Comparative Historical Sociology, ASA

Category: New Publications

  • 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

  • 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.

  • New Book Announcement: The Migration- Development Regime by Rina Agarwala

    How can we explain the causes and effects of global migration from the perspective of sending states and migrants themselves? The Migration and Development Regime introduces a novel analytical framework to help answer this question in India, the world’s largest emigrant exporter and the world’s largest remittance-receiving country. 

    Drawing on an archival analysis of Indian government documents, a new data base of Indian migrants’ transnational organizations, and unique interviews with poor and elite Indian emigrants, recruiters, and government officials, this book exposes the vital role the Indian state, as well as its poor and elite emigrants, have long played in forging and legitimizing class inequalities within India through their management of international emigration. 

    Since the 1800s, the Indian state has differentially used poor and elite emigrants to accelerate domestic economic growth at the cost of class inequalities, while still retaining political legitimacy. At times, the Indian state has forbidden emigration, at other times it has promoted it.  At times, Indian emigrants have brought substantial material inflows, at other times, they have brought new ideas to support new development agendas within India.  But throughout, Indian emigration practices have deepened class inequalities by imposing different regulations, acquiring different benefits from different classes of emigrants, and making new class pacts–all while remaining invisible in political and academic discussions on Indian development.  On the flip side, since the early 1900s, poor and elite emigrants have resisted and re-shaped Indian development in response to state migration practices. 

    By taking this long and class-based view, this book recasts contemporary migration not simply as a problematic function of “neoliberalism” or as a development panacea for sending countries, but as a long and dynamic historical process that sending states and migrants have long tried to manage.  In doing so, it re-defines the primary problems of migration, exposes the material and ideological impact that migration has on sending state development, and isolates what is truly novel about contemporary migration. 

    OUP Page: The Migration-Development Regime – Paperback – Rina Agarwala – Oxford University Press (oup.com)

  • New Article from Our Members

    Riccioni, I. and Halley, J.A., 2021. Performance as Social Resistance: Pussy Riot as a Feminist Avant-garde. Theory, Culture & Society, DOI: 10.1177/02632764211032726

  • Logical Skills: Social-Historical Perspectives

    Brumberg-Chaumont, J. and Rosental, C. eds., 2021. Logical Skills: Social-Historical Perspectives. Springer Nature.

    This contributed volume explores the ways logical skills have been perceived over the course of history. The authors approach the topic from the lenses of philosophy, anthropology, sociology, and history to examine two opposing perceptions of logic: the first as an innate human ability and the second as a skill that can be learned and mastered. Chapters focus on the social and political dynamics of the use of logic throughout history, utilizing case studies and critical analyses.
    Specific topics covered include:

    • the rise of logical skills
    • problems concerning medieval notions of idiocy and rationality
    • decolonizing natural logic
    • natural logic and the course of time

    Logical Skills: Social-Historical Perspectives will appeal to undergraduate and graduate students, as well as researchers in the fields of history, sociology, philosophy, and logic. Psychology and colonial studies scholars will also find this volume to be of particular interest.

  • The Demonstration Society

    Rosenthal, Claude. (2021) The Demonstration Society. Translated by Catherine Porter. MIT Press

    Today, as in the past, public demonstrations are not only tools to prove, persuade, and promote, but also fundamental forms of social interaction and exchange.

    YouTube demos of makeup products by famous influencers, demonstrations of strength during street protests, demonstrations of military might in North Korea: public demonstrations are omnipresent in social life. Yet they are often perceived as isolated events, unworthy of systematic examination. In The Demonstration Society, Claude Rosental explores the underlying dynamics of what he calls a “demonstration society.” He shows how, both in today’s world and historically, public demonstrations constitute not only tools to prove, persuade, and promote, but fundamental forms of interaction and exchange, and, in some cases, attempts to lead the world.

