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Comparative & Historical Sociology

Spring 2007 Newsletter of the ASA Comparative and Historical Sociology section Volume18, No. 2 ______

SECTION OFFICERS Symposium on 2006-2007 Locked in Place: Chair William G. Roy State-Building and Late University of California-Los Angeles Industrialization in India Chair-Elect Philip S. Gorski Yale University Vivek Chibber Past Chair New York University Richard Lachmann SUNY-Albany Princeton University Press 2003 Secretary-Treasurer Geneviève Zubrzycki University of Michigan

Why did India, despite a democratic framework and a Council Members state commitment to economic growth, fail to reach Jeffrey Broadbent, U Minnesota (2009) the levels of economic development that South Korea Miguel A. Centeno, Princeton (2007) reached in the 1950s and 1960s? Vivek Chibber’s Vivek Chibber, New York U (2009) Locked in Place revives the comparative historical Marion Fourcade, Berkeley (2008) Mara Loveman, UW-Madison (2008) study of economic development and argues for the James Mahoney, Northwestern (2007) central role of capitalists in sending India’s develop- mental state awry. In this issue Jeffery Paige, Elisa- beth Clemens, and Leo Panitch examine Chibber’s Newsletter Editor claims and Chibber responds. Monica Prasad Northwestern University

◊ Webmaster Dylan John Riley Also in this issue: Arthur Stinchcombe, William University of California, Berkeley Sewell, Jr., and Charles Tilly review each others’ recent books; and Amy Kate Bailey, Rebecca Emigh, and Richard Lachmann reflect on why and how they entered Comparative Historical Sociology. Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

India and the Myth of the Anti- Korea. The Korean case is based on secondary materials but is considerably more than simply a Developmental State shadow comparison. The review of the secondary literature appears exhaustive and Chibber even Jeffery Paige develops a novel explanation of the success of University of Michigan business-state relations in Korea—self-interest. While most accounts emphasize the relative Vivek Chibber’s Locked in Place is in many re- autonomy of the Korean state and its power to dis- spects an exemplary work of comparative histori- cipline a weak capitalist class, Chibber argues that cal sociology fully deserving of the many awards it was the turn to export-led industrialization aided it has received. There are a number of features that by Japan’s transfer of its light manufacturing to make this work stand out. Korea that made cooperation with the Korean state both necessary and profitable for Korean capital- First, the book is based on extensive research on ists. This comparison adds to our understanding of archival materials including both state documents the Indian case because the absence of a turn to and personal papers for the Indian post-colonial export-led industrialization (and the absence of period. These materials have never before been Japan) further limited prospects for a successful exploited by either sociologists or historians. developmental state there. These primary sources are not simply deployed in Furthermore, the book is compara- tive in the sense that Marc Bloch annunciated long ago--a hypothesis Challenges the conventional wisdom on all developed in one context is tested in sides, addresses problems of fundamental another. Indeed the comparisons of this kind both explicitly, with other theoretical and practical importance, and attempts at late-late development, or proposes novel solutions with broad appli- implicitly, with counterfactuals, are one of the book’s strengths. Both cation to the global South. This is what so- kinds of comparison are not static ciology should be at its best. parallel descriptions but theoreti- cally productive and generative.

Third, as Achin Vanaik has ob- a historical narrative but used to develop and test served in his review of Locked in generalizable sociological propositions. Chibber Place in the New Left Review (2004, p. 154), it moves easily from the particular to the general represents “a powerful assault on the intellectual (and back) even though a substantial literature in assumptions, arguments and claims on which the comparative historical sociology has denied that prevailing neo-liberal consensus in India rests.” such a combination is desirable or even possible. And not only in India The dominant neo-liberal Detailed descriptions of historical events and per- narrative portrays India as one of the principal ex- sonalities are linked to theoretical propositions of amples of the failure of socialist inspired state the widest possible historical and comparative planning in which a “license-permit-quota-raj” scope. Debates in Delhi in 1947-1951 illuminate inhibited the development of a dynamic Indian the development state not only in India but in capitalist class and a high-growth free market South Korea, Japan, post-war France, Latin Amer- economy. The neo-liberal remedy of privatization, ica and indeed in the world of “late-late develop- deregulation, liberalization, and globalization is ers” generally. then seen as an antidote to the maladies of Indian development planning and indeed of development Second, this is a genuinely comparative work in planning generally. two senses. First there is an explicit comparison with the paradigmatic developmental state— It is difficult to believe that anyone could continue to hold to this view after reading Chibber’s book. 2 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Despite Nehru’s socialist principles and a genuine ful demobilization of the working class but also devotion to development planning in the Congress the relative absence of independent political mobi- party’s political leadership, the Indian Planning lization on the part of the Indian peasantry. Al- Commission was a relatively powerless agency though Chibber notes that Gandhi succeeded in that was subordinate to other ministries. Its efforts incorporating the peasantry into the Congress at organizational embeddedness in the