.ac.uk/Depts/global/staff.htm

This site contains transcripts, audiofiles and videos from the 1999 BBC Reith lectures which were given by Giddens and focused generally on the theme of globalisation. Audio and video files of the lectures are also available for downloading from the site and there are discussion forums featuring debates concerning issues raised by the lectures.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/hi/english/static/events/reith_99/default.htm

This site offers a brief introduction to Giddens' general approach, and has details on his ideas about self, gender and identity in modern societies. The section entitled ‘Modernity, Post-modernity and the Post-traditional’ is particularly useful . http://www.theory.org.uk/giddens.htm

 

Sheila Rowbotham has made important contributions to the exploration of women’s oppression and their worldwide struggles to counter patriarchy and economic and political inequality . Her homepage at the University of Manchester, where is Professor of Gender and Labour history, is http://www.socialsciences.manchester.ac.uk/sociology/staff/rowbotham.htm

The Marxists Internet Archive has a section on women and Marxism which includes some pages on Sheila Rowbotham’s life and work, as well as an archive of some of the chapters from Hidden from History. http://www.marxists.org/subject/women/authors/rowbotham-sheila/index.htm

The Monthly Review had an interesting article back in 1996 entitled ‘Reflections on the Recent Work of Sheila Rowbotham: Women’s Movements and Building Bridges’ by Vinay Bahl, which is still accessible online at http://www.monthlyreview.org/1196bahl.htm

 

David Harvey is by training a social geographer but is currently a Distinguished Professor of Anthropology at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, where his homepage is http://web.gc.cuny.edu/anthropology/fac_harvey.html

An interview with David Harvey by Sasha Lilley of the radical radio program Against the Grain , about the origins and trajectory of the neoliberal creed is available to read online at http://mrzine.monthlyreview.org/lilley190606.html

A good starting point to find out about David Harvey’s work is Castree’s entry on Harvey in Key Thinkers on Space and Place (2004). It was edited by Hubbard, Kitchin and Valentine and was published by Sage.

 

Walden Bello is executive director of Focus on the Global South and professor of sociology and public administration at the University of the Philippines. He has a homepage with recent publications at the transnational Institute (a worldwide fellowship of scholar-activists), where he is a fellow and board member: http://www.tni.org/fellows/bello.htm

This German site with resources, archives and news has a really useful page which includes links to texts written by Walden Bello, that go back to 1999 http://www.nadir.org/nadir/initiativ/agp/free/bello/index.htm

A commentary by Walden Bello ‘2000: The Year of Global Protest against Globalization’ is accessible through Znet (an extensive online progressive magazine and community of alternative news, opinions, discussion forums, and resources ) this is the direct link http://www.zmag.org/sustainers/content/2001-01/10bello.htm

 

Howard Becker is a sociologist and musician. He has created homepage where he h as placed a number of his works from recent years that have been "published in obscure places" and so may not have been easy to find. Also included on the site is news of Becker's ongoing work and links to sites that he finds informative and interesting.
http://home.earthlink.net/~hsbecker/

This is an accessible and very informative (but not very well laid out) page which explains and assesses responses to Becker’s labelling theory: http://www.criminology.fsu.edu/crimtheory/becker.htm

There is also a page on Howard Becker hosted by the Sociology department at the University of Colorado, it’s a useful resource for information on Contemporary thinkers in Symbolic Interactionism http://socsci.colorado.edu/SOC/SI/si-becker.htm

 

Ulf Hannerz

Ulf Hannerz is a Swedish anthropologist, and is professor of Social Anthropolgy at Stockholm University where this is his homepage http://www.socant.su.se/personal/staff_eng.asp?id=4&q=0,49781

For an online review of Hannerz’s Transnational Connections: Culture, People, Places (1996), see Thomas Hylland Eriksen’s review which is concise and accessible http://folk.uio.no/geirthe/Hannerz.html His website entitled ‘Engaging with the World’ is a generally useful academic resource for social scientists.

You can also access a pdf file of Ulf Hannerz’s working paper ‘Flows, Boundaries and Hybrids: Keywords in Transnational Anthropology’ through the Transnational Communities Programme website http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/hannerz.pdf

 

Michel Foucault was a French philosopher and there is a wealth of resources about him and his work online, so here are ‘a pick of the best’: three well-designed academic sites particularly useful for Sociology students.

