I've found sociology and its approaches to be profoundly insightful. Even though I'm a trained philosopher, one of my favorite thinkers is not a philosopher, but Max Weber, the founding father of sociology. Economists probably have more influence due to the fact that economics is perceived to be a "hard science". The irony, of course, is that it isn't.
The irony is that economics is merely a highly-specialised branch of sociology. Economies are part of how our societies work.
I remember my high-school chemistry teacher saying "don't tell the physics teacher that chemistry is just a highly specialised branch of physics!". It's the same with economics and sociology.
Max Weber's theories on Protestantism being the cause of success in America have been pretty much thoroughly debunked when you control for differences in aptitude amongst the religious sects that arrived to America in it's early history. Not to mention his work led to the founding ideas of the Frankfurt School lol.
His theories on the Protestant ethic are controversial[1], but hardly "thoroughly debunked." As far as the Frankfurt School, uh, who cares? They drew from many political and social philosophies (including Marx who we often find at odds with Weber). It just seems completely uncharitable and tangential to bring it up.
While Weber over-stated his case, he has definitely not been "debunked". Check out _Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation_ by Becker et al[0], it's a survey of the literature and contains a lot of empirical evidence in support of the Weberian view of the Reformation.
