La Sociología del siglo XX

Abstract

The 20th century confirms the definitive institutionalisation (academic and scientific)
of sociology as established public information, which is something that neither the pioneers
of the 18th century nor the great creators of the 19th century (from Comte to Spencer, without
forgetting Tocqueville or Marx) had achieved. Starting out from the data compiled by the ISA at
its Montreal Conference, this paper aims at answering the question by using the most important
sociology texts of the last century, taking advantage of these to establish a chronology of
the development of sociological thought within the framework of a sociology of sociology.
Examined here are the great institutionalisers of the early 20th century and the compilers who,
between 1920 and 1968, came to form two large schools (functionalist and Marxist), opposed
to one another in many ways but converging in fundamental beliefs, and the constructivist or
hermeneutical turn-around of sociology as from 1968 (which still prevails), and the subsequent
return to the Great Theory