capitalist while advocating conservative positions in regard class consisted of little more than talking things to wealth and property, the absence of the peas- over. The Commission was never able to do any- antry from the Indian development political equa- thing more than offer special permits and other tion is striking. In Japan and Taiwan as well as benefits to the Indian business elite who success- Korea land reform created a small farmer class fully resisted all state efforts to direct or discipline that became reliable supporters of developmen- their activities. The business elite, as Chibber tally oriented political elites. shows, contrary to conventional historiog- raphy, was hostile to the very idea of state planning from the very beginning. Ulti- mately the weakness of the planning agency If India is an example of a failed rested on Congress’s ties to the business elite and Congress’s successful efforts to developmental state and the neo- demobilize an independent labor move- liberal orthodoxy is wrong, how ment. India is an example not of the failure of state-led development but rather of its do we account for the extraordi- absence! nary recent Indian economic Finally, the book begins to develop a model growth rates? of the political base of the developmental state. In the conclusion Chibber generalizes his findings and argues that the state must avoid capture by the capitalist class either Furthermore if India is an example of a failed de- by having the good fortune to have a very weak velopmental state and the neo-liberal orthodoxy is capitalist class (the case of Taiwan) or a strong wrong how do we account for the extraordinary political base in some other class. Chibber’s pref- recent Indian economic growth rates? Did the In- erence is obviously for a developmental state dian developmental state accomplish something based in a strong working class party and he after all? Or were the neo-liberal proponents of makes a convincing argument that post-war globalization right all along? Perhaps in his next France represents just such a case. In the end he is book--or more briefly in the discussion--he can forced to conclude that the putative social democ- explain how India became “unlocked.” ratic development state in the Third World re- mains a theoretical possibility only. Nevertheless Finally, prospects for the social democratic devel- the attempt to theorize the social base of the de- opmental state may be limited by precisely those velopmental state goes far beyond most accounts structural changes in the global economy that neo- and has implications far beyond the case of India. liberal ideology did so much to promote. The cur- rent unprecedented rise of left parties and social Still for a book explicitly concerned with the class movements throughout Latin America may pro- base of the developmental state one class receives vide a potential test of the prospects and limits of relatively little attention especially in regard to its the social democratic or any kind of developmen- immense numerical size—the peasantry. Diane tal state. Although the rise of the Latin American Davis in her recent Discipline and Development left is very much a project in process, the prelimi- (2004) argues that the peasantry or, more accu- nary results are not encouraging. Socialist and rately, the small farmer class forms the social base populist parties such as the Worker’s Party in Bra- of the developmental state in Korea and else- zil, the Uruguayan Broad Front, Néstor Kirchner’s where. The influence of the business elite in the Peronists in Argentina and the much tamed social- Congress party is not only a result of the success- 3 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 ist party in Chile have promoted neo-liberal poli- velopment fail to be adopted and – to an even cies despite surprisingly radical antecedents and, greater extent implemented – in post- sometimes, radical rhetoric. The developmental independence India? Second, once this failure results of the much more radical, self-described was recognized, why were economic planners and revolutionary movements in Bolivia, Venezuela or politicians unable to reform the situation and fix post-Fidel Cuba remain to be seen. But so far Fer- the problem? These questions are framed in an nando Henrique Cardoso’s famous observation interesting double move, both against theory and that “within neo-liberalism there is no alternative, against the case of South Korea as an exemplar of and outside neo-liberalism there is no salvation” state-led economic development. The theoretical has yet to be disproved. foil for Locked in Place is provided by “statist” accounts that became the dominant explanation in These are some of the issues raised but not ad- economic development research published in the dressed in Locked in Place. Still there is only so 1980s and 1990s. In stylized form, these argu- much one can do in a single book and Chibber has ments contended that state-led planning was the accomplished a great deal--a genuinely compara- key to the successes exemplified by certain indus- tive study, based on original archival sources, that trializing East Asian economies with their empha- challenges the conventional wisdom on all sides, sis on export-led growth. The key question was addresses problems of fundamental theoretical and what made it possible for states to lead capitalist practical importance, and proposes novel solutions development and the answer was located in the with broad application to the global South. It is qualities of state bureaucracy and bureaucrats. also clearly, even elegantly, written with a refresh- ing absence of sociological jargon and a clear ana- Against this argument, India appears as a striking lytical line that runs throughout the book. This is failure. Statist analyses would highlight both the what sociology should be at its best. political support for economic planning and the endorsement of centralized planning by capitalists, exemplified by the Bombay Plan (published in two parts in 1944 and 1945). Given this combina- tion