Comparative Historical Sociology, ASA

Category: Announcements

  • 2024 ASA Mini-Conference

    Intersectional Solidarity: Emerging Comparative Historical Perspectives

    Comparative Historical Sociology Mini-Conference
    McGill University
    August 9, 2024

    Register for Free: http://bit.ly/4c7WbBq (lunch provided)
    chsminicon2024@gmail.com

    State Violence and Empire
    Luis Rubén González Márquez · Heidi Nicholls · Corey R. Payne

    Gender, Reproduction, & State Power
    Joss Greene · Khoa Phan Howard · Esther Moraes

    Land, Settlement, and Post-coloniality
    Lauren Crosser · Ben Kaplow · Lindsay Maurer ·Rahardhika Utama

    Democracy, the State, & Redistribution

    Samantha Agarwal · Nabila Islam · Juho Korhonen

    Racial Categories and Racialization
    Elizabeth Adetiba · Sharan Kaur Mehta & Sarah Iverson · Demar Lewis

    Solidarity and Labor
    Benjamin Abrams · Rishi Awatramani · Youbin Kang · Bahar Tabakoglu

    Plenary: Unsettling Settler Colonialism
    Julian Go · James Fenelon · Areej Sabbagh-Khoury · Yvonne Sherwood

  • New Book: After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology

    What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that have long justified comparison’s use: that cases can be unproblematically compared as though they are independent of one another, that comparison can reliably yield valid causal inference, and that comparative methods can grapple with questions of meaning, sequence, and process that are central to historical explanation. Yet they remain reluctant to abandon comparison altogether, not least because comparisons are still manifestly useful in the research process.

    After Positivism presents a bold new set of warrants and methodologies for comparison that takes these criticisms fully into account. The contributors to this book marshal a wide array of postpositivist approaches to knowledge to reconstruct the analytic potential of comparison for a new generation of social scientists. In addition to providing fresh answers to classic questions about case selection and causal inference, authors ponder the role comparison plays in a world where social phenomena are demonstrably time-, space-, and concept-dependent; where causation is typically conjunctural; where social structures and groups emerge and die; and where important objects of inquiry can be understood only in terms of relationships, emergent properties, or contingent and irregular effects. Engaging and timely, this book will be of interest to all those who seek to improve our explanations of historical change in social-scientific research.

    ABOUT THE AUTHORS

    Nicholas Hoover Wilson is associate professor of sociology at Stony Brook University. He is the author of Modernity’s Corruption: Empire and Morality in the Making of British India (Columbia, 2023).

    Damon Mayrl is associate professor of sociology at Colby College. He is the author of Secular Conversions: Political Institutions and Religious Education in the United States and Australia, 1800–2000 (2016).

    https://cup.columbia.edu/book/after-positivism/9780231208239: New Book: After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology

  • Xiaohung Xu Memorial Conference (May 24th)

    Xiaohong Xu Memorial Conference (May 24)

    Professor Xiaohong Xu, sociologist of politics, culture, revolution, political economy, and China, passed away on December 12, 2023. His death interrupted a period of great creativity and productivity. In his last years, Xiaohong saw several texts he had dedicated years to complete going into print and others assume form and coherence.

    On May 24, almost half a year after Xiaohong’s departure, Michigan Sociology and the Lieberthal-Rogel Center for Chinese Studies will hold a day of symposium to honor Xiaohong and showcase his original and evocative sociological thinking. The symposium will feature prominent scholars in Xiaohong’s fields, who will discuss his work in four panels, each dedicated to one of his recent contributions.

    A hybrid event. You may attend in person or virtually.

    Department of Sociology

    University of Michigan

    Weiser Hall 10th Floor
    500 Church St, Ann Arbor, MI 4810

  • CHS Section Mid-Year Town Hall (4/19)

    CHS Section Mid-Year Town Hall (4/19)

    We will be convening for our annual section mid-year town hall on April 19, 2024, at 12pm EST on zoom. Now part of our normal section practice, the town hall will allow us to communicate and check-in about section news and updates, the miniconference, the ASA programming, etc. It is also a chance to raise any ideas, concerns, or questions from the membership. 

    Please email me (jonathan.wyrtzen@yale.edu) if you have an agenda topic you would like included. 

  • New Book: Selina Gallo-Cruz- Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Global Nonviolence as Contentious Performance.

    Congrats to Selina Gallo-Cruz, who recent published  has published an Element in Contentious Politics with Cambridge University Press, Have Repertoire, Will Travel: Global Nonviolence as Contentious Performance.

  • New Book: Kristin Surak- The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires

    The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires (Harvard University Press) 

    By Kristin Surak

    https://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog.php?isbn=9780674248649

    Summary:

    Citizenship has become a hot commodity.  Now over a dozen countries allow wealthy individuals to naturalize in exchange for a set donation or investment, and more than 50,000 people use such citizenship by investment programs acquire “golden passports” each year. If the sale of citizenship has grabbed headlines, much less is known about the geopolitical powerplays that define this global market. We typically think of citizenship as a status that secures rights within a country. However, the value of citizenship by investment usually hinges on the rights that citizenship secures outside the country, including visa-free access and business opportunities. This grants third countries and supra-national powers substantial influence over how other states admit new members. Drawing on six years of fieldwork in sixteen countries and a new dataset, The Golden Passport: Global Mobility for Millionaires (Harvard University Press) lays bare the operation of the global market in golden passports, focusing on the geopolitical powerplays that both define and disrupt these global flows. Traveling the world of elitie mobility challenges us to reconsider our basic assumptions about citizenship, inequality, and globalization.

