Classical theory in sociology is often seen as a foundation story of great men theorizing European modernity.

However, sociology actually emerged from a cultural dynamic centered on tensions of liberalism and empire.
Global expansion and colonization provided sociology with its main conceptual framework, data, key problems,
and methods. After the early-20th-century crisis, a profoundly reconstructed American discipline emerged,
centered on difference and disorder within the metropole. The retrospective creation of a "classical" canon
solved certain cultural dilemmas for this enterprise and generated a discipline-defining pedagogy.

In recent introductory sociology textbooks, the focus is on founding fathers Karl Marx, Emile Durkheim, and
Max Weber. This view is repeated in more sophisticated form in advanced training, with American graduate
programs often having courses in which students are introduced to "classical theory" and make a close study of
certain texts written by Marx, Durkheim, and Weber. Sociologists take this account of their origins seriously,
and classical texts are widely cited.