of political intention and capitalist support, The Lessons of Failure the only account for the failure of India’s project of economic development would seem to lie with Elisabeth S. Clemens 1 the competence of Indian bureaucrats themselves. University of Chicago Within this theoretical framework, India is the case that could have had it all but blew it. A common mistake of novice teachers is to focus only on mistakes. But if students vow never to Locked in Place challenges the facts of both cases write that particular sentence or make that specific in order to redirect analytic attention away from argument, how can they learn from failure? More the competence of state bureaucrats to the prefer- experienced teachers regularly point out success in ences of business.2 First, Chibber adopts a strat- the hope that students will revisit a successful es- egy from the comparative literature on welfare say when they turn to write on a different topic. state development in order to focus on the se- Yet, as Vivek Chibber argues, we can also draw quence and timing of events in South Korea. The the wrong lessons from success. In Locked in turn to export-led industrialization, he argues, was Place, he engages theories of economic develop- not an effect of, but a condition for, the construc- ment informed by the impressive accomplish- ments of East Asia in order to better understand the trajectory of Indian economic development. 2 By “bringing business back in” to historical sociology, Chibber contributes to a growing re-engagement of sociolo- gists with the questions of economic history central to clas- Chibber asks two questions of the Indian case. sical sociological theory. For an extended discussion, see First, why did state-led strategies of economic de- Bruce G. Carruthers, “Historical Economic Sociology: Ac- tors, Networks, and Context” in Julia Adams, Ann Shola 1 I have benefited from the insightful discussion of Locked Orloff, and Elisabeth S. Clemens, eds., Remaking Moder- in Place by members of Sociological Inquiry, Autumn nity: Politics, History, and Sociology (Duke University 2006. Press, 2005). 4 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 tion of a state-led developmental strategy. Exoge- of reform even in the face of weak economic per- nous factors – strong relationships with Japanese formance. And, when pressure for reform finally industrialists who sought to relocate industrial ca- did break through in the 1980s, it took the form of pacity to Korea as well as U.S. military provision- deregulation rather than the creation of the theo- ing – provided South Korean industrialists with a retically exemplary state-led development strategy windfall inheritance of networks of international credited with the economic successes of East Asia. trade. Capitalists, however, required state aid to secure adequate financing and materials. Conse- As a work of comparative political economy, quently, South Korea was able to construct a de- Locked in Place persuasively links the questions velopmental state because the preferences of busi- that inform studies of economic development with ness supported the establishment of this policy the strategies of comparative welfare state studies. regime. Whereas statist analyses of economic de- The latter document just how hard it can be to es- velopment focus attention on the competence and tablish a redistributive social spending state and capacity of government agencies, Chibber under- Chibber uses this style of close analysis of policy scores the importance of the consent of firms to be conflicts to contend that the failure of the Indian governed, to be disciplined. economic planning project lay with the configura- tion of business interests rather than the ideologi- This piece of the argument exemplifies Chibber’s cal commitments or competences of Indian bu- theoretical commitment to “unlock the black box” of group preferences and their consequences within policy processes (p. x). If South Korean capitalists, operating in an unusual geographical In Chibber’s universe of and historical conjuncture, developed rational preferences for state-led economic development, comparative politics, Indian firms operating in a different context had everything happened good reasons both to pay some lip service to eco- nomic planning and then to resist the implementa- except the cultural turn. tion of a central planning agency with the capacity to discipline economic behavior. Faced with a wave of popular protest and labor mobilization during the struggles for independence, business had good reason to expect that the leadership of the Indian National Congress would support some reaucrats or politicians. In the process, however, model of state economic planning and, therefore, a the competence of capital is largely taken for number of business leaders sought to control what granted. Chibber’s strategy is to engage in a close that would involve. Once again geography and analysis of the structural location of Korean and history are important to the explanation – with a Indian firms and then to read preferences off of large domestic market and the withdrawal of Brit- location. Relatively little attention is paid to the ish firms at the time of Independence (a decision mobilization or collective identity of business. that receives little in the way of explanation), both For example, we are left to wonder about how the business and political leadership embraced import Korean case would have unfolded in the absence substitution as a developmental model rather than of the coordinating capacity of the chaebol, the an export-led strategy. Consequently, Indian dominant business groups. Instead, the ability of business resisted the “installation” of a centralized business to control political outcomes is under- state capacity for economic planning and, once a stood as the consequences of the absence of a relatively weak and poorly coordinated “planning” strong labor movement allied with state bureau- apparatus was established, their rational economic crats that could overpower capitalist interests. preferences led firms to adopt strategies that un- (Chibber documents the decision of the leaders of dermined the overall performance of the Indian India Congress to divide and domesticate the labor economy. The shortcomings of this first- movement; labor is largely absent from the discus- generation of poorly implemented state economic sion of South Korea.) planning then created the condition for the failure 5 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

