Comparative Historical Sociology, ASA

Category: New Publications

  • Recent Articles by Our Members

    Recent Articles by Our Members

    Here are some recent publications from members of our section:

    Burchardt, Marian, and Ann Swidler. “Transplanting Institutional Innovation: Comparing the Success of NGOs and Missionary Protestantism in Sub-Saharan Africa.” Theory and Society 49 (2020): 335-64. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11186-020-09380-7

    Hammer, Ricarda. 2020. Decolonizing the Civil Sphere: The Politics of Difference, Imperial Erasures, and Theorizing from History. Sociological Theory. https://doi.org/10.1177/0735275120921215

    Luft, Aliza. 2020. Theorizing Moral Cognition: Culture in Action, Situations, and Relationships.” Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World. 6:1-15.

    Luft, Aliza. 2020. “Religion in Vichy France: How Meso-Level Actors Contribute to Authoritarian Legitimation.” European Journal of Sociology. 1-35.

    Luft, Aliza. 2020. “Three Stories and Three Questions about Participation in Genocide.” Journal of Perpetrator Research. 3(1), 196-206.

    Singh, Sourabh. 2020. To rely or not to rely on common sense? Introducing critical Realism’s insights to social network analysis. Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour. https://doi.org/10.1111/jtsb.12241

  • Rational Choice Sociology: Essays on Theory, Collective Action and Social Order

    Rational Choice Sociology: Essays on Theory, Collective Action and Social Order

    Michael Hechter. Rational Choice Sociology: Essays on Theory, Collective Action, and Social Order.  Cheltenham, UK: Edward Elgar, 2019.

    Whereas rational choice theory has enjoyed considerable success in economics and political science, due to its emphasis on individual behavior sociologists have long doubted its capacity to account for non-market social outcomes. Whereas they have conceded that rational choice theory may be an appropriate tool to understand strictly economic phenomena – that is, the kinds of social interactions that occur in the gesellschaft– many sociologists have contended that the theory is wholly unsuitable for the analysis of the kinds of social interactions in the gemeinschaft – such as those occurring in families, in social groups of all kinds, and in society at large. In a variety of non-technical chapters, Rational Choice Sociology shows that a sociological version of rational choice theory indeed can make valuable contributions to the analysis of a wide variety of non-market outcomes, including those concerning social norms, family dynamics, crime, rebellion, state formation and social order.

  • The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance and Mutiny in the Age of Sail

    The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance and Mutiny in the Age of Sail

    Steven Pfaff and Michael Hechter, The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance and Mutiny in the Age of Sail. Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2020.

    The Age of Sail has long fascinated readers, writers, and the general public. Herman Melville, Joseph Conrad, Jack London et al. treated ships at sea as microcosms; Petri dishes in which larger themes of authority, conflict and order emerge. In this fascinating book, Pfaff and Hechter explore mutiny as a manifestation of collective action and contentious politics. The authors use narrative evidence and statistical analysis to trace the processes by which governance failed, social order decayed, and seamen mobilized. Their findings highlight the complexities of governance, showing that it was not mere deprivation, but how seamen interpreted that deprivation, which stoked the grievances that motivated rebellion. Using the Age of Sail as a lens to examine topics still relevant today – what motivates people to rebel against deprivation and poor governance – The Genesis of Rebellion: Governance, Grievance, and Mutiny in the Age of Sail helps us understand the emergence of populism and rejection of the establishment.

  • Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere

    Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere

    Breaching the Civil Order: Radicalism and the Civil Sphere. 2020. Edited by Jeffrey Alexander, Trevor Stack and Farhad Khosrokhavar. Cambridge, Cambridge University Press. ISBN 9781108427234 (hardback)

    It is not only a paradox but something of an intellectual scandal that, in an era so shaken by radical actions and ideologies, social science has had nothing theoretically new to say about radicalism since the middle of the last century. Breaching the Civil Order fills this void. It argues that, rather than seeing radicalism in substantive terms – as violent or militant, communist or fascist – radicalism should be seen more broadly as any organized effort to breach the civil order. The theory is brilliantly made flesh in a series of case studies by leading European and American social scientists, from the destruction of property in the London race riots to the public militancy of Black Lives Matter in the United States, from the performative violence of the Irish IRA and the Mexican Zapatistas to the democratic upheavals of the Arab Spring, and from Islamic terrorism in France to Germany’s right-wing Pegida.

  • First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers

    First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers

    Richard Lachmann, First-Class Passengers on a Sinking Ship: Elite Politics and the Decline of Great Powers (Verso, 2020)

    The extent and irreversibility of US decline is becoming ever more obvious as America loses war after war and as one industry after another loses its technological edge. Lachmann explains why the United States will not be able to sustain its global dominance. He contrasts America’s relatively brief period of hegemony with the Netherlands’ similarly short primacy and Britain’s far longer era of leadership.

    Decline in all those cases was not inevitable and did not respond to global capitalist cycles. Rather, decline is the product of elites’ success in grabbing control of resources and governmental powers. Not only are ordinary people harmed, but also capitalists become increasingly unable to coordinate their interests and adopt policies and make investments necessary to counter economic and geopolitical competitors elsewhere in the world.

    Conflicts among elites and challenges by non-elites determine the timing and mold the contours of decline. Lachmann traces the transformation of US politics from an era of elite consensus to present-day paralysis combined with neoliberal plunder, explains the paradox of an American military with an unprecedented technological edge unable to subdue even the weakest enemies, and the consequences of finance’s cannibalization of the US economy

  • Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector

    Above the Fray: The Red Cross and the Making of the Humanitarian NGO Sector

    Shai M. Dromi, Lecturer on Sociology, Harvard University
    University of Chicago Press, 2020

    Policymakers and activists often assume that humanitarian aid is best provided by NGOs, which are generally seen as impartial and neutral. In Above the Fray, Shai Dromi investigates how the international community has come to overwhelmingly trust humanitarian NGOs, when historically other forms of relief work were also valued. Drawing on archival research, Dromi traces the genesis of the humanitarian NGO sector to the mid-nineteenth-century Red Cross, and illustrates how its orthodox Calvinist beginnings shaped the policies that today govern the humanitarian field. Theoretically, Dromi argues for the key role belief systems play in establishing new social fields and institutions.

    Link to the book on the publisher’s website: https://www.press.uchicago.edu/ucp/books/book/chicago/A/bo46479924.html (there’s a 20% discount for online orders until 3/15 using the code UCPNEW at checkout)

    Link to my own website for more information: www.shaidromi.com

  • Special issue on Orlando Patterson. Theory and Society 48(6). Dec. 2019.

    Special issue on Orlando Patterson. Theory and Society 48(6). Dec. 2019.

    This special issue celebrates the legacy of Patterson’s Slavery and Social Death and his contributions to comparative and historical sociology. Volume authors include John Bodel, Fiona Greenland, Renisa Mawani, Michael Ralph, Maya Singhal, George Steinmetz, and Orlando Patterson.