■ Sociological theory
Perhaps the most influential origin story constructed by sociologists has been that their discipline arose from the work of three founders: Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim and Max Weber. Of course, these are not the only early figures recognised, but they are the most usual ones listed. Precursors such as Auguste Comte, who invented the name of the discipline, and Herbert Spencer, whose work was also enormously influential in the nineteenth century, are now largely forgotten. ‘Who now reads Spencer?’ Talcott Parsons (1937) once quipped. The irony is that few sociologists probably read Parsons today. But it is not just that Spencer’s large body of work is no longer read, but that he is rarely included among those credited with founding the discipline.
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