The result of this analytic strategy is both reassur- ences are read off of location, then the capacity for ingly familiar and slightly unsettling. For anyone collective political action does not seem to require steeped in the comparative politics of the 1980s further investigation. Yet rational economic cal- and engaged in the theoretical debates that have culation can also provide reasons for defection, followed, Locked in Place appears to have been betrayal and schism. Did the “consent” of Korean written in an alternative but neighboring universe. business to state-led economic discipline rest on Centered on two nations-as-cases, it bears the the denser networks of a small nation, on the hallmarks of the comparative research of the late foundation of organized business groups, on the 1980s and adds attention to fine-grained historic- experience of occupation and war, or on the inter- ity, conjuncture, and eventfulness that have fig- pretation of the threats posed by organized labor ured in more recent theoretical accounts of histori- and the risk of an alternative path of economic na- cal change. Chibber problematizes the state in tionalization? In rejecting forms of cultural ex- important ways, understanding it as an institu- planation rooted in ideology, Chibber may have tional accomplishment that is sustained by specific truncated his analysis prematurely and missed an feedback processes and potentially undermined by opportunity to contribute to a richer institutional exogenous process that change the distribution of account of economic rationalities. But this would actors’ rational economic preferences. Thus in have been the version of Locked in Place written Chibber’s universe of comparative politics, every- in my universe. Within the framework of his own thing happened except the cultural turn. forceful analytic commitments, Vivek Chibber has produced a notable success that demonstrates the Because of this, Locked in Place forces us to con- potential of harnessing rigorous comparative poli- sider just what has been added by that influential tics to questions of economic development. intellectual move. The challenge is to identify where Locked in Place suffers from life in this al- ternative universe. Which elements of the analy- sis would have benefited from closer attention to Unlocking the Shackles of the State processes of interpretation and cultural construc- tion? Perhaps ironically, the potential for a fruit- versus Market Dichotomy ful engagement between Locked in Place and the cultural turn may be greatest with regard to the Leo Panitch concept of economic rationality itself. As Chibber York University explains his focus on the influence of import- substitution and export-led industrialization, “in The importance of Vivek Chibber’s Locked in generating bourgeois preferences, these models Place lies especially in the enormous contribution serve to set the terms on which politics are con- it makes to overcoming the false state versus mar- ducted” (p. 233). But, in the theoretical language kets dichotomy that has plagued political economy of John Meyer and his colleagues, these models during the neoliberal era. Writing from the per- are theorizations or scripts that circulated in a spective that states are indeed constitutive of (va- transnational discourse on economic development. rieties of) capitalism but that state actions are al- Thus business preferences were not only read off ways determined by their relation to the balance of of specific structural locations at a specific mo- class forces in any given society, Chibber has ment; preferences were also read through cogni- given us the definitive critique of the institutional- tive templates that related firm behavior to ex- ists’ state autonomy approach to explaining eco- pected benefits. In this sense, historically- nomic development (or the lack of it) in the South specific rationalities are culturally constituted. in recent decades. And he has done this in a way Events might have unfolded differently given a that brings that critique into a dialogue with the third way, an alternative theorization of economic state debate concerning the advanced capitalist development strategy. countries. In this respect, Locked in Place does more than any other book to reverse the unfortu- A second point of fruitful engagement centers on nate direction taken by political sociology away the processes of group formation. To the extent from class analysis after the advances made in the that actors share an economic location and prefer- 1970s by the neo-marxist work on the capitalist 6 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 state. Insofar as those who led this shift in direc- plinary planning by the state whereas Indian capi- tion were in good part motivated by proving that tal was not -- Chibber’s explanation points to the the East Asian NICs and European social democ- important role of Japanese capital in penetrating racies were exemplary alternatives to Anglo- the Korean economy and the effect of this in mak- American neoliberalism, the strategic as well as ing Korean firms recognize that they were de- the social scientific implications of Chibber’s ac- pendent on state planners to make their turn to complishment is considerable indeed. production for export possible and effective. This is a very persuasive argument, especially when Of course even as good a book as Locked in Place combined with his awareness of the US role in the has its limitations as well as its virtues. One of its 1950s in promoting Japan’s own export-led indus- great virtues