Elementary Forms of Religious Life should be #1!

I love teaching Intro this way: a combination of books and articles that demonstrate sociology as a science and exemplify the "imagination". Just ordered two (Gusfield and Gordon) that were previously unfamiliar to me. Thanks!

definitely missing Smiths' The Everyday World as Problematic

Oh, boy, Doug.
How about this version of your question? People send in their top ten lists and then you (a) list the 10 winners, but, more important, (b) estimate the overlaps in readers' lists (probably quite low). You could even go farther: Ask for the ten least-worthy-of-all-the-acclaim-they-get books and see the overlap of those lists with the top-ten.
Good luck!

Claude

I dont believe that any of these books uses contemporary statistical data in any deep sense the way many sociologists actually do. Don't spoonfeed. I would also add Simmel's Web of Group Affiliation

a few folks asked about the gender composition of the author list. i'm interested in having more women authors (as well as more scholars of color) but also just to say that arlie hochschild and avery gordon are women.

modern world system vol I, wallerstein. duh.

on the weberian tip, status and sacredness, murray milner. he takes weber's short essay on class, status, and party and explodes it out to a full-blown theory of status. i'm baffled that it hasn't become a landmark theoretical text and how-to manual for analyzing status systems in any contexts. (disclaimer: he was my advisor.)

neither is an easy read or contexts/tsp style writing, but the intellectual payoff is huge.

'The Web of Group Affiliation' Simmel

'The Social Construction of Reality' Berger & Luckmann

William Julius Wilson, When Work Disappears.

A comment that was posted on the accidental "hidden" double-post!

sanne p | Submitted on 2013/12/31 at 9:29 am

A little scary that all the authors are male.

A fine idea and excellent choices, Doug. I initially had the same reaction as Wellman, though I realize many quant classics haven't held up as well as their more interpretive contemporaries. I'm not sure I'd recommend any of these for your list, but many remain inspiring (and even breathtaking) for their ingenuity and clear-headedness in designing, compiling, and presenting sociological evidence on compelling questions. Writing Locked Out with Jeff Manza, I remember looking for exemplars in stratification and criminology in terms of ideas, design, and evidence. For me, these include Kohn's Class and Conformity, Hirschi's Causes of Delinquency (which reads a little like Durkheim's Suicide), Blau and Duncan's American Occupational Structure, Treiman's Occupational Prestige in Comparative Perspective, and Sampson and Laub's Crime in the Making. Today, I'd probably add Western's Punishment and Inequality (and a few contemporary multimethod books).

I can't wait to see the suggestions- I have a library budget I need to spend.

Here are a few thoughts on your list. My recommendations below are NOT my top 20, just some neglected sociological classics that deserve consideration for your course (and for the edification of young sociologists).

Kudos on your selection of "Black Reconstruction in America." Far and away Du Bois' best and most influential academic work (note I said "academic").

I concur that Goffmann should be included. While "Stigma" is a very good," "The Presentation of Self in Everyday Life" will still be read in a 100 years.

I agree that Bourdieu should also be included. However, "Weight of the World" is a questionable choice. It has 22 co-authors and seems more like Studs Turkel than an example of Bourdieu's best work like "Outline of a Theory of Practice" or "Distinction."

Simmel is the most obvious oversight. Unfortunately, the suggestion of "The Web of Group-Affiliation" overlooks that it is just a chapter in "Soziologie," as is "Conflict." The respective translations by Bendix and Wolff are a conveniently available in a single volume. "The Philosophy of Money" may end up his most canonical work.

For Joe Gusfield I would substitute "Symbolic Crusade: Status Politics and the American Temperance Movement" for "The Culture of Public Problems."

