Historical Sociology

Talking among Themselves? Weberian and Marxist Historical Sociologies as Dialogues without 'Others'

by Gurminder K Bhambra

Sociology’s orientation to history is based around agreement on the importance of key substantive issues concerning... more Sociology’s orientation to history is based around agreement on the importance of key substantive issues concerning the emergence of modernity and the related ‘rise of the West’, as well as agreement around a stadial idea of progressive development and the privileging of Eurocentred histories in the construction of such a framework. Within these areas of broad agreement, however, there are also key points of contestation between the strong forms of macro-sociology as embodied, in particular, by Marxist and Weberian approaches, for example, Brenner, Anderson, and Wallerstein on the one hand, and Runciman, Giddens and Mann, on the other. The sites of contestation include addressing the precise nature of the origins of capitalism, the importance of the commercial versus the agrarian mode of production in the transition to capitalism, or arguments about how later developing countries might accommodate forms of modernity already established, for example, as in the multiple modernities debates. What these debates all have in common is that they can be carried out in the context of a standard framework of comparative sociology, a framework that I will argue is unable to address the issues raised by the turn to postcolonial studies and global history.

Westernisation, Rationalisation, Amalgamation: Party Politics in Intercivilisational Encounters

by Vit Simral

2011 The three anthropological approaches to neoliberalism, in International Social Science Journal, Vol 61 (202) : 351–364.

by Mathieu Hilgers

International Social Science Journal, Volume 61, Issue 202, 2011: 351–364.

For around fifteen years now, anthropology has been engaged in the study of neoliberalism. What contribution does the... more For around fifteen years now, anthropology has been engaged in the study of neoliberalism. What contribution does the discipline have to make to a debate largely monopolized by economics and political science? To answer this question, the present article returns to the major texts and highlights the three perspectives from which anthropology has approached neoliberal expansion: culturalist, systemic and the approach based on governmentality. Each has its own epistemological presuppositions and a specific conception of anthropology, globalization and neoliberalism. The article highlights the relevance and limitations of these approaches.

2012, « The Historicity of the Neoliberal State », in Social Anthropology, volume 20, n° 1, pp. 80-94

by Mathieu Hilgers

Debate with Loic Wacquant “Three Steps to a Historical Anthropology of Actually Existing Neoliberalism." Social Anthropology, 20, 1, with responses in the next issue: Jamie Peck, Nick Theodore, and Neil Brenner, Stephen Collier, Daniel Goldstein, Johanna Bockman, Don Kalb...

Max Weber's Protestant Ethic: Do Protestants Work More?

by Uzair Mughal

"This paper uses a 1975-76 Time Use Study to explore Max Weber’s claim that Protestants work more than... more "This paper uses a 1975-76 Time Use Study to explore Max Weber’s claim that Protestants work more than non-Protestants holds true in the given dataset. We used the data available from four days of time diaries kept by 1519 households which had details like total work time, sleep time and whether Protestant or not. Our tests show that Weber’s famed “Protestant Ethic” holds true in this case. There is a positive correlation between Protestantism and total work time, which is economically and statistically significant."

Le concept d'élites / The concept of elites

by Vanessa Van Renterghem

Vom Nutzen der Geschichte, vom Wissen der Akteure und vom Nachteil der Multi-Sited Ethnography-Welthandel, Wirtschaftskrise und Standortwettbewerb in …

by Patrick Neveling

Religión, memorias y mitos.Las artes de narrar en la construcción de identidades.

by L. Nicolás Guigou

Religión, memoria y mitos. Las artes de narrar en la construcción de identidades.
Religión, memoria y mitos. Las artes de narrar en la construcción de identidades.
En: Anuario de Antropología Social. Montevideo: DAS-NORDAN, 2008. ISSN: 1510-3846