is an argument advanced with a rigor trialization, and its extension to South Korea (in- that matches the best of game theoretic/rational deed it is instructive to read Chibber’s book in choice analysis. But Chibber refuses to just rely on conjunction with the chapter on Korea in deductive logic for causal explanation, and Chalmers Johnson’s Blowback (2000) ). amasses plenty of what Gramsci called “empirico- historical evidence” to sustain his class analysis, Locked in Place does including evidence that pertains not only to the salience of capitalist class pressures on the state, more than any other book but also to the salience of state actors’ own “read- ings” of the balance of class forces. This concern to reverse the unfortunate with marshalling such evidence led Chibber, as he direction taken by politi- recounts in a fascinating passage in the Preface, to various Indian Ministries. But finding their his- cal sociology away from torical records of policy-making either destroyed or denied to him, he struck on the brilliant idea of class analysis after the turning to the U.S. State Department, where in- advances made in the deed he found a wealth of data about Indian policy making in the ‘Memoranda of Conversation’ be- 1970s by the neo-marxist tween US embassy officials and prominent Indian state officials, politicians and businessmen. That work on the capitalist there was more of use to him regarding Indian state. economic policy making in the U.S. State De- partment’s records than in the British Foreign Of- fice ones tells us something important about the remarkable, even if informal, imperial capacity of This is an argument that is broadened and further the American state. But although Chibber has enriched by the emphasis Chibber gives to show- many references to imperial influences scattered ing how US foreign aid policy became by the through the book, the role of the imperial state is 1960s increasingly oriented to promoting the re- not theorized or analyzed here. structuring of economies in the South so they would be less reliant on US government loans and Is this then a book that, in its search for explaining more receptive to foreign direct investment and the historical roots of the differences between the more export-oriented. That said, the role of the US South Korean and Indian varieties of capitalism, imperium in relation to the South Korean state and continues to reflect some of the limitations of what capitalist class remains insufficiently analyzed. Martin Shaw has appropriately called the ‘social This especially so in relation to the emergence of science as stamp collecting’ comparative method, the Park dictatorship under which Korean plan- one which compares two nation states while pay- ning was inaugurated; in relation to the ability of ing insufficient attention to the overarching impe- the state to repress labor and other democratic rial carapace in which they are both imbricated? forces for so long; and, not least important, in rela- Such a criticism would be unfair. For instance, in tion to the confidence of South Korean capitalists addressing the central question the book poses -- that state developmental planning would not entail that is, why Korean capital was receptive to disci- a fundamental challenge to private property. 7 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Chibber’s argument is utterly compelling as he powerful Indian industrialist G. D. Birla to Deputy turns, in the main part of the book, to showing Prime Minister V. B. Patel in Delhi “reporting on that, if one thinks it is state capacities that deter- the worries that British and American capital mine developmental possibilities, the post- evinced about the ‘investment climate’ in India” independence Indian state initially evinced far (p. 244). But it would be have been very interest- more potential for this than the South Korean ing as well to explore this in relation to what John state. And he certainly demonstrates very well the Saville has termed “the mind of the Foreign Of- opposition of the Indian bourgeoisie to the state fice” during the onset of the Cold War, and also playing any kind of disciplinary developmental in relation to the 1945 Labour Government’s own role in terms of holding private firms accountable abandonment of effective planning in the immedi- for the public funds doled out to them in line with ate post-war years. In terms of the American im- the requirements of the economic plan. That said, perial relationship, Chibber himself provides good it is not entirely clear whether Chibber is arguing evidence (often in his footnotes which are worth that the Indian state really tried and failed to in- the price of admission themselves) of how astute stall a developmental planning process, or whether American officials in Delhi could be in terms of it never seriously even tried to do so. Was it capi- recognizing the grounds for the split between the talist pressures that really determined that effec- government and the party on economic policy (pp. tive state planning was killed in its infancy? Or 286-7), but more might have been adduced from was it the Congress leadership itself that aborted this about what this suggested about US imperial such planning not long after it was conceived? state capacities. Chibber vacillates between these positions. On the one hand, he suggests (p. 126) that while ‘much of Both imperial and domestic capitalist opposition the Congress leadership visualized state-led de- to effective capitalist planning in India in the early velopment’ of the disciplinary type, it was the fact post-war decades suggests there is something fun- that India’s capitalists wanted ‘nothing at all’ to damentally wrong with the conventional division do with this that determined the outcome. And yet of the era since World War Two into a period of he also suggests (p. 125) that the conservative, national state autonomy and interventionist reform older generation dominant within Congress’s followed by a sharply contrasting period of the “High Command” itself exercised “the most