A. R. Radcliffe-Brown
(1881–1955)Radcliffe-Brown was one of the most influential of the founding figures of social anthropology, through his teaching in universities in England, North America, South Africa, and Australia. ...
ABC TV
A US national television network broadcaster that has been one of the major investors—along with CBS and NBC—in sports programming in the USA. These three network broadcasters dominated much of the ...
Abebe Bikila
1932–1973 Ethiopian runner who won two Olympic gold medals in the marathon.Abebe Bikila was born in Mout, Ethiopia. Before competing as a runner he was a member of the ...
absolutism
A state-form typical of societies in the process of transition from feudalism to capitalism and in which power is concentrated in the person of a monarch, who has at his or her disposal a centralized ...
abstracted empiricism
A term coined by C. Wright Mills in The Sociological Imagination (1959) to refer to the work of those sociologists who equate empiricism with science and make a fetish of quantitative research ...
acephalous
A term used to describe the political system of societies without centralized state authority—such as, for example, traditional African lineage political systems (see J. Middleton and D. Tait, Tribes ...
achieved status
A high social status acquired by individual effort or open competition (for example, through winning at sport), rather than from the status the person is born with. Compare ascribed status.
actionalism
A term generally associated with the name of French sociologist Alain Touraine, and not to be confused with the ‘action frame of reference’ (see action theory) proposed by Talcott Parsons. Beginning ...
Adidas
(established 1920)This leading global producer of sports footwear, equipment, and leisure wear is widely recognized by its trefoil logo, launched in 1972, the more geometric performance logo ...
administrative theory
An early form of organization theory, pioneered mainly by Henri Fayol (1841–1925), which was concerned principally with achieving the ‘most rational’ organization for co-ordinating the various tasks ...
