Tocqueville on centralization as the natural form of government for...
I have shown that equality suggested to men the thought of a unique, uniform and strong government. I have just shown that it gives them the taste for it; so today nations are tending toward a...
View ArticleTocqueville on the absence of government in America (1835)
What most strikes the European who travels across the United States is the absence of what among us we call government or administration. In America, you see written laws; you see their daily...
View ArticleTocqueville on the form of despotism the government would assume in...
After having thus taken each individual one by one into its powerful hands, and having molded him as it pleases, the sovereign power extends its arms over the entire society; it covers the surface of...
View ArticleTocqueville on the spirit of association (1835)
When citizens can associate only in certain cases, they regard association as a rare and singular process, and they hardly think of it. When you allow them to associate freely in everything, they end...
View ArticleWilliam Graham Sumner denounced America’s war against Spain and thought that...
Now what will hasten the day when our present advantages will wear out and when we shall come down to the conditions of the older and densely populated nations? The answer is: war, debt, taxation,...
View ArticleWilliam Graham Sumner on how “society” helps the drunkard in the gutter (1883)
When you see a drunkard in the gutter, you are disgusted, but you pity him. When a policeman comes and picks him up you are satisfied. You say that “society” has interfered to save the drunkard from...
View ArticleWilliam Graham Sumner on the political corruption which is “jobbery” (1884)
Jobbery is any scheme which aims to gain, not by the legitimate fruits of industry and enterprise, but by extorting from somebody a part of his product under guise of some pretended industrial...
View ArticleWilliam Graham Sumner on the racism which lies behind Imperialism (1898)
The Americans have been committed from the outset to the doctrine that all men are equal. We have elevated it into an absolute doctrine as a part of the theory of our social and political fabric. It...
View ArticleWilliam Graham Sumner reminds us never to forget the “Forgotten Man”, the...
In the definition the word “people” was used for a class or section of the population. It is now asserted that if that section rules, there can be no paternal, that is, undue, government. That...
View ArticleWeber (Max)
Max Weber (1864 - 1920) was a German sociologist, historian, jurist, and political economist. He was one of the founding fathers of sociology. In his most famous book, The Protestant Ethic and the...
View ArticleBrown (Susan Love)
Susan Love Brown is a recently retired Professor of Anthropology at Florida Atlantic University in Boca Raton, Florida.
View ArticleSumner: A Sketch
Related Links: William Graham Sumner Source: Editors' Introduction to Sumner's The Challenge of Facts and other Essays, ed. Albert Galloway Keller (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1914). SKETCH OF...
View ArticleNisbet (Robert A.)
Robert Nisbet (1913-1996), former professor of sociology at Columbia University, is the author of Sociology as an Art Form; The Social Philosophers; Prejudices: A Philosophical Dictionary; The...
View ArticleRojas (Fabio)
Fabio Rojas is professor of sociology at Indiana University. He studies organizational behavior in political, economic, and educational settings.
View ArticleTocqueville (Alexis De)
Alexis de Tocqueville (1805-1859) was an enormously influential French political philosopher, politician, and historian. After a trip to the U.S. in 1831 to observe the penal system he wrote Democracy...
View ArticleSumner (William Graham)
William Graham Sumner (1840-1910) was one of the founding father’s of American sociology. Although he trained as an Episcopalian clergyman, Sumner went on to teach at Yale University where he wrote his...
View ArticleJavakhishvili (Irakli)
Irakli Javakhishvili is currently an associate professor at Webster University in Georgia, and adjunct professor at Webster University in Tashkent.
View ArticleSpencer (Herbert)
Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) was one of the leading 19th century English radical individualists. He began working as a journalist for the laissez-faire magazine The Economist in the 1850s. Much of the...
View ArticleLeroux (Robert)
Robert Leroux is a professor of sociology at the University of Ottawa. He is interested by epistemology, the history of social science, and liberal thought.
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