I make no mention of books already cited in this thread of comments:

"Democracy in America" Vol. 2 (Tocqueville)

"Twenty Years at Hull-House" or "Democracy and Social Ethics" (Jane Addams)

"The Civilizing Process" (Norbert Elias)

"The Reproduction of Mothering" (Nancy Chodorow)

"The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte" Karl Marx

"Middletown" (Robert Lynd and Helen Merrell Lynd)

"Ideology and Utopia" (Karl Mannheim)

"Human Nature and the Social Order" (Charles Cooley)

"Society in America" abridged ed. (Harriet Martineau)

"The Lonely Crowd" "(David Riesman)

"The Culture Industry" (Theodor Adorno)

"A Voice from the South" (Anna Julia Cooper)

"The Opium of the Intellectuals" Raymond Aron

"The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere" (Jurgen Habermas)

"The Power Elite" (C.W. Mills)

"Class and Class Conflict in Industrial Society" (Ralf Dahrendorf)

"Abortion and the Politics of Motherhood" Kristin Luker

"Political Parties" (Robert Michels)

"The Hidden Injuries of Class" or "Corrosion of Character" (Richard Sennett)

"Paths in Utopia" (Martin Buber)

I like your ideas Doug! I agree with Chris that it would be nice to see some quant/mixed methods and strat. Some suggestions, although most do not help increase diversity.

Wilson's "The Truly Disadvantaged"
Mills' "The Power Elite" or "White Collar"
Blau and Duncan's "The American Occupational Structure"
Massey and Denton's "American Apartheid"
Elder "Children of the Great Depression" (for life course)

and I second Monte's suggestion about "Presentation of Self"; I read parts of it as in my first Soc class in undergrad and it has stuck with me.

While I appreciate Wellman's, Chris', and Caren's lament about the lack of quant books on Doug's list,there might be a reason why these classic works lack long-distance legs--rhetoric.

In 'The Rhetoric of Social Research' (which also has an excellent essay by Claude Fischer), Joe Gusfield has an insightful essay, "Two Genres of Sociology: A Literary Analysis of 'The American Occupational Structure' and 'Tally's Corner.'"

AOS makes rhetorical use of statistical presentation. Gusfield points to the "dull quality of the language . . . The sentences are long and the language is quite formal. The style is marked by a deliberate lack of style. There is a seeming lack of concern for unique, unconventional, or surprising use of language. . . . Much of this is accomplished with long subordinate clauses . . . [which] has something of the continuous monotonic drumming."

Gusfield's is not denigrating AOS; however,its gravitas depends,in part,on an authoritative, scientific language (think ASR). He praises the work but demonstrates that its audience is limited to a technically literate community of specialists. Even within that community, it is read for content, not for style--not exactly a book one would re-read for pleasure, or recommend to a sociological generalist for edification and enjoyment.

Since my quant qualifications are limited to my fingers and toes, I am no one to judge. However, those of you versed in this genre are qualified. Just as Marx, Tocqueville, Weber and Simmel are still read despite their empirical shortcomings, what quantitative works transcend their findings? books that are a joy to re-read, partially because of their rhetorical style?

Every graduate introductory seminar should require Kenneth Burke's 'Rhetoric of Motives.' If you doubt Burke's sociological chops, read Gusfield's 'On Symbols and Society,' a marvelous anthology of Burke in the Heritage of Sociology Series.

Doug, I'm so glad that you are trying to develop this class and posted on here for feedback.

Why do you focus on great books rather than the broader approach of great works, which would include articles and essays? Yet another way to approach this is to assign works that are exemplars. Or do you think that "exemplar" is narrower than what you intend or is harder to pinpoint?

My favorite sociology class by far was a graduate seminar at Wisconsin taught by Duneier for which we read classic ethnography books. I'm not sure whether he would mind my posting the list on here, so maybe I could email it to you. My experience in his class motivated me to draft syllabi of classes (one and two-semester versions) on great works. I shifted to great works after reading many interesting and useful older articles and taking into account how fields in sociology tend to be either book or article oriented.

As for the requirement that it be "a real book not a collection," some classic works, such as Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure, are then left out. The Sociological Imagination, which I think is useful for grad students to read, is mainly a collection.

One way to think about what to include is to see if there are important works that seem to be falling through the cracks, which can vary by department. Some of the suggested books might already be assigned in a seminar on theory, for example.

Weight of the World is a great, great book! So glad to see it on your list. My most favourite book, though, is Education and the Working Class by Jackson and Marsden (1962).