I have a student who wants to study anthropology, sociology, and politics at a major university, and she has an interview coming up.
It’s not my major field, so I’m looking for some input. She needs to familiarize herself with more formal systems with explanatory power on human cultural behaviors.
I’ve been teaching her historical materialism for months, which had been good in terms of her actually understanding the world, but I feel like I’d be doing her a disservice if that was her only tool, especially because her interviewers will most certainly be libs.
What other theories should she be aware of?
The Big 3 in sociology are Marx, Weber, and Durkheim. If she’s got a handle on Marx, especially texts like the mss. of 1844, she’s got a better start than most. For Weber, The Protestant Ethic is a good starter. For Durkheim, either Division of Labor or Elementary Forms of Religious Life. Of course there’s lots more recent stuff, but everyone still references those.
