Durkheim never saw a social media pile-on, but he worried about what holds societies together and how they draw moral boundaries. This article introduces his ideas on social facts, solidarity, crime and anomie, and uses them to analyse contemporary “culture wars” over statues, values and offence – and to show where his framework now needs updating.
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Weber wrote about files and offices, not welfare portals, tickets and AI chatbots. Yet his ideas on rationalisation, bureaucracy and legal-rational authority still help make sense of why “the system” feels both neutral and overwhelming. This article introduces Weber for undergraduates and tests his relevance against contemporary forms of algorithmic power.
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Marx wrote about factories and nineteenth-century class conflict, not delivery apps or algorithmic ratings. So how far can his ideas take us today? This article introduces Marx’s core concepts and tests them against platform capitalism and the gig economy, showing what still works, what does not, and where later theorists extend his framework.
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