influ- loss of state autonomy amidst globalization and ence” in terms of the opposition to such discipli- neoliberal reform. Indeed, there is a strong case to nary planning. My reading of the evidence Chib- be made that the seeds of neoliberalism were ber presents supports the latter interpretation, at planted in the early post-war decades. Chibber’s least in the sense of the pragmatic anticipatory op- evidence can be read as showing that state policies position to developing effective planning capacity in these decades were the incubators of the en- on the part of Indian political leaders and senior hanced power of private capital. Just how much bureaucrats in light of their ‘reading’ of the resis- the fight against disciplinary planning in India set tance that would arise from both Indian and impe- the stage for the greater reliance on market forces rial capitalist forces. that has been the hallmark of neoliberalism is well-revealed in Chibber’s quotation of Con- Chibber rightly puts a lot of emphasis on how this gress’s Deputy Chairman, D.R. Gadgil telling a accommodation to capital entailed a split between U.S. embassy official in 1967 that he was ‘in favor government and party, between the “High Com- of greater liberalization because successful state mand” and the activists. And, in an especially im- intervention “required much more administrative portant chapter, he demonstrates how the demobi- effort and sophistication than were available… lization of the labor movement after independence Detailed planning of the production effort and in- weakened the left inside the party. But more sys- vestment can benefit the whole economy appro- tematic attention might also have been paid to priately only if accompanied by meticulous price how imperial relationships steeled the Congress and distribution control. If, because of a variety of leadership in their opposition to effective devel- circumstances, such a regulatory regime cannot be opmental planning. This is richly suggested, for operated, must not larger reliance be placed on instance, by “the barrage of letters” that Chibber market forces and competitiveness?” (p. 215). uncovered written in 1949 from London by the 8 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

What could have been done differently? And what Response to Clemens, Paige, and might now be done? In this respect, Chibber is refreshingly open in affirming that his contribu- Panitch tion is strategic as well as social scientific. Build- ing on his demonstration of the significance of the Vivek Chibber exclusion of trade union representation from In- New York University dian post-war planning, and indeed Congress’s deliberate demobilization of the labor movement, The heyday of state-led development passed more Chibber makes a case at the end of the book for than two decades ago, but some of the basic ques- mobilizing anew and enhancing the power of labor tions regarding its politics still remain under- so its representatives might be able to exert greater studied. In this respect, the developmental state influence within a genuine social democratic has enjoyed a rather different history than has the cross-class economic planning coalition. But this welfare state, its counterpart in the advanced capi- is quite misleading. What was followed in India in talist world. Whereas there is a very rich literature the post-war era epitomized social democratic on the institutional variations within, and histori- politics in terms of the split between government cal lineages of, welfare states, the study of devel- and party, the demobilization of labor and the opmental states fares rather poorly in comparison. abandonment of effective planning. In some cases, Particularly weak is the scholarship on the origins this came about relatively quickly in the late of the latter, the politics behind its variations, and 1940s (e.g. in the UK as well as India); in others it its relation to social forces. took rather longer (e.g. in Sweden or Austria). But in all cases capitalist planning of the social de- When I conceived of the project that culminated in mocratic corporatist type ran up against the im- Locked in Place, the fierce debates on the origins possibility of reconciling effective planning with of the American welfare state during the New capital’s assertion of its right to privately deter- Deal were still raging. They were triggered, in mine what is invested and where, and what is pro- large measure, by Theda Skocpol’s critique of, duced and where. The ultimate demonstration of and challenge to, Marxist state theory, and soon this was the sorry fate of the Swedish wage- generated a vast literature on the role of classes earner’s fund proposals as part of the labor move- and political elites in the formation of social- ment’s unsuccessful attempt to keep corporatist democratic states. I was struck by the near total planning going there by the mid-1970s. absence of careful analysis regarding these same issues when it came to developmental states. One The attempt to rehabilitate social democratic cor- of the ambitions motivating the book was to bring poratism in the hope that a newly mobilized and analyses of developmental states “up to speed,” as strengthened labor movement will make social it were, in light of the advances made in the study democratic corporatist planning work in the South of social democracy. This was not the only, or (without even addressing what this would have to even the main, inspiration behind the project – I entail in terms of changing government-party rela- had already decided as an undergraduate that I tions) was an unfortunately weak way to conclude wanted to write a dissertation on the formation of such a very strong book. This much may be for- the post-colonial state in India -- but it did play an given, however, in light of the book’s great con- important role in my framing of the issue. tribution in terms of rehabilitating class analysis and further developing state theory within political By the time the dissertation morphed into a book a economy and political