En la presente investigación se ha procurado unificar diversos ejes relacionados
con un conjunto de... more En la presente investigación se ha procurado unificar diversos ejes relacionados
con un conjunto de tematizaciones de interés antropológico,
intentando ahondar en la esfera de lo religioso en tanto eje
de construcción identitaria, a través de la indagación de las
mitologías, memorias y narrativas posibles en el marco de la
memoria colectiva y social de un grupo específico: la comunidad
rural denominada San Javier (Departamento de Río Negro,
Uruguay). La matriz religiosa de esta Colonia se afinca en su
propio proceso fundacional: San Javier fue fundado en el año
1913, en el Uruguay, por un grupo de inmigrantes rusos pertenecientes
a la “Comunidad Nueva Israel” (Novo Israilskaia
Obchina), corriente religiosa escindida de la Iglesia Ortodoxa
Rusa a mediados del siglo XVIII. En el presente artículo refiero
a la profundización en las narrativas de los habitantes de San
Javier, estudiando las diferentes temporalidades que atraviesan
a las mismas y las fragmentaciones espacio-temporales sobre
las cuales estas narrativas se construyen.

Celuloide líquido

by Fernando Bonete Vizcaino

La importancia sociológica del tiempo actual, la posmodernidad, es ya indudable en todas las dimensiones vitales.... more La importancia sociológica del tiempo actual, la posmodernidad, es ya indudable en todas las dimensiones vitales. "Celuloide líquido" pretende realizar un recorrido y síntesis de sus principales postulados a través del lenguaje cinematográfico, el ámbito comunicativo de masas imperante en el último medio siglo. Las teorías del gran pensador posmoderno Zygmunt Bauman son desarrolladas siguiendo los ejemplos fílmicos propuestos por la ingente obra del profesor Juan Orellana al respecto, para finalizar proponiendo una salida sociológica al individualismo y "relaciones líquidas" basada en el humanismo cristiano del filósofo Gustave Thibon.

The Irish State & the Bethany Home - submission to Minister for Education, Ruairi Quinn (24 May 2011)

by Niall Meehan

Submitted to Ruairi Quinn TD, Minister for Education, at Leinster House meeting, 24 May 2011, by delegation consisting of Derek Leinster, Noleen Belton, Patrick Anderson McQuoid, Niall Meehan, Joe Costello TD, Robert Dowds TD.

‘The institution is kept very well is clean & comfortable… It is well recognised that a large number of... more ‘The institution is kept very well is clean & comfortable… It is well recognised that a large number of illegitimate children are delicate… from their birth’

Winslow Sterling Berry, Deputy Chief Medical Adviser, Department of Local Government and Public Health, Ireland, after visiting Bethany Home, Orwell Road, Rathgar, Dublin, 25 January, 6 October 1939 (see p. 8).

‘A beautiful institution…, seemed to be well-run and spotlessly clean… I closed the place down and sacked the matron, a nun, and also got rid of the medical officer. The deaths had been going on for years. They had done nothing about it.’

JamesDeeny, Chief Medical Adviser, Department of Health, Ireland, after visiting Bessborough Mother and Babies Home, Cork, in the mid to late 1940s (see p.11).

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See also,
Church & State and the Bethany Home
http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/277737/

Proposal to include Bethany Home within the remit of Senator Martin McAleese’s investigation of state interactions with Magdalene institutions

by Niall Meehan

Submission to Minister of State, Justice, Equality & Law Reform Kathleen Lynch (14Jul11) by Niall Meehan and Joe Costello TD

Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in the Irish Times, 4 Nov 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’... more Since 1917, according to Mary Raftery (writing in the Irish Times, 4 Nov 2004), ‘Protestant children in need of care’ were ‘essentially dealt with by private institutions’. She suggested that the state’s attitude was one of ‘hands-off’. Indeed, in the 1937 Cussen report on the ‘Reformatory and Industrial School System’ and the 1970 Kennedy report on the same subject and again in the 2009 Ryan Commission report on institutional child abuse, it is stated that problematic Protestants were dispersed by the Courts among Protestant clergy who were expected to deal with matters privately.