    Rosental compares demos with other forms of public demonstrations, drawing out both their peculiarities and common features. He analyzes the processes through which demonstrations are conceived and carried out, as well as the skills of their producers. He also compares contemporary demos with historical demonstrations including theaters of machines in the Renaissance, public demonstrations of natural philosophy in the seventeenth century, and demonstrations of the magic lantern in the nineteenth century. Above and beyond the entertainment they sometimes provide, demonstrations are experienced as intense moments that broadly involve alliances, material and symbolic goods, and, more generally, the future of individuals and collectives. Rosental elucidates the many ways in which we live today, as in the past, in a society of demonstration.

  • The Arab Spring Abroad: Diaspora Activism against Authoritarian Regimes

    The Arab Spring revolutions of 2011 sent shockwaves across the globe, mobilizing diaspora communities to organize forcefully against authoritarian regimes. Despite the important role that diasporas can play in influencing affairs in their countries of origin, little is known about when diaspora actors mobilize, how they intervene, or what makes them effective. This book addresses these questions, drawing on over 230 original interviews, fieldwork, and comparative analysis. Examining Libyan, Syrian, and Yemeni mobilization from the US and Great Britain before and during the revolutions, Dana M. Moss presents a new framework for understanding the transnational dynamics of contention and the social forces that either enable or suppress transnational activism. This book:

    • Advances new theory by demonstrating how four social forces-conflict transmission, transnational repression, resource conversion and geopolitical support-help or hinder diaspora activism
    • Compares social movement groups from communities that have previously received little attention in the sociology of migration, transnationalism, and ethnic and racial minorities
    • Integrates insights from sociology, political science, and area studies

    Cambridge is offering a discount code of 20% the hardback price; enter MOSS2021 at checkout when purchasing.

  • Recent Publications by Our Member

    Recent writings by our members Didem Türkoğlu and Jason C. Mueller:

    Türkoğlu D. (2021) Ever Failed? Fail Again, Fail Better: Tuition Protests in Germany, Turkey, and the United States. In: Cini L., della Porta D., Guzmán-Concha C. (eds) Student Movements in Late Neoliberalism. Social Movements and Transformation. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-75754-0_11

    Mueller, J. C. and McCollum, J. (2021) ‘A Sociological Analysis of “OK Boomer”’, Critical Sociology. doi: 10.1177/08969205211025724.

    Mueller, Jason C. 2021. “Neoliberal Order Breakdown and the US Withdrawal from Afghanistan.” CounterPunch.Org. September 13, 2021. https://www.counterpunch.org/2021/09/13/neoliberal-order-breakdown-and-the-us-withdrawal-from-afghanistan/.

    Mueller, Jason C. 2021. “Outcomes of the US ‘War on Terror’: The Afghanistan-Somalia Comparison.” Section on Marxist Sociology. September 1, 2021. https://marxistsociology.org/2021/09/outcomes-of-the-us-war-on-terror-the-afghanistan-somalia-comparison/.

  • Movements and Parties: Critical Connections in American Political Development

    Tarrow, S., 2021. Movements and Parties: Critical Connections in American Political Development. Cambridge University Press.

    How do social movements intersect with the agendas of mainstream political parties? When they are integrated with parties, are they coopted? Or are they more radically transformative? Examining major episodes of contention in American politics – from the Civil War era to the women’s rights and civil rights movements to the Tea Party and Trumpism today – Sidney Tarrow tackles these questions and provides a new account of how the interactions between movements and parties have been transformed over the course of American history. He shows that the relationships between movements and parties have been central to American democratization – at times expanding it and at times threatening its future. Today, movement politics have become more widespread as the parties have become weaker. The future of American democracy hangs in the balance. This book:

    • Offers a new account of how the interactions between social movements and parties have been transformed over the course of American history
    • Examines how these interactions have affected the character and resilience of American democracy
    • Sheds new light on critical episodes in American politics from the Civil War era to the present day
    • Tracks historical changes in the relative strength of movements and parties and shows that movement politics have become more widespread as the parties have become weaker