sociology, inviting their decade later, the concerns animating the welfare extension to the analysis of the imperial state, and state debates had already receded, and even demonstrating the dead end to which the state seemed a distant memory. Elisabeth Clemens is autonomy approach has led as an alternative to therefore entirely right in noting that the book neoliberalism. seems to have come out of an alternate universe – not only because of the “cultural turn,” to which Clemens points; but also because of the general fading of class analysis as a major force in Ameri- can sociology. It is therefore something of a sur- 9 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 prise – and may all surprises be so pleasant! – that countries at comparable levels of industrial devel- the book has been received warmly by the disci- opment. The book therefore not only seeks to pline. propose a class analysis of state-building in these two countries, but also its relevance to other cases Locked in Place is a book that asks a very precise in the South. question: if the success of state promotion of in- dustrialization depends in large part on the state’s It is gratifying that this argument appears satisfac- institutional capacity, then what explains the suc- tory to my three colleagues. But Panitch raises an cess of some states in building this capacity, and interesting question: was it that the Indian state the singular lack of success in other cases? It is a tried to install an effective planning apparatus and book about state-building – as its title declares. retreated, or was it that, anticipating a business To this question, I offer the answer that the critical attack, the state retreated in an attempt to keep condition for state-building is the reaction of do- business within the ruling coalition? Panitch mestic capitalist classes. Korea exemplifies a case thinks that I argue the latter, but, in my view, I where domestic capital supported state-building, quite clearly argue the former: the Indian state hence allowing for its success; India, in contrast, tried to push through its reforms, but retreated in experienced a massive campaign against such a the face of a capitalist offensive. I think what state by its business class, hence forcing state Panitch has in mind is a scenario in which the pro- managers to retreat on their agenda, and leaving posed state institutions might have actually been the state with a relatively feeble planning appara- passed and put into place, but then would have tus. been dissolved. Perhaps this is what he would take as a case of the state actually trying some- thing and retreating – as opposed to a case in which institutions are proposed and never actually By no means should the book put into place. But in reality, the evidence is closer to his hypothetical scenario than he might be taken as part of the chorus think. The planning institutions that might have – so loud in Indian academic made the Indian state more effective got all the circles these days – that the way into Parliamentary committees and even as draft legislation; moreover, some key institutions four decades of planning were actually installed, but then whittled down in were a gigantic mistake. clear response to business pressure. This may not be as far as he’d like, in order for it to merit the appellation of “state retreat”; but we might be quibbling over words here. What is clear is that measures were proposed, there was an attempt to implement them, and they were either shelved or Bringing capitalists into the picture as a central broken down, in response to direct political pres- actor went against the scholarship of the 1980’s sure. and 1990’s which, in the study of developmental- ism, had become increasingly state-centered. In For the most part, the concerns that my interlocu- much of the literature, it was simply assumed – tors raise are not about the role of domestic busi- this needs to be stressed, for it was rarely demon- ness per se, but about the relevance of other poten- strated – that capitalists in the developing world at tial actors and forces. Jeffery Paige wonders if the mid-century were simply too small to have mat- South Korean state’s base in the middle peasantry tered as a political force. I try to argue that while might have contributed to its political stability and it is certainly possible that capitalists in particular as well to the legitimacy of the whole planning historical settings can be too small and too de- enterprise. Here he draws upon Diane Davis’s pendent on the state to be a formidable political excellent new book on the political bases of de- force, this was so neither in India, nor Korea – and by extension, it may not have been so in other

10 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 velopmental states.3 Leo Panitch, while quite combination of capitalist pressure and labor’s re- happy with my book on its own terms, laments treat reduced the political elite’s capacity to push that it gives insufficient attention to the role of through its measures, because it lost leverage imperial influences. He is careful to note, cor- against recalcitrant capitalists. rectly, that the book does point to the influence of core countries on state-building; his concern, if I Would a mobilized peasantry have directly af- understand him correctly, is that the analysis is not fected the state’s leverage with capitalists? Per- systematic enough. Imperialism comes in through haps. But we ought to resist drawing a parallel the back door, as it were, instead of being theo- between mobilized urban workers and rural peas- rized as a core element in the process itself. ants in this regard. Mobilized labor directly af- fects the state’s leverage against business because Both of these concerns have considerable merit. It it quite directly hits business operations, and is certainly true that I do not pay sufficient atten- hence business costs – thereby inclining industri- tion to the rural sector in my analysis of Indian alists to measure the relative worth of their resis- state-building. This