  • 2024 CHS Miniconference

    August 9, 2024

    Montreal 

    Intersectional Solidarity: Emerging Comparative Historical Perspectives

    The 2024 CHS Conference will center emerging comparative historical perspectives on the theme of intersectional theory, analysis, and solidarity. The planning committee encourages the submission of papers around, but not limited to, the following themes:

    • Indigeneity, Indigenous peoples, decolonial politics and intersectional solidarity 
    • Empire, nation, nationalism, citizenship, migration, and borders
    • Race, ethnicity, class, gender, and sexuality 
    • Revisiting modernity: politics, religion, identity
    • States, Political Economy, and (Post)Coloniality

    Please submit a title and abstract of not more than 500 words to the planning committee at chsminicon2024@gmail.com by February 29, 2024.


    Please contact any member of the organizing committee, if you have questions:  Samantha Agarwal (sagarwal@american.edu), Rishi Awatramani (rawatra1@jhu.edu), Berfu Aygenc (berfuaygenc@gmail.com), Benjamin Kaplow (benjamin.kaplow@yale.edu), Veda Hyunjin Kim (vhkim@owu.edu)

  • CALL FOR PAPERS- 50th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE OF SSH

    CALL FOR PAPERS FOR THE 50th ANNIVERSARY ISSUE OF SOCIAL SCIENCE HISTORY

    What is the relationship between the past and the present? What is the nature of how change occurs or does not occur over time? This anniversary issue explores the multiple possibilities. For example, in some cases, the present is seen in the past, as a repetition of it. This can be conceptualized as cycles of history that reoccur over time. However, another conceptualization is the past as a creator of the present—that is, the past in different ways leads to the present. These paths might be linear, path dependent, or historically constructed. Yet another idea is that past and present are unique, and in fact, unrelated.

    Thus, the relationship between the past and present takes many different forms. Scholars who emphasize the repercussions of a new and unexpected shock imply discontinuity and rupture between past and present. In contrast, the literatures that document the later life consequences of early life or intergenerational experience tend to focus attention on continuities and the past as a creator of the present. Similarly, the long-term persistence of the structures of inequality suggests a process of replication and even stasis. Even social scientists who use statistical models to analyze historical data over time implies some kind of relationship between the past and later points. Variety exists within fields: both technology history and historical institutionalism offer up examples of developments that are path dependent along with ones that represent a complete break from the past.  Whatever the field, the model, the literature and most importantly, the historical question, how the relationship between the past and present is perceived, is key to social science history research. These are just a few of the many possibilities!

    The Fall 2026 issue is the 50th anniversary of Social Science History. For this issue, the theme of “past and present” will be explored. Papers should address this theme in some way, either theoretically, empirically, substantively (or some combination of them). All papers must be suitable for publication in Social Science History (https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/social-science-history) and will undergo peer review before publication.

    200-word abstracts are due by April 2nd, 2024, and a final paper must be ready for review by January 15, 2025. Abstracts should be sent to socialsciencehistory@ssha.org.

  • CHS Panels / Call for Papers for ASA 2024

    CHS Panels / Call for Papers for ASA 2024 in Montreal (Deadline February 26, 2024)

    We are very excited to share our section panels being organized for next year’s ASA. These include an invited session, “Towards an Intersectional Comparative-Historical Sociology,” and three panels open for paper submission plus our roundtables session. 


    The online portal is open for submissions! The deadline is February 26, 2024 at 11:59 p.m. Eastern. 

    Comparative and/or Historical Sociology: Open Session (*Open to papers/extended abstract submission)

    We welcome submissions on topics of comparative and/or historical sociology, broadly defined.
    (Session Organizer) Vasfiye Betul Toprak, University of Virginia; (Session Organizer) Simeon J. Newman 

    Colonial Legacies and Contemporary Politics (*Open to papers/extended abstract submission)
    Historical sociologists have increasingly turned attention to tracing various ways colonial and imperial state practices and rule have shaped social, political, and economic life in successor independent states and post-imperial metropoles. This panel welcomes papers across a wide range of regions and cases that address questions of colonial continuity or change related to contemporary political outcomes. These include, but are not limited to, liberal / authoritarian systems, identity politics and movements, political contention, ethnic and racial classifications, citizenship, and legal systems.
    (Session Organizer) Yael H Berda, Hebrew University of Jerusalem 

    Field Theory, History, and Sociological Analysis: New Directions (*Open to papers/extended abstract submission)
    Field theory has increasingly been deployed as a vigorous framework for historical sociological analysis. Applied to history, Bourdieu’s field theory underscores the importance of examining processes of contestation among social actors as a means to highlight both the objective features of their social world and their subjective perception of it. This session invites papers that theoretically and empirically engage and advance field theory and its insights into a wide range of historical cases.
    (Session Organizer) Sourabh Singh, Florida State University
    (Discussant) George Steinmetz, University of Michigan–Ann Arbor 


    Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology Roundtables (*Open to papers/extended abstract submission)
    We welcome submissions on topics of comparative and/or historical sociology, broadly defined.
    (Session Organizer) Vasfiye Betul Toprak, University of Virginia; (Session Organizer) Simeon J. Newman

  • Trajectories (Fall 2023)

    Trajectories_Fall-2023Download