The following events related to sociology occurred in the 1880s.

1881

Pierre Guillaume Frédéric le Play creates the sociological magazine La Reforme Sociale.

1882

• Friedrich Nietzsche's The Gay Science is published.
• Leslie Stephen's The Science of Ethics is published.

1883

• Lester Frank Ward's Dynamic Sociology is published.
• Francis Galton's Inquiries into Human Faculty and Its Development is published.
• Thomas Hill Green's Prolegomena to Ethics is published.
• Ludwig Gumplowicz's Race Struggle is published.
• Carl Menger's Investigations into the Method of the Social Sciences with Special Reference to Economics is published.
• Friedrich Nietzsche's Thus Spoke Zarathustra is published.
• Henry Sidgwick's Principles of Political Economy is published.
• William Sumner's What Social Classes Owe Each Other is published.

Births

• February 8: Joseph Schumpeter

Deaths

• March 9: Arnold Toynbee
• March 14: Karl Marx

1884

• Friedrich Engels' The Origin of the Family, Private Property and the State is published.
• Carl Menger's The Errors of Historicism is published.
• Gaetano Mosca's Theory of Governments and Parliamentary Government is published.
• Foundation of the Fabian Society

1885

• Ludwig Gumplowicz's Outline for Sociology is published.
• Sir Henry James Sumner Maine's Popular Government is published.
• The Second Volume of Karl Marx's Capital is published (edited by Engels).

1886

• Friedrich Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil is published.
• Jose Rizal's Dimanche des Rameaux is published in Berlin.

1887

• Friedrich Nietzsche's On the Genealogy of Morals is published.
• Ferdinand Tönnies' Gemeinschaft and Gesellschaft is published.

1888

• James Bryce's The American Commonwealth is published.

Births

• July 6: Eugen Rosenstock-Huessy

Deaths

• February 3: Henry Maine

1889

• Jane Addams establishes The Social Settlement in Chicago.
• Henri Bergson's Time and Free Will is published.
• Jose Rizal's Filipinas dentro de cien años, a socio-political essay, is published in Madrid.