is perhaps the biggest lacuna tance to state initiatives against the costs being in the book. Paige suggests that Indian business’s imposed on them by ongoing strikes, job actions, influence on the states was not only because of the etc. But a mobilized peasantry does not hit busi- demobilization of the labor movement (as I argue), ness operations as directly – it can hit business but also because of the parallel absence of the indirectly by affecting the flow of inputs of vari- peasantry as a mobilized actor: “The influence of ous kinds, but this is a contingent matter, depend- the business elite in the Congress party is not only ing on facts about the industrial structure of an a result of the successful demobilization of the economy, the specifics about which regions and working class but also the relative absence of in- sectors are mobilized, etc. Hence, I am wary of dependent political mobilization on the part of the advancing, as a theoretical argument, that peasants Indian peasantry.” This suggests the following ought to be taken as an actor parallel to workers in counterfactual: if the peasantry had been present matters of the state’s leverage against business. as a mobilized force, they would have pressed for Paige is probably right in suggesting that a strong policies that pushed the state in another direction, base in the middle peasants can more firmly in- perhaps in a more developmental direction. The cline political elites toward an effective develop- state might have been more willing to resist busi- mental state – this is, I think, where he draws upon ness pressure for de-fanging the planning appara- Diane Davis. But this speaks to state managers’ tus, and perhaps had a deeper commitment to intentions and commitments – which, in the Indian pushing its agenda. case, were not lacking. What was lacking was leverage, and here, I am somewhat skeptical about While this is certainly suggestive, I would offer the potential opened up by the peasantry – in mat- the following cautionary note. The state’s rela- ters relating to industrial capitalists.4 tionship to a social group can affect its policy out- comes in two ways: by affecting state managers’ I should also clarify that the failure of the Indian intentions and by affecting their capacities to act. state was not absolute. I was careful to note in the My argument about the Indian state’s retreat in the book that India was a relative failure – relative to face of business pressure does not rest on any pu- a case like Korea, and to India’s own ambitious tative lack of commitment on the part of Nehru agenda. On an absolute level, import substitution and his colleagues. I don’t, in other words, think in India yielded some remarkable achievements – that the Indian National Congress was weak in its a diversified industrial base, a highly trained engi- intentions – indeed, it is likely that there was no neering corps, managerial expertise, and a public other political elite in the South at mid-century sector that managed to survive and set up key in- that was more committed to building a develop- frastructural industries. Thus, I would not at all mental state. The reason it retreated was that the disagree with Paige in his observation that the ef- forts of the whole developmentalist period were

3 Diane Davis, Discipline and Development: Middle Classes and Prosperity in East Asia and Latin America, (Cambridge: 4 Of course, if the issue is the state’s leverage against landed 2004). classes, this might be a different matter. 11 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 admirable; and further, that they laid the ground- tion between structures and capitalist strategies; work for the recent successes in industrial growth. instead of assuming a straightforward causal chain By no means should the book be taken as part of leading from structures to action, I might have al- the chorus – so loud in Indian academic circles lowed for great variation in capitalist responses – these days – that the four decades of planning a variation resulting from cultural factors that were a gigantic mistake. might have filtered the very perception of the structures by key actors. Hence, in different cul- Panitch’s argument that the imperial role – not just tural settings, the same structures might have gen- of Great Britain but also the United States – needs erated varying responses. to be theorized more explicitly is, I think, basi- cally correct. But I would caution here against assuming, as Panitch might be, that the imperial core consistently opposed developmentalism. He I wish to register my refers to “imperial and domestic capitalist opposi- tion to effective capitalist planning in India,” agreement that culture partly from the evidence I offer in the book re- garding some British firms that mobilized against can be relevant, and my a powerful planning apparatus in India. But oppo- resistance to the injunc- sition from some firms does not amount to impe- rial opposition tout court. On this, I am agnostic. tion that we insist on its To answer whether there was something that de- serves to be called imperial opposition, we need to relevance in every case. uncover two facts: first, what was the sentiment within the larger business community, or discrete segments of that community, to developmental- ism; second, what was the imperial state’s position Perhaps, but I’m skeptical. I am perfectly happy on the matter – which we cannot prejudge, what- with the notion that culture filters the perception ever the opinion of business might have been. I of economic actors. What I hesitate to accept is say nothing about this in the book, and Panitch is that “historically-specific rationalities are cultur- right to castigate me on this. For what it’s worth, ally constituted,” as Clemens says. There is no this is precisely the project in which I am im- doubt that such actions are culturally mediated; mersed right now – the reaction of hegemonic but for them to be constituted by culture is a much powers to developmentalism from the 1930’s to stronger claