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KARL MARX

MAY 5, 1818
 Karl Marx was born to Heinrich Marx and Henriette in Trier, Germany.
1830
 He enrolled at the Trier High School.
1835
 He graduated from Trier High School and enrolled at the University of Berlin.
 He became a Hegelian idealist.
1841
 He graduated with a doctorate in Philosophy.
1842
 He moved to Cologne, Germany.
 He was influenced by the Humanist Philosophy of Ludwig Feuerbach.
1843
 He married Jenny von Westphalen.
 He moved to Paris.
 He wrote “Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.”
1844
 Marx’s daughter, Jenny Caroline, was born.
 He met Friedrich Engels.
 He wrote “The Paris Manuscripts.”
1845
 He got expelled from France and moved to Brussels, Belgium
 He wrote “Theses on Feuerbach.”
 Marx had another daughter, Jenny Laura.

1846
 He set up the Communist Correspondence Committee, together with Engels.
1847
 He had a son, Edgar.
 Launch of the Communist League.
 He wrote “The Poverty of Philosophy”.
1848
 French Revolution
 He returned to France.
 He published the “Communist Manifesto” with Engels.
1849
 He moved to Cologne, Germany.
 He wrote in the “Neue Rheinische Zeitung.”
 He moved to London.
1850
 He wrote the “Address to the Communist League” with Engels.
1852
 He wrote “The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.”
1861
 He completed “Grundisse” Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy.

1864
 He supported the launch of the International Workingmen’s Association.
1867
 He published “Das Kapital.”
1869
 He wrote “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.”
1872
 He attended The Hague Congress of the First International.
1875
 He wrote “Critique of the Gotha Programme.”
1881
 His wife dies.
1883
 Karl Marx dies due to lung abscess.
 Burial in London’s Highgate Cemetery.

THE Achievements OF KARL MARX


 “Father” of Modern Day Communism
 Father of Marxism
 Publication of Communist Manifesto
 Revival of the Communist League
 Creation of the International Workingmen’s Association
 Publication of Das Kapital
 Posthumous Nobel Prize in Economics

EMILE DURKHEIM
David Émile Durkheim is regarded as the principal architect of modern social science and father of
sociology. Born into a family of a long line of rabbis, he broke away from the Jewish tradition and
produced many secular works. His first major sociological work, ‘The Division of Labor in Society’,
discussed how modern society is held together by a division of labor that makes individuals
dependent upon one another. In ‘Rules of the Sociological Method’, he put forward the need for
scientific approach in the study of sociology, a revolutionary thought in that period of time. He set up
the first European department of sociology and became France's first professor of sociology and
also established the journal L'Année Sociologique. His monograph ‘Suicide’, a study of suicide rates
in Catholic and Protestant populations, elevated sociology to the status of science. In his ‘The
Elementary Forms of Religious Life’, he presented a theory of religion, comparing the social and
cultural lives of aboriginal and modern societies. He also expressed his views on individualism,
differentiating between egoism and moral individualism. He remained a dominant force in French
intellectual life until his death, presenting numerous lectures and published works on a variety of
topics, including the sociology of knowledge, morality, religion, law, and education.
Childhood & Early Life

 David Emile Durkheim was born on April 15, 1858, in Epinal, capital town of the department of
Vosges, in Lorraine to Mélanie and Moïse, a rabbi of Epinal, and the Chief Rabbi of the
Vosges and Haute-Marne.
 Expected to become a devout rabbi, he began his education in a rabbinical school, but at an
early age, he decided not to follow in his family's rabbinical path, and changed schools.
 He entered the École Normale Supérieure in 1879, at his third attempt and had as classmates
brilliant people such as sociologist Jean Jaurès, philosopher Henri Bergson, historian Henri
Berr and the psychologist Pierre Janet
 At the Normale, he was guided by Numa Denis Fustel de Coulanges, a classicist with a social
scientific outlook, and wrote his Latin dissertation on Montesquieu and read Auguste Comte
and Herbert Spencer.
Career