This site of resources has been developed and maintained by Clare O'Farrell who is a lecturer in the School of Cultural and Language Studies at the Queensland University of Technology. An extensive set of links of Foucaldian resources is included as is a Foucault bibliography and information about new books about his work.
http://www.foucault.qut.edu.au/

The Foucauldian has been in operation since 1999 to provide information and various resource types about the work of Michel Foucault. Included on the site are 18 texts, both of primary works by Foucault and secondary texts written about his work. The site also contains an extensive bibliography of Foucault's work, as well as links to related sites.
http://www.thefoucauldian.co.uk/

This is a website specifally focused on ‘The Birth of the Clinic’ written by Casey Alt which also includes a chronology of Foucault's life and work: http://www.stanford.edu/dept/HPS/BirthOfTheClinic/

 

John Urry is Professor of Sociology at the University of Lancaster, Lecturer for the Tourist gaze and Director of the Centre for Mobilities Research. This his homepage there http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/staff/urry/urry.htm

If you would like to hear John Urry speak about the sociological value of personal networks, travel and tourism, and the effect peak oil will have on how we interact with one another, you can listen or watch his lecture on social networks through the Global Public Media site at http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/interviews/805

This paper ‘Globalising the Tourist Gaze’ was presented at the Cityscapes Conference in Graz, November 2001 and published on the Web by the Department of Sociology at the University of Lancaster. It examines globalisation, global culture and the development of global tourism from a sociological point of view.
http://www.lancs.ac.uk/fss/sociology/papers/urry-globalising-the-tourist-gaze.pd

 

Pierre Bourdieu was a French sociologist, the HyperBourdieu website provides access to a bibliography of his works. The bibliography was complied by Ingo Morth and Gerhard Frohlich academics at the University of Linz in Austria. The bibliography contains references to written works and also public statements. Various notes included in the bibliography are in German only, English and French versions are works in progress.
http://www.iwp.uni-linz.ac.at/lxe/sektktf/bb/HyperBourdieu.html

A very complete bibliography with recent additions hosted by Massey university in New Zealand is a very useful resource to read more of and about Bourdieu’s work http://www.massey.ac.nz/~nzsrda/bourdieu/pierre.htm

The Conclusion to Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgment of Taste. (1984) is available online via the Marxists Writers archive at http://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/fr/bourdieu.htm

 

Manuel Castells is Professor of Sociology and Professor of City and Regional Planning at the University of California, Berkeley where this his homepage http://sociology.berkeley.edu/faculty/castells/

You can see a webcast of an interview of Manuael Castells by Harry Kreisler in 2001 entitled ‘Identity and Change in the Network Society’ through the Institute of International studies at UC Berkeley at http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/people/Castells/castells-con0.html

A critical review of Castells’s The Rise of the Network Society (1996) is available online at http://www.thechronicle.demon.co.uk/archive/castells.htm This short essay written by Jan A.G.M. van Dijk ans is available though Chronicle World an Internet magazine focusing on the Black African Caribbean experience in Britain and the African Diaspora.

 

Norbert Elias was a European Sociologist whose work focused on the relationship between power, behaviour, emotion and knowledge over time.

This website hosted by the University of Sidney identifies and provides all sorts of resources for all social scientists working with the ideas of Norbert Elias and process sociology. http://www.usyd.edu.au/su/social/elias/elias.html

This site contains a comprehensive listing of the works of Norbert Elias, The site lists not only published books and articles but also manuscripts and oral communications, in a variety of media and including reprints and translations. Also on this site is a bibliography of secondary literature on Elias, in alphabetical order. The site has been produced by Ingo Mörth, Gerhard Fröhlich and Werner Höbart of the Universität Linz, Austria. The catalogue is in German and there are introductions in English, French, Spanish Dutch and Italian.
http://www.kuwi.uni-linz.ac.at/hyperelias/z-elias /

The Norbert Elias Foundation was established in 1983 on the initiative of Norbert Elias himself, its aim being to stimulate research in the social sciences. It supports projects in the Social sciences in general and figurational studies in particular. Its website has resources on the author and his work, as well as its applications in social science today. http://www.norberteliasfoundation.nl/

 

Emile Durkheim a French sociologist is one of the founding figures of Sociology, and there are many websites on his life and works available online. Here are some well-established introductory sites:

This site is designed to provide an introduction to the thought of Emile Durkheim. The sample of quotations from Durkheim's original texts are arranged under such headings as anomie, suicide, religion, solidarity, division of labour and crime. There is a brief bibliography of introductory sources and links to relevant web sources.
http://durkheim.itgo.com/

This is a brief collection of Web pages summarising his life and works, ideal for newcomers to Durkheim, the pages offer an overview of his basic ideas and some excerpts from some of his key texts. Much of the information has been taken from Lewis Coser's book Masters of Sociological Thought. The website has been compiled by by Professor Larry Ridener formerly of James Madison University, now based at Pfeiffer University USA.
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML#durkheim

This site has been developed and maintained by Frank Elwell of Rogers State University in the United States. The central aim of the site is to offer support of undergraduate students, studying Durkheim. It gives an overview of Durkheim's work, covering topics such as suicide, anomie, and the division of labour.
http://www.faculty.rsu.edu/~felwell/Theorists/Durkheim/index.htm

 

Georg Simmel was a German sociologist and is often declared to be one of the founders of sociology, yet undoubtedly he is the least well known.

