The Best Books About Sociology

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Updated August 11, 2023 1.5K votes 204 voters 26.2K views
Over 200 Ranker voters have come together to rank this list of The Best Books About Sociology

List of best books about sociology, including jacket cover images when available. All these popular books on sociology are sorted by popularity, so the highest rated books are at the top of the list. This well-researched sociology bibliography includes out-of-print titles and generally contains the most popular, famous, or otherwise notable books - fiction or non-fiction - about sociology. If you're looking for a list of top books on sociology then you're in the right place.

The list you're viewing contains books like Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed and The solitary outlaw. You should be able to answer the question, "What are the best books about sociology?" after checking out this list.

This greatest sociology book list contains various bits of information, such as the author's names and what genre the books fall under. Most of these sociology books can be bought on Amazon with one easy click.

Sociology is a topic that both Jürgen Habermas and Upton Sinclair, Jr. have written books about, as have other fantastic authors.

Most divisive: Uncanny Networks
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  • Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste
    1

    Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

    Pierre Bourdieu
    10 votes
    • First Published: 1979
    • Original Language: French
  • The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life
    2

    The Elementary Forms of the Religious Life

    Émile Durkheim
    7 votes
    • First Published: 1912
    • Original Language: French
  • Discipline and Punish
    3

    Discipline and Punish

    Michel Foucault
    5 votes
    • First Published: 1975
    • Subjects: Social science, Philosophy, Criminal justice
    • Genres (Book): Psychology, History
    • Original Language: French Language
    Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison is a 1975 book by the French philosopher Michel Foucault. An analysis of the social and theoretical mechanisms behind the massive changes that occurred in Western penal systems during the modern age, it focuses on historical documents from France. Foucault argues against the idea that the prison became the consistent form of punishment due mainly to the humanitarian concerns of reformists. He traces the cultural shifts that led to the prison's dominance, focusing on the body and questions of power. Prison is a form used by the "disciplines", a new technological power, which can also be found, according to Foucault, in places such as schools, hospitals, and military barracks. In a later work, Security, Territory, Population, Foucault admits that he was somewhat overzealous in his descriptions of how disciplinary power conditions society; he qualifies and develops his earlier ideas.
  • Das Kapital
    4

    Das Kapital

    Karl Marx
    5 votes
    • First Published: 1867
    • Subjects: Economic development, Current events, Socialism, Economic history, Politics
    • Genres (Book): Philosophy, Treatise, Political philosophy, Economics
    • Original Language: German Language
    Das Kapital, Kritik der politischen Ökonomie, by Karl Marx, is a critical analysis of political economy, intended to reveal the economic patterns underpinning the capitalist mode of production.
  • The Rules of Sociological Method
    5

    The Rules of Sociological Method

    Émile Durkheim
    5 votes
    • First Published: 1895
    • Original Language: French Language
    The Rules of Sociological Method is a book by Émile Durkheim, first published in 1895. It is recognized as being the direct result of Durkheim's own project of establishing sociology as a positivist social science. Durkheim is seen as one of the fathers of sociology, and this work, his manifesto of sociology. Durkheim distinguishes sociology from other sciences and justifies his rationale. Sociology is the science of social facts. Durkheim suggests two central theses, without which sociology would not be a science: It must have a specific object of study. Unlike philosophy or psychology, sociology's proper object of study are social facts. It must respect and apply a recognized objective scientific method, bringing it as close as possible to the other exact sciences. This method must at all cost avoid prejudice and subjective judgment. This book was one of the defining books for the new science of sociology. Durkheim's argument that social sciences should be approached with the same rigorous scientific method as used in natural sciences was seen as revolutionary for the time. The Rules is seen as an important text in sociology and is a popular book on sociological theory courses.
  • Suicide
    6

    Suicide

    Émile Durkheim
    5 votes
    Suicide was a groundbreaking book in the field of sociology. Written by French sociologist Émile Durkheim and published in 1897 it was ostensibly a case study of suicide, a publication unique for its time that provided an example of what the sociological monograph should look like. Some argue that it is not a case study, which makes it unique among other scholarly work on the same subject.