Workshop on Historical Sociology, Shanghai University
Background Readings:
Classical sociology—
Elias, Norbert. The Civilizing Process.
Marx, Karl. The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte.
Tocqueville, Alexis de. The Old Regime and the French Revolution.
Weber, Max. Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism.
Overview—
Calhoun, Craig. Calhoun, Craig. 1996. “The Rise and Domestication of Historical Sociology.” The Historic Turn in the Human Sciences: 305–38.
Tentative Focuses for the Morning Sessions
Day 1: Second Wave Positivism/Revolution
Book:
Skocpol, Theda. 1979. States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Articles:
Lieberson, Stanley. 1991. “Small N’s and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases.” Social Forces 70 (2) (December 1): 307–320.
Sewell, William H. 1985. “Ideologies and Social Revolutions: Reflections on the French Case.” The Journal of Modern History 57 (1) (March 1): 57–85.
Day 2: Capitalism/Culture
Book:
Biernacki, Richard. 1995. The Fabrication of Labor: Germany and Britain, 1640-1914. University of California Press.
Articles:
Biernacki, Richard. 2005. “The Action Turn? Comparative-historical Inquiry Beyond the Classical Models of Conduct.” Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology: 75–91.
Day 3: Weberian/State
Book:
Gorski, Philip S. 2003. The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. University of Chicago Press.
Articles:
Foucault, Michel. 1977. “Nietzsche, Genealogy, History.” Language, Counter-memory, Practice: Selected Essays and Interviews: 139–64.
Gorski, Philip S. 2004. “The Poverty of Deductivism: A Constructive Realist Model of Sociological Explanation.” Sociological Methodology 34 (1): 1–33.
Day 4: Bourdieusian/Empire
Book:
Steinmetz, George. 2008. The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. University of Chicago Press.
Articles:
Steinmetz, George. 2004. “Odious Comparisons: Incommensurability, the Case Study, and ‘small N’s’ in Sociology.” Sociological Theory 22 (3): 371–400.
Gorski, Philip S. 2013. “Bourdieusian Theory and Historical Analysis: Maps, Mechanisms, and Methods” in Bourdieu and Historical Analysis, edited by Philip Gorski, pp. 327-366.
Day 5: Causal Mechanisms