Hence, there is a large gap in official knowledge as a result of implementing a sectarian welfare and detention system, albeit one in which the dominant confessional community was regulated more so than its smaller Christian counterpart. This practice had no statutory basis but statute law was used to enforce it, often against the stated intent of the law. Research into Bethany Home indicates that this is one reason for neglect and death in the Bethany Home.

Official records explain why officials decided not to interfere when confronted with evidence of unusually high child mortality and medical neglect in the Bethany Home. We mainly summarise them here.

Direct State involvement

Bethany was a place of detention for women convicted of crimes from the trivial to the most serious. There appears to be no statutory basis for the directing of offending Protestant females into the Bethany home until 1945, but then only in the case of female Protestant children and teenagers. Incarceration of women generally in the Bethany Home was, however, an official practice.

------------------
See also,
Church & State and the Bethany Home
http://gcd.academia.edu/NiallMeehan/Papers/277737/

Pathways to genocide: the process of ideological radicalisation

by Elisabeth Hope Murray

PhD dissertation, University of Edinburgh; awarded August 2011

Classes and nations in recent historical sociology

by Daniel Chernilo

The Financial Crisis as an Expression of Macrohistorical Trends - World Hegemony, Neoliberal Globalization, and Financialization in 21st Century Capitalism - Shane Willson

by Shane Willson

Many studies try to understand the financial crisis that began in 2007 by utilizing short-term perspectives, but few... more Many studies try to understand the financial crisis that began in 2007 by utilizing short-term perspectives, but few step back far enough to see how macrohistorical transformations created the environment for a crisis of immense magnitude. In this work, I apply Arrighi’s theory of systemic cycles of accumulation to the current crisis and find that, while this theory elucidates some broad features of the global political economy that fostered the crisis, Arrighi’s explicit limitations lead to further areas of inquiry that help to understand this crisis in its specificity.

By analyzing large-scale historical lines unique to the late 20th century, I show that financialization and globalization – mediated through US world hegemony and neoliberalism – created feedback loops promoting, not just a quantitative rise in the use of finance, but qualitative changes to overarching production, distribution, and consumption practices throughout the global economy. Some of these changes include the integration of many new and varied actors into the financial sector, the financialization of the globalized production process, the increased use of finance by lower and middle classes to reproduce labor in the face of stagnant wages, and the increased use of derivatives for profit-making.

Additionally, I elaborate market-level changes in the US financial sector and show how the aforementioned macro-level transformations expressed themselves through the crisis. The use of “slice and dice” and “originate and distribute” models crippled the functions of derivatives and promoted their widespread misuse, even in the face of highly regarded theories of risk management. A historical view of derivatives shows that, while their use may be a fundamental cause of the crisis, derivatives express deeper trends in the evolution of capitalism: derivatives increase alienation, change the way we view ownership, and increase competition in our globalized political economy.

This long-term view allows me to elaborate how the nexus of financialization, globalization, neoliberalism, and world hegemony came together to create the most far-reaching financial crisis since the Great Depression.

Choosing Lesser Evils: The Role of Business in the Development of the German Welfare State from the 1880s to the 1990s (Diss.)

by Thomas Paster

Social Network Analysis of Cuneiform Archives: A New Approach, to appear in H.D. Baker and M. Jursa (eds), Proceedings of the Second START Conference in Vienna (17-19th July 2008) Too much data? Generalizations and model-building in ancient economic history on the basis of large corpora of documentary evidence (PART I: main text)

by Caroline Waerzeggers

This article will be published with an appendix giving a brief discussion of applications of social network analysis in history. The appendix is not included in this draft.

Archaeology, Early Complex Societies, and Comparative Social Science History

by Michael E. Smith

Smith, Michael E.
2012 Archaeology, Early Complex Societies, and Comparative Social Science History. In The Comparative Archaeology of Complex Societies, edited by Michael E. Smith, pp. 321-329. Cambridge University Press, New York.

"CE QUI CHANGE ET LE DÉJÀ FAIT" Diachronie et synchronie dans les sciences sociales et historiques

by Bastien Bosa

Published in: Revue européenne des sciences sociales no 49-2 – p.169-196

Résumé. Cet article propose une réflexion sur la place de la diachronie et de la synchronie dans la recherche... more Résumé. Cet article propose une réflexion sur la place de la diachronie et de la synchronie dans la recherche sociale, en partant de l’une des contradictions indépassables pour toute appréhension du temps. Celui-ci peut être pensé sous l’angle de la concomitance (dont chacun a fait l’expérience et qui revient à penser le temps comme une « succession de présents différents ») ou sous l’angle des processus (c’est-à-dire de la modification permanente des conditions de l’expérience en fonction d’une différentiation entre passé, présent et futur). Nous nous interrogerons sur ce que signifie travailler dans la diachronie ou dans la synchronie, en soulignant notamment la difficulté à distinguer clairement les deux approches : de nombreuses recherches habituellement pensées comme diachroniques ne le sont peut-être pas et, réciproquement, des approches pensées comme synchroniques s’articulent presque nécessairement avec une pensée des processus.

Abstract. This article proposes a reflection on the place of the synchrony-diachrony distinction in social research. The understanding of time is structured by a recurring contradiction: time can be thought of in terms of “concomitant experiences” (time appears in that perspective as a “succession of different presents”) or in terms of “processes” (insisting on the permanent modifications of social life on the basis of a differentiation between past, present and future). I will try to present as clearly as possible diachronic and synchronic approaches, before stressing the difficulty to separate them: some researches usually thought of as diachronic might include other dimensions, while conversely, investigations presented as synchronic almost necessarily articulate processual perspectives.

Historical Sociology, Modernity, and Postcolonial Critique

by Gurminder K Bhambra

Standard historical-sociological accounts of modernity are predicated on notions of rupture and difference: a temporal... more Standard historical-sociological accounts of modernity are predicated on notions of rupture and difference: a temporal rupture between an agrarian, pre-modern past and an industrial, modern present, and a cultural difference between the ‘West’ and the ‘Rest’. While sociology’s long-standing linear accounts of modernization, based on notions of societal convergence, have been tempered by a recent emphasis on ‘multiple modernities’, the wider postcolonial critique has not been sufficiently answered. One of the most significant charges of this critique has been that the universality ascribed to sociological concepts such as modernity has been based on a parochial reading of the histories of Europe and the US as internally homogenous and qualitatively distinct from histories elsewhere. In other words, the world historical character of such concepts rests on a partial understanding of what happened in the West with little consideration of events in other places – more specifically, of the necessarily global conditions of these events. In this article, I assess the contributions of four developments in sociology and history which seek to take into account the world beyond the West in our understandings of modernity: namely, third wave cultural historical sociology, multiple modernities, micro-histories and global history. These different endeavours provide promising avenues of redress to earlier Eurocentred narratives, but to be effective they must not only provide us with ‘new data’ but also participate in the dialogue of how these new considerations may prompt us to think differently about the concepts in question.

Hierarchy Domination Nature Critical Theory Social Ecology and Historical Inquiry

by Damian White

Historical social theory, nature and the domination of nature debate - Bookchin, the production of space/nature (Smith/Lefebvre) and beyond...bits on stones and bones and the early environmental histories of early humans....issues I am still very interested in......The paper posits a natural affinity between Neil Smith's production of nature thesis and much of empirical work emerged in archeology and anthropology on early humans and their environment....It would seem to me that we have been involved in the production of nature much longer than is commonly recognized (it didn't just start with capitalism/modernity) and this has real implications for how we think critical theory & critical ecological theory.