Sociological theory in the context of "Sociologists"

Ferdinand Tönnies (German: [ˈtœniːs]; 26 July 1855 – 8 April 1936) was a German sociologist, economist, and philosopher. He was a significant contributor to sociological theory and field studies, best known for distinguishing between two types of social groups, Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft (community and society). He co-founded the German Sociological Association together with Max Weber and Georg Simmel and many other founders. He was president of the society from 1909 to 1933, after which he was ousted for having criticized the Nazis. Tönnies was regarded as the first proper German sociologist and published over 900 works, contributing to many areas of sociology and philosophy. Tönnies, Max Weber, and Georg Simmel are considered the founding fathers of classical German sociology. Though there has been a resurgence of interest in Weber and Simmel, Tönnies has not drawn as much attention.

Sociologists have defined a collectivity as a social system, as an aggregate of organisms,or as a definable social order wherein the members have a sense of membership.Collectivities comprise a central element of much modern sociological theory.

In terms of sociological categories, a community can seem like a sub-set of a social collectivity.In developmental views, a community can emerge out of a collectivity.

Carl May FAcSS (born 1961, in Farnham, Surrey) is a British sociologist. He researches in the fields of medical sociology and Implementation Science. Formerly based at Southampton University and Newcastle University, he is now Professor of Health Systems Implementation at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Carl May was elected an Academician of the Academy of Learned Societies in the Social Sciences in 2006. He was appointed a Senior Investigator at the National Institute for Health and Care Research (NIHR) in 2010. He was elected an Honorary Fellow of the Royal College of General Practitioners in 2020. He has honorary professorial appointments in primary care at the University of Melbourne, and in public health at Monash University.

May is best known for his contributions to Implementation Science and his work is represented by many studies of the interaction between health technologies and their users. In Implementation Science his work investigates how innovations become routinely embedded in health care and other organizational systems. This research has led to Normalization Process Theory, developed with Tracy Finch and others, including Victor Montori. This is a sociological theory of the implementation, embedding, and integration of new technologies and organizational innovations. May and colleagues have applied Normalization Process Theory to explaining patient non-compliance with treatment, proposing that a proportion of non-compliance is structurally induced by healthcare systems themselves as patients are overburdened by treatment. To counter this, they have proposed Minimally Disruptive Medicine, which seeks to take account of its effects on patients' workload.

Pierre Bourdieu (UK: /bʊərˈdjɜː/, US: /bʊərˈd(j)uː/; French: [pjɛʁ buʁdjø]; Gascon: Pèir Bordièu; 1 August 1930 – 23 January 2002) was a French sociologist and public intellectual. Bourdieu's contributions to the sociology of education, the theory of sociology, and sociology of aesthetics have achieved wide influence in several related academic fields (e.g. anthropology, media and cultural studies, education, popular culture, and the arts). During his academic career he was primarily associated with the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris and the Collège de France.

Bourdieu's work was primarily concerned with the dynamics of power in society, especially the diverse and subtle ways in which power is transferred and social order is maintained within and across generations. In conscious opposition to the idealist tradition of much of Western philosophy, his work often emphasized the corporeal nature of social life and stressed the role of practice and embodiment in social dynamics. Building upon and criticizing the theories of Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Max Weber, Émile Durkheim, Claude Lévi-Strauss, Erwin Panofsky and Marcel Mauss among others, his research pioneered novel investigative frameworks and methods, and introduced such influential concepts as the cultural reproduction, the habitus, the field or location, symbolic violence, as well as cultural capital, social capital, and symbolic capital (as distinct from traditionally recognized economic forms of capital). Another notable influence on Bourdieu was Blaise Pascal, after whom Bourdieu titled his Pascalian Meditations.