 In 1882, Durkheim passed his aggregation, the competitive examination required for
admission to the teaching staff of state secondary schools, or lycées, and soon began to
teach philosophy.
 In 1885 he left for Germany, studied sociology in Marburg, Berlin and Leipzig and by the
following year completed the draft of his ‘The Division of Labor in Society’, his doctoral
dissertation.
 His articles on German social science and philosophy, which were influenced by the work of
Wilhelm Wundt, a German psychologist, philosopher, and a founding figure of modern
psychology, made him famous in France.
 He was appointed with the official title, Chargé d'un Cours de Science Sociale et de Pédagogie
at University of Bordeaux in 1887 to teach the university's first social science course.
 He reformed the French school system and introduced the study of social science in its
curriculum. However, his belief that religion and morality could be explained by social
causes earned him many critics.
 In 1898, he founded L'Année Sociologique, the first French social science journal which aimed
to publish and publicize the works of a growing number of students and collaborators who
developed his sociological program.
 In 1897, he published ‘Suicide’, a case study offering a model of what the sociological
monograph might look like. He explored the differing suicide rates among Protestants and
Catholics.
 He pioneered the use of quantitative methods in criminology during his suicide case study. He
focused on primary research methods for studying the distribution and causes of crime, data
collection, survey and evaluation.
 By 1902, he realized his ambition of attaining a prominent position in Paris by becoming the
chair of education at the Sorbonne, towards which the Parisian faculty had shown reluctance
fearing “sociological imperialism"
 His lectures were solely mandatory for the entire student body and had much influence over
the new generation of teachers. He sat on the Council of the University and advised the
Ministry of Education.
 In 1912, he published ‘The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life’, which analyzed religion
as a social phenomenon. He attributed the development of religion to the emotional security
attained through communal living.
 When World War I began, he devoted himself to the cause of national defense, organized
committees for the publication documents on the war, to be sent to neutral countries to
undermine German propaganda.
 By 1916, he became disillusioned about the consequence of a possible German defeat and
the advantage it would give the conservative clerical party in France and became conscious
of his Jewish heritage.
Major Works

 In 1892, he published ‘The Division of Labour in Society’, his doctoral dissertation dealing with
the nature of human society, its development and argued for moral and economic regulation
to maintain peace and order
 In 1895, in ‘the Rules of the Sociological Method’ he declared that social sciences should also
be based on a scientific method and founded the first European department of sociology at
Bordeaux
Personal Life & Legacy

 Durkheim married Louise Dreyfus in 1897 and they had two children, Marie and Andre. His
wife followed the Jewish traditional of taking care of family affairs and helped him in
proofreading and secretarial duties.
 In 1915, his son Andre was killed while fighting on the Balkan front. The tragedy devastated
the scholar. He suffered a stroke and died in Paris and was buried at the cemetery in
Montparnasse.

MAX WEBER
Best Known For:
 A founding figure of the field of sociology
 Thesis of the "Protestant Ethic"
 Ideas on bureaucracy
Birth: Max Weber was born April 21, 1864.
Death: He died June 14, 1920.

Early Life And Education:


Max Weber was born in Erfurt, Prussia (present day Germany). Weber’s father was greatly
involved in public life and so his home was constantly immersed in both politics and academia.
Weber and his brother thrived in this intellectual atmosphere. In 1882, he enrolled at the
University of Heidelberg, but after two years left to fulfill his year of military service at
Strassburg. After his release from the military, Weber finished his studies at the University of
Berlin, earning his doctorate in 1889 and joining the University of Berlin’s faculty, lecturing and
consulting for the government.

Career and Later Life:


In 1894, Weber was appointed professor of economics at the University of Freiburg and then
was granted the same position at the University of Heidelberg in 1896.
His research at the time focused mainly on economics and legal history. After Weber’s father
died in 1897, two months after a severe quarrel that was never resolved, Weber became prone
to depression, nervousness, and insomnia, making it difficult for him to fulfill his duties as a
professor. He was thus forced to reduce his teaching and eventually left in the fall of 1899. For
five years he was intermittently institutionalized, suffering sudden relapses after efforts to break
such cycles by travelling. He finally resigned his professorship in late 1903.
Also in 1903, Weber became the associate editor of the Archives for Social Science and Social
Welfare where his interests lied in more fundamental issues of social sciences. Soon Weber
began to publish some of his own papers in this journal, most notable his essay The Protestant
Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, which became his most famous work and was later published
as a book.

In 1909, Weber co-founded the German Sociological Association and served as it’s first
treasurer. He resigned in 1912, however, and unsuccessfully tried to organize a left-wing
political party to combine social-democrats and liberals. At the outbreak of World War I, Weber,
aged 50, volunteered for service and was appointed as a reserve officer and put in charge of
organizing the army hospitals in Heidelberg, a role he fulfilled until the end of 1915.
Weber's most powerful impact on his contemporaries came in the last years of his life, when,
from 1916 to 1918, he argued powerfully against Germany's annexationist war goals and in
favor of a strengthened parliament. After assisting in the drafting of the new constitution and in
the founding of the German Democratic Party, Weber became frustrated with politics and
resumed teaching at the University of Vienna and then at the University of Munich.
Major Publications
 The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1904)
 The City (1912)
 The Sociology of Religion (1922)
 General Economic History (1923)
 The Theory of Social and Economic Organization (1925)

RUTH BENEDICT
Ruth Benedict, née Ruth Fulton (born June 5, 1887, New York, N.Y., U.S.—died Sept. 17,
1948, New York City), American anthropologist whose theories had a profound influence
on cultural anthropology, especially in the area of culture and personality.

Benedict graduated from Vassar College in 1909, lived in Europe for a year, and then settled
in California, where she taught in girls’ schools. In 1914 she returned to New York City.

For some years Benedict sought vainly for an occupation. In 1919 she enrolled at the New
School for Social Research, where the influence of Elsie Clews Parsons and Alexander
Goldenweiser led her to study anthropology under Franz Boas at Columbia University. She
approached the field of anthropology from a strong humanistic background, and even after she
became involved in the field in the 1920s, she continued to write poetry under the pseudonym
Anne Singleton until the early 1930s. From the outset of her career in social science she
conceived of cultures as total constructs of intellectual, religious, and aesthetic elements. She
received her Ph.D. in 1923 for her thesis on a pervasive theme among North American
Indians, The Concept of the Guardian Spirit in North America (1923). In 1924 she began
teaching at Columbia.

Benedict’s first book, Tales of the Cochiti Indians (1931), and her two-volume Zuñi
Mythology (1935) were based on 11 years of fieldwork among and research into the religion and
folklore of Native Americans, predominantly the Pueblo, Apache, Blackfoot,
and Serrano peoples. Patterns of Culture (1934), Benedict’s major contribution to anthropology,
compares Zuñi, Dobu, and Kwakiutl cultures in order to demonstrate how small a portion of the
possible range of human behaviour is incorporated into any one culture; she argues that it is the
"personality," the particular complex of traits and attitudes, of a culture that defines the
individuals within it as successes, misfits, or outcasts. Six years later, with the publication
of Race: Science and Politics, she refuted racist theory. From 1925 to 1940 she edited
the Journal of American Folklore.

During 1943–45 Benedict was a special adviser to the Office of War Information on dealing with
the peoples of occupied territories and enemy lands. Her long-standing interest in Japanese
culture bore fruit in The Chrysanthemum and the Sword (1946). She returned to Columbia in
1946, and in 1947 she was president of the American Anthropological Association. By that time
she was acknowledged as the outstanding anthropologist in the United States. Benedict
became a full professor at Columbia in 1948, and that summer she began her
most comprehensive research undertaking as director of a study of contemporary European and
Asian cultures. Upon her return from a trip to Europe, however, she fell ill and died.
MARGARET MEAD
Margaret Mead is best known for her studies and publications on cultural anthropology.
Synopsis

Margaret Mead was born December 16, 1901 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Mead did her undergraduate
work at Barnard College, where she met Franz Boas, who she went on to do her anthropology Ph.D. with
at Columbia. She became a curator of ethnology at American Museum of Natural History, where she
published the bestseller, Coming of Age in Samoa.

Early Life

Cultural anthropologist and writer Margaret Mead was born on December 16, 1901, in Philadelphia,
Pennsylvania. Mead is credited with changing the way we study different human cultures. The daughter
of a University of Pennsylvania economist and a feminist political activist, she graduated from Barnard
College in 1923, where she met Franz Boas. Studying with Boas, Mead went on to get a Ph.D. at
Columbia University in 1929.

Social Science Research

Mead was appointed assistant curator of ethnology at the American Museum of Natural History in 1926.
After expeditions to Samoa and New Guinea, she published Coming of Age in Samoa (1928)—which
became a best seller—and Growing Up in New Guinea (1930). All together, she made 24 field trips
among six South Pacific peoples.

Her later works included Male and Female (1949) and Growth and Culture (1951), in which Margaret
Mead argued that personality characteristics, especially as they differ between men and women, were
shaped by cultural conditioning rather than heredity. Some critics called her fieldwork impressionistic,
but her writings have proved enduring and have made anthropology accessible to a wider public.

Respected Work

Over the years, Mead became an in-demand lecturer, often tackling controversial social issues. She also
wrote a column for Redbook magazine and was a popular interview subject on a wealth of topics. She
continued to work for the American Museum of Natural History until 1969 and an adjunct professor at
Columbia University for a time. In 1972, Mead published her autobiography, Blackberry Winter.

Personal Life and Death

Married and divorced three times, Mead first wed Luther Cressman in 1923. The couple divorced in 1928.
She then married Reo Fortune, but that union ended in 1935. The next year, Mead took her third husband,
anthropologist Gregory Bateson. The couple sometimes collaborated in field research and had a child
together, a daughter named Mary Catherine Bateson. The couple divorced in 1950. Margaret Mead died
on November 15, 1978, in New York, New York.
HARRIET MARTINEAU

Harriet Martineau (June 12, 1802-June 27, 1876), a pioneering British journalist and writer, grew
up Unitarian and was for a time a Unitarian apologist. A free trade advocate, she provided
influential support for economic reform in Britain. The observational methodology she developed
traveling in America was a forerunner of modern sociology. In her writing on the theory of
education she advocated the kind and affectionate treatment of children. She is best remembered
for her contributions to the emerging woman’s movement and for the example she set as a woman
powerful in spheres dominated by men.
Harriet was born into a Unitarian family in Norwich, England. Her father, Thomas Martineau, was
a prosperous textile manufacturer. Her mother, Elizabeth, while caring for her eight children's
physical needs, was not demonstrative. Harriet, the sixth child, felt her mother's coolness and
negative comments greatly. Harriet lavished attention and affection on her two younger siblings,
James and Ellen. James Martineau later became a noted Unitarian minister and theologian.
Later in life, in 1849, shortly after her mother died, Martineau came to terms with her own difficult
childhood experience by writing a manual for the affectionate upbringing of children, Household
Education. In this she rejected the idea of original sin as a "fatal notion." "Teach a child that his
nature is evil," she wrote, "and you will make him evil." Although her educational theory was
indebted to the work of the philosophers Locke and Rousseau, she added to their ideas emphasis
on the importance of parental love in the development of a child’s positive self-image.
Progressive deafness became evident in adolescence. In early adulthood she was persuaded to
use an ear trumpet. Toward the end of her life she concluded that her deafness was "about the
best thing that ever happened to me," as it was both "the grandest impulse to self-mastery" and
an opportunity to help others similarly afflicted.
Harriet and her sisters were educated at home by older siblings and tutors; only the boys went to
university. On a lengthy visit to relatives in Bristol when she was sixteen, Harriet fell under the
spell of the Unitarian minister and educator, Lant Carpenter. She returned home more self-
confident than when she had left, partly as a result of her new religious self-possession, but largely
because her aunt had supplied some of the maternal affection withheld by her own mother.
From Carpenter and from her brother James (who also studied with Carpenter), Martineau
imbibed the necessarian doctrine of Joseph Priestley. According to this doctrine, every effect has
a cause rooted in the laws of the universe, which neither divine nor human will can change. She
found this belief comforting and stabilizing, giving her "strength under sorrow, perplexity, sickness,
and toil" for the rest of her life.
Martineau began writing for the Unitarian periodical, Monthly Repository, in 1822. In her second
article, "Female Education," following the path of Mary Wollstonecraft, with whom she may
already have been familiar, Martineau argued that apparent differences in intellect between men
and women were the product of educational discrimination. Martineau eventually became the
most frequent contributor to the Monthly Repository, the volume of her contributions peaking
1829-32.
In 1830 the British and Foreign Unitarian Association held a contest for essays in three categories,
proving Unitarian ideas superior to those of Catholics, Jews and Moslems. Martineau entered and
won all three prizes. These were, however, her last writings explicitly supporting Unitarianism.
Her religious ideas began to shift immediately afterwards. Although she retained a nominal
Unitarian connection and attended chapel regularly, she later judged that by 1831 she "had
already ceased to be an Unitarian in the technical sense." Martineau soon began to identify the
worship of God with the service of man. She took as her motto for life, "Whatsoever thy hand
findeth to do, do it with thy whole might." (Ecclesiastes 14:10).
After the failure of the Martineau manufacturing business in 1829, Harriet had been forced to fall
back upon needlework to make a living. The reception of the Unitarian prize essays encouraged
her resolution to try supporting herself by writing.
In 1831 Martineau conceived the idea of writing a series of stories called Illustrations of Political
Economy, based upon the utilitarian principles of Joseph Priestley and Jeremy Bentham—"the
greatest happiness of the greatest number"—and the free trade economics of Adam Smith. She
hoped to enable ordinary people to understand such things as tariffs, taxes and the national
budget. She had to trek door-to-door to find a publisher, but when the series was published during
1832-33, the two dozen volumes sold in phenomenal numbers. This success gave her a national
reputation, and enough money to allow her both to set up a household in London and to fund a
two-year tour of the United States.
Because of her reputation as a Unitarian apologist, Martineau was welcomed by American
Unitarians, including William Ellery Channing, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Catharine Maria Sedgwick,
and Charles and Eliza Follen. In 1835, while attending an anti-slavery meeting in Boston as an