Created by the editors of the gateway Sociology in Switzerland, ‘ Georg Simmel Online’ presents extracts from Simmel's major books and over fifty journal articles, all in the original German. This useful collection is accompanied by extracts in English from Lewis A. Coser's Masters of Sociological Thought, which provide biographical information about Simmel and discuss the significance of his work. http://socio.ch/sim/index_sim.htm

This is again a brief collection of Web pages summarising the life and works of Georg Simmel from Larry Ridener. As with Durkheim, it is ideal for newcomers to Simmel, as the pages offer an overview of his basic ideas and excerpts from his key texts.
http://www2.pfeiffer.edu/~lridener/DSS/INDEX.HTML#simmel

 

Jürgen Habermas is one of the world’s most eminent contemporary sociologists and works in the tradition of the Frankfurt School of Critical Theory.

The site provides a short synopsis of Habermas' social and political thought which is suitable for undergraduate courses, there are also links to definitions of some important terms and concepts.
http://filer.case.edu/~ngb2/Authors/Habermas.html

Habermas Online is maintained by Mathieu Deflem, who is an Assistant Professor of Sociology at the University of South Carolina. The site is divided into four sections including online texts, reviews, secondary resources and links to related sites. Each of these sections are extensive and offer a comprehensive overview of Habermas's work.
http://www.habermasonline.org/

The Habermas forum was started in 2001 by a group of professors from Denmark and Norway interested in sharing ideas and resources about Habermas. The website aims to bring those interested in Habermas together to gather information about books, reviews and events. There is an online newsletter which readers can sign up to hear about via email. The site is Danish only.
http://www.habermasforum.dk/

 

Cynthia Enloe is a Research Professor of International Development and Women’s Studies at Clark University, Worcester, her recent work has focused on theorising the connections between gender and militarization. This is her homepage http://www.clarku.edu/departments/idce/faculty/enloe.htm

You can read her brief for Foreign Policy in Focus ‘Masculinity as Foreign Policy Issue’ which includes a list of key problems and recommendations, at http://www.fpif.org/briefs/vol5/v5n36masculinity_body.html

You can also download an interview from 2006 with Cynthia Enloe from The Progressive website (which describes itself as ‘the leading voice for peace and social justice since 1909’) where she talks about the election results, Rumsfeld's resignation, and women in Iraq and Afghanistan. http://www.progressive.org/radio_enloe06

 

Ulrich Beck isProfessor for Sociology at the University of Munich, and the British Journal of Sociology Professor at the London School of Economics and Sciences. This his staff page at the LSE http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/sociology/whoswho/beck.htm and his homepage at the University of Munich http://www.lsbe.soziologie.uni-muenchen.de/sys/cgi/one.pl?name=beck&datafile=de/mitarbeiter.xml

The University of Cardiff’s Undergraduate Introduction to Sociology has a useful webpage on Beck’s Risk Society thesis, which includes links to reviews of ‘Risk Society’. http://www1.cardiff.ac.uk/socsi/undergraduate/introsoc/ubeck.html

A talk from 2001 by Ulrich Beck entitled The Silence of Words and Political Dynamics
in the World Risk Society can be accessed via Logos: journal of Modern Society and Culture at http://logosonline.home.igc.org/beck.htm

 

Zygmunt Bauman is a polish-born sociologist who is Emeritus Professor of Sociology at the University of Leeds where this homepage can be found: http://www.leeds.ac.uk/sociology/people/bauman.htm

You can access a working paper of his entitled ‘Europe of Strangers’ through Oxford University Transnational Communities Programme http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/bauman.pdf

You can also access the 2005 Zygmunt Bauman Lecture series: Melting Modernity through the LSE website at http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/miliband/BaumanLectures.htm

 

Martin Albrow is a British Sociologist and is Research professor in the Social Sciences at Roehampton Institute, London.

You can access one of his working paper through Oxford University Transnational Communities Programme entitled ‘Frames and Transformations in Transnational Studies’ http://www.transcomm.ox.ac.uk/working%20papers/albrow.pdf

An insight into Albrow’s work can be found in his autobiographical statement ‘Unfinished work: the Career of a European Sociologist’ in Mathieu Deflem (ed) Sociologists in a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007.