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L.H Morgan
Sir Edward Evans
Ruth Benedict
Margaret Mead
G. H Mead
C.H Cooley
B. Malinowski
Alfred Schultz
Herbert Marcuse
Edmund Leach
Ralph Linton
Peter M. Blau
Franz Boase
Auguste Comte
Emile Durkheim
Herbert Spencer
Karl Mannheim
Karl Marx
Pareto
R.K Merton
Pitirim Sorokin
Talcott Parsons
Ferdinand Tonnies
Veblen
Sigmund Freud
Plato
Thomas Hobbes
Edward Burnett Taylor
Karl Polyani
Alfred Louis Kroeber
Erving Goffman
James George Frazer
Ralph Dahrendorf
Raymond Firth
Radcliffe Brown

Peter M. Blau

An Austrian sociologist who contributed substantially both theoretically and empirically to the scientific analysis of social structure. Initially he adopted a social psychological perspective focusing on interpersonal relations of workers in bureaucracies. His exploration of how formal structures of organizations constrain informal social relations of bureaucrats remains a classic of sociological analysis. Along with the Homans he established exchange theory in sociology. He was primarily concerned with applying small-scale exchange theory to large-scale issues.

Blau's orientation shifted from the social psychological to the social structural and from the micro to the macro.

Important Books:

  • On the nature of organizations
  • Exchange and Power in Social life
  • The American Occupational Structure

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