observer, Martineau was invited to make a statement in favor of abolition. Although she had been
opposed to slavery prior to her visit to America, she hesitated to comply because, as she later
wrote, "I foresaw that almost every house in Boston, except those of the abolitionists, would be
shut against me; that my relation to the country would be completely changed, as I should
suddenly be transformed from being a guest and an observer to being considered a missionary
or a spy."
But she felt she had to speak the truth. In her statement Martineau denounced slavery as
"inconsistent with the law of God." After the meeting, as she had predicted, her entry into
American society was sharply circumscribed. The Follens, abolitionists themselves, accompanied
her on her tour of the western states.
Martineau had approached her American trip in the manner of a sociologist. She was determined
to evaluate and criticize what she saw, using only American terms of reference, and not British
standards of behavior. She traveled widely, covering 10,000 miles, making the acquaintance of
people of all classes. She based two books, Society in America, 1837, and Retrospect of Western
Travel, 1838, upon these experiences.
Although she was generally impressed by American democracy, in Society in America Martineau
expressed disappointment in the free enterprise system for the tendency to allow some, pursuing
"a sordid love of gain," to trample the rights of others. She thought that democracy could only be
preserved, in the long run, by the abolition of private property. And she considered that, given
America’s expressed values, the position of woman ought to have been far better than it actually
was, that the condition of American women differed from that of slaves only in that they were
treated with more indulgence. "Is it to be understood that the principles of the Declaration of
Independence bear no relation to half of the human race? If so, what is the ground of the
limitation?"
From 1839-44 the pain from an ovarian cyst kept her an invalid. She used opiates to deaden the
pain, but nothing stopped her writing. During this period she wrote a novel, a series of children’s
books, and a popular manual, Life in the Sick-Room, in which she drew upon her own current
experience to counsel others both how to bear up under illness and how to behave when visiting
the ill.
In the early 1840s mesmerism (or hypnotism, a non-standard medical practice based upon the
theory of animal magnetism) was attracting considerable attention in Britain. As much out of
scientific curiosity as desperation, Martineau allowed herself to be mesmerized. To her delight,
she found that her pain vanished. She came out of seclusion and, typically, immediately
advocated mesmerism for medical purposes.
Now happily free of pain, Martineau moved to Ambleside in the Lake District. There she built a
house, The Knoll, near the Wordsworths and the Matthew Arnolds. It was her home for the rest
of her life. In a letter to her sister Emily from Ambleside, Charlotte Bronte expressed admiration
of Martineau, for "the manner in which she combines the highest mental culture with the nicest
discharge of feminine duties."
In 1846 Martineau embarked with friends on an eight-month tour of the Near East, where she
studied ancient Egyptian religion and visited places mentioned in the Bible in Palestine. This trip
convinced her that religion had not been revealed all at once but had evolved. She had already
dropped most Christian doctrines but had clung to belief in an afterlife. Now she let that go as
well. When she returned to England she rushed into print with Eastern Life Present and Past. As
a travel book it was well received, though most readers considered her religious views atheistic.
Brother James's vitriolic review made permanent their separation which had been growing over
the years; they never spoke to one another again. British Unitarians, on the whole, continued to
claim her in spite of the embarrassment associated with the author of Eastern Life. Toward the
end of her life Martineau wrote, "I hope and believe my old co-religionists understand and admit
that I disdain their theology in toto, and that by no twisting of language or darkening of its
meanings can I be made out to have any thing whatever in common with them about religious
matters."
Martineau’s illness returned in 1854, rendering her an invalid for the rest of her life. She was
determined, nevertheless, to pursue a journalistic career which she had begun two years before
when she had become a leader writer for the London Daily News. Over the next fourteen years
she wrote more than 1600 items for the Daily News, "Doing pretty well for a dying person."
Martineau took a number of controversial stands in print. Notably, she opposed the notorious
Contagious Diseases Act, which allowed the police to treat any woman unaccompanied by a man
as a prostitute and which granted accused women no rights of defense or appeal. In spearheading
the fight against this act, she provided early leadership in a campaign that brought a large number
of women into the public discussion of politics, thereby helping to launch the modern British
women’s movement. Her writings on slavery have been credited with swaying English public
opinion in favor of the North in the American Civil war. A strong-minded and outspoken woman,
she offended many people. Even so, her journalism made hers a well-respected name in her time.
Although she lived for another decade, the progress of her illness forced Martineau to retire from
writing in 1866. Even in retirement she wrote letters for publication and lent her name to numerous
causes. During her last years she continued to serve as her nation’s conscience and as an icon
of Britain’s emerging feminist cause

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