1800s: Martineau · Tocqueville · Marx · Spencer · Le Bon · Ward · Pareto · Tönnies · Veblen · Simmel · Durkheim · Addams · Mead · Weber · Du Bois · Mannheim · Elias Relational sociology is a collection of sociological theories that emphasize relationalism over substantivalism in explanations and interpretations of social phenomena and is most directly connected to the work of Harrison White and Charles Tilly in the United States and Pierpaolo Donati and Nick Crossley in Europe.
[11] Overall, "relational theorists reject the notion that one can posit discrete, pre-given units such as the individual or society as ultimate starting points of sociological analysis.
Among early and mid-20th century sociologists, the most prominently relational theorists are John Dewey, Arthur F. Bentley, Pierre Bourdieu, Norbert Elias, and Niklas Luhmann.
Pierpaolo Donati contends that Simmel, specifically the concept Wechselwirkung, is "the first one to give sociology the "relational turning point.
These sociologists included Harrison White, Charles Tilly, Mustafa Emirbayer, David Gibson, Ronald Burt, Mimi Sheller, Jeff Goodwin, Ann Mische and Melissa Fischer.
[23][24] In addition to White, presenters included: John Levi Martin, Patrik Aspers, Eiko Ikegami, Ann Mische, Stephan Fuchs and Sophie Muetzel.
[25] In October 2009, sociologist Yanjie Bian hosted the International Conference on Relational Sociology at the Institute for Empirical Social Science Research of Xi'an Jiaotong University.
[30][31] This conference included the work of Frederick Wherry, Jennifer Haylett, Sarah Quinn, Josh Whitford[32] and Nina Bandelj.
[34] In addition to Simmel, Marx, Elias and Luhmann, such German relational sociologists include: Leopold von Wiese, Karl Mannheim, Theodor Litt, Alfred Schütz, and Helmuth Plessner.