William Graham Sumner

William Graham Sumner was an American sociologist and political economist who taught at Yale. His writing examined social customs, class, and laissez-faire liberalism.

Folkways: Informal customs and habits that arise in groups and guide everyday conduct. Sumner made this concept central to his account of how customs form and persist.
The Forgotten Man: Sumner’s figure for the ordinary taxpayer whose labor supports policies benefiting others. The essay uses this figure to criticize redistributive schemes and political favoritism.
Yale University: A private research university founded in New Haven, Connecticut, in 1701. Sumner taught political and social science at Yale for most of his academic career.
Progressivism: A reform movement that sought to address problems of industrialization through political and social change. Progressive reformers favored interventions Sumner regarded as threats to liberty or economic adjustment.
Cultural relativism: The approach of understanding beliefs and practices within their cultural contexts rather than judging them by another culture’s standards. Sumner’s account of customs emphasized how social standards develop within particular groups.
Mores: Social norms regarded as morally binding and essential to a group’s way of life. Sumner distinguished morally charged customs from ordinary folkways.
What Social Classes Owe to Each Other: Sumner’s 1883 book arguing that class-based reform often burdens taxpayers and restricts individual liberty. This book offers his clearest sustained critique of class legislation.
Herbert Spencer: An English philosopher who applied evolutionary ideas to society and became influential in nineteenth-century social thought. Spencer’s evolutionary sociology helped shape the intellectual setting in which Sumner worked.
Welfare state: A system in which government provides social protections and services to support citizens’ well-being. The welfare state embodies the public responsibility Sumner generally resisted.
Ethnocentrism: The tendency to judge other cultures by the standards of one’s own. Sumner used the concept to describe how groups treat their own customs as natural and superior.

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Pitirim SorokinCompared with: Sumner’s evolutionary framework contrasts with Sorokin’s emphasis on recurring cultural systems.