In this study, Filipe Carreira da Silva and Mónica Brito Vieira propose revisiting the history of social and political thought in a radically innovative way. The history of the sociological canon is told here through the connected stories of six classic books: The Souls of Black Folk by W.E.B. Du Bois, Mind, Self and Society by G.H. Mead, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life by Émile Durkheim, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism by Max Weber, The Economic-Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844 by Karl Marx and Democracy in America by Alexis de Tocqueville.

Following the history of these classic books of social and political thought throughout the 19th and 20th centuries, Carreira da Silva and Brito Vieira help us to rediscover the collective of agents, including their authors, but also editors, translators, commentators and many others, behind each of them. Books are not only made of people. However, for Carreira da Silva and Brito Vieira, the publishing process has a material and technological dimension that is not easily separated from its symbolic dimension; one and the other involve both collaboration and a continuous battle over disciplinary belonging, ideological positioning and the political significance of each book and its author.

Find the book on the Mundos Sociais website.