Book1869
The Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill
Argues that the legal and social subordination of women rests on custom dressed up as nature, and that it damages both sexes by suppressing half of human capacity.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Social Sciences
Sociology & Anthropology
Human beings as social animals — the structures they build, inherit, and rarely notice.
12 fields · 113 topics · 122 curated works
Fields within Sociology & Anthropology
Sociological Theory
10The frameworks used to explain social order and change.
Foundations & Overviews · Functionalism · Conflict Theory · Symbolic Interactionism · Structuration Theory
Social Stratification & Inequality
10Who ends up where, and why it persists.
Foundations & Overviews · Class Structure · Social Mobility · Income & Wealth Inequality · Poverty
Race, Ethnicity & Migration
9Group boundaries and movement across them.
Foundations & Overviews · Racial Formation · Ethnic Identity · Discrimination & Segregation · Immigration & Integration
Gender & Sexuality
9How societies organise sex, gender and family roles.
Foundations & Overviews · Gender Roles & Socialisation · Feminist Theory · Gender & Labour · Masculinity Studies
Family, Kinship & Community
8The smallest durable social units.
Foundations & Overviews · Kinship Systems · Marriage & Partnership · Parenting & Childrearing · Household Economics
Urban & Rural Sociology
9How place shapes life — urbanisation, gentrification and segregation, where postcode predicts more than it ought.
Foundations & Overviews · Urbanisation · Neighbourhood Effects · Gentrification · Housing & Homelessness
Criminology & Deviance
11Rule-breaking and the systems built to respond.
Foundations & Overviews · Theories of Crime · Crime Statistics & Measurement · Policing · Prisons & Incarceration
Cultural Anthropology
11Understanding a way of life from the inside.
Foundations & Overviews · Ethnographic Method · Participant Observation · Cultural Relativism · Ritual & Symbolism
Biological & Evolutionary Anthropology
9Humans as a species with a deep history.
Foundations & Overviews · Human Origins · Primatology · Hunter-Gatherer Societies · The Agricultural Transition
Social Networks & Collective Behaviour
9Structure and contagion in social systems.
Foundations & Overviews · Network Structure & Centrality · Weak Ties · Diffusion of Innovation · Social Contagion
Demography
9The arithmetic of populations, which drives more than most people expect.
Foundations & Overviews · Fertility · Mortality & Life Expectancy · Migration Patterns · Population Ageing
Sociology of Religion, Science & Technology
9Institutions of belief and knowledge, studied sociologically.
Foundations & Overviews · Secularisation · Religious Movements · Sociology of Scientific Knowledge · Science & Technology Studies
Reading in Sociology & Anthropology
122A way in
Start here
No prior grounding assumed.
The Subjection of Women
John Stuart Mill · 1869
Argues that the legal and social subordination of women rests on custom dressed up as nature, and that it damages both sexes by suppressing half of…
+13 more at this level
Then
Assumes you know the vocabulary.
The Souls of Black Folk
W. E. B. Du Bois · 1903
Introduces double consciousness — seeing yourself through the eyes of a society that despises you — and founds American sociology of race.
+46 more at this level
Go deeper
Primary sources and full treatments.
The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism
Max Weber · 1905
Traces capitalist discipline to a religious idea of vocation, and argues that ideas can be causes rather than only reflections of material interest.
+60 more at this level
12 of 122 works
Book1895
The Crowd: A Study of the Popular Mind
Gustave Le Bon
Argues that individuals submerged in a crowd lose their critical faculty and personal responsibility to a collective mind driven by contagion and suggestion, a claim later criticised as an elitist caricature of mass politics rather than a description of it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Book1913
The Psychology of Revolution
Gustave Le Bon
Argues that revolutions are driven less by rational grievance than by the same crowd psychology and mystical belief that govern religious movements, so their leaders succeed by manipulating emotion rather than argument.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Book1961
The Forest People
Colin M. Turnbull
Portrays the Mbuti of the Ituri forest as an egalitarian, playful society whose identity is bound to the forest itself, and argues their way of life offers a working alternative to hierarchy rather than a primitive stage before it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Report1968
Report of the National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders
Concludes that the 1967 urban riots grew out of entrenched racial discrimination in housing, employment and policing, and warns that the United States was moving toward two societies, separate and unequal.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1980
Do Artifacts Have Politics?
Langdon Winner
Argues that technical artefacts can themselves embody political arrangements -- Robert Moses's low bridges, designed to keep buses of poor and black New Yorkers off certain parkways, being the famous case -- so choosing a technology is often already choosing a politics.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1982
Broken Windows
James Q. Wilson & George L. Kelling
Argues that visible disorder, a broken window left unrepaired, signals that no one is watching and invites further crime, so policing should target minor disorder and not only serious offences.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay1987
The Worst Mistake in the History of the Human Race
Jared Diamond
Argues that adopting agriculture made most people's lives worse, shorter, more disease-ridden and more unequal than foraging, even though it eventually enabled larger populations and civilisation.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Essay2001
Down with Meritocracy
Michael Young
The sociologist who coined 'meritocracy' as a satirical warning in 1958 revisits the term after New Labour adopted it as a positive goal, and argues a society that tells losers they deserved to lose is crueller than one that never promised merit would be rewarded.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Report2021
World Inequality Report 2022
Lucas Chancel, Thomas Piketty, Emmanuel Saez & Gabriel Zucman
Compiles a single global dataset of income and wealth shares and argues that within-country inequality has risen almost everywhere since 1980 even as between-country inequality has fallen, leaving the world overall about as unequal as at the height of Western imperialism.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Report2023
Our Epidemic of Loneliness and Isolation
Office of the U.S. Surgeon General
Argues that loneliness carries mortality risk comparable to smoking or obesity, and calls for rebuilding social connection through deliberate changes to institutions, workplaces and public space rather than leaving it to individuals.
link checked 17 Sept 2026Report2023
World Population Ageing 2023: Highlights
United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division
Argues, from the UN's own population estimates, that population ageing is now a near-universal trend rather than a rich-country phenomenon, and that most future ageing will happen in countries not yet equipped for it.
link checked 17 Sept 2026