1950s in sociology

1950

• Theodor Adorno's The Authoritarian Personality is published.
• George Homans's The Human Group is published.
• Thomas Humphrey Marshall's Citizenship and Social Class.
• Richard Titmuss' The Problems of Social Policy is published.
• Thomas Humphrey Marshall launches the British Journal of Sociology.

1951

• Theodor Adorno's Minima Moralia is published.
• Maurice Duverger's Political Parties is published.
• Theodor Geiger's Social Mobility within the Danish Middle-Class is published.
• Rosa Luxemburg's The Accumulation of Capital is published.
• C. Wright Mills' White Collar: The American Middle Classes is published.
• Talcott Parsons' The Social System is published.
• Robert C. Angell serves as president of the ASA.
• Society for the Study of Social Problems is founded.
• British Sociological Association is founded by Morris Ginsberg and others

1952

• Hans Jurgen Eysenck's Scientific Study of Personality is published.
• Melville J. Herskovits's Economic Anthropology: A study in Comparative Economics is published.
• Robert E. Park's Human Communities is published.
• Talcott Parsons' and Edward Shils' Towards a general theory of action is published.
• Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's The Structure and Function of Primitive Society is published.
• Dorothy Swaine Thomas' The Salvage is published.
• Dorothy Swaine Thomas serves as the first woman president of the American Sociological Association.

1953

• Morris Ginsberg's The Idea of Progress: A Revaluation is published.
• Morris Ginsberg's On the Diversity of Morals is published.
• Alfred Kinsey's Sexual Behaviour in the Human Female is published.
• C. Wright Mills' Character and Social Structure is published.
• Ludwig Wittgenstein's Philosophical Investigations is published.
• Max Weber's The Sociology of Religion is published.
• Samuel A. Stouffer serves as president of the ASA.

1954

• Lewis Coser's The Functions of Social Conflict is published.
• Hans Jurgen Eysenck's Psychology of Politics is published.
• David V. Glass' Social Mobility in Britain is published.
• David V. Glass' Trend and Pattern of Fertility in Britain is published.
• Alvin Ward Gouldner's Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy is published.
• Edmund Leach's Political Systems of Highland Burma is published.
• C. Wright Mills' Mass Society and Liberal Education is published.
• Siegfried Frederick Nadel's Nupe Religion is published.
• Talcott Parsons' Essays in Sociological Theory is published.
• Florian Znaniecki serves as president of the American Sociological Association.
• Thomas Humphrey Marshall becomes Chair of Sociology at the LSE

1955

• Theodor Adorno's Prisms is published.
• Gordon Allport's Becoming is published.
• Milovan Djilas' The New Class is published.
• Lucien Goldmann's The Hidden God; a study of Pascal and Racine is published.
• George Alexander Kelly's The Psychology of Personal Constructs is published.
• Paul Lazarsfeld's Personal Influence is published.
• Herbert Marcuse's Eros and Civilization is published.
• Joan Woodward's The Dockworker is published.
• Barbara Wootton's Foundations of Wage Policy is published.
• Leopold Von Weise retires as chairperson of the German Society for Sociology and is succeeded by Helmuth Plessner.

1956

• Vere Gordon Childe's Man Makes Himself is published.
• Viola Klein's and Alva Myrdal's Women's Two Roles: Home and Work is published.
• David Lockwood's Some Remarks on "The Social System" is published.
• Charles Wright Mills's The Power Elite is published.
• Pitirim Sorokin's Fads and Foibles in Modern Sociology and Related Sciences is published.
• Otto Stammer's Functions in the Party Unit is published.
• Asher Tropp's School teachers : the growth of the teaching profession in England and Wales from 1800 to the present day is published.
• Max Weber's The Soteriology of the Underprivileged is published.
• November 4 - The use of force by the Soviet union to destroy the Hungarian Uprising turns many doctrinal Marxists away from the Marxist-Leninist model.

1957

• Hans Jurgen Eysenck's Dynamics of Anxiety and Hysteria is published.
• Edward Franklin Frazier's Black Bourgeoisie is published.
• Terrence Morris's The Criminal Area: A study in Ecology is published.
• Stanislaw Ossowski's Class Structure in the Social Consciousness is published.
• Karl Polanyi's Trade and Markets in the Early Empires is published.
• Karl Popper's The Poverty of Historicism is published.
• Alfred Radcliffe-Brown's A Natural Science of Society is published.
• Jean-Paul Sartre's The Problem of Method is published.
• Victor Turner's Schism and Continuity in an African Society is published.
• Karl Wittfogel's Oriental Despotism: A comparative Study of Total Power is published.
• Michael Young's and Peter Willmott's ''Family and kinship in East London
• Revised edition of Robert K. Merton's Social Theory and Social Structure is published.
• Robert K. Merton serves as president of the ASA.

1958

• Simone De Beauvoir's The Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter is published.
• Georges Gurvitch's The Spectrum of Time is published.
• Fritz Heider's The Psychology of Interpersonal Relations is published.
• David Lockwood's Blackcoated worker : a study in class consciousness is published.
• Helen Merrell Lynd's On Shame and the Search for Identity is published.
• C. Wright Mills's The Causes of World War 3 is published.
• Gunnar Myrdal's Beyond the Welfare State is published.
• Irene Taeuber's The Population of Japan is published.
• Richard Titmuss' Essays on the Welfare State is published.
• Michael Young's The Rise of the Meritocracy, 1870–2023: An Essay On Education and Equality is published.
• the Jewish Journal of Sociology is established in London, Maurice Freedman becomes the first editor.

1959

• Oliver Cox's Foundations of Capitalism is published.
• Ralf Dahrendorf's Class and Class Conflict in an Industrial Society is published.
• Ernest Gellner's Words and Things is published.
• Erving Goffman's Presentation of Self in Everyday Life is published.
• Morris Janowitz's Sociology and the Military Establishment is published.
• Oscar Lewis' Five Families; Mexican Case Studies In The Culture Of Poverty is published.
• C. Wright Mills's The Sociological Imagination is published.
• Geoffrey Duncan Mitchell's Sociology : the study of social systems is published.
• Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery is published.
• Barbara Wootton's Social Science and Social Pathology is published.
• Kingsley Davis serves as president of ASA.
• Barbara Wootton becomes president of the British Sociological Association.
• Helmuth Plessner retires as chairperson of the German Society for Sociology and is succeeded by Theodor Adorno

Deaths

• April 27: William F. Ogburn
• May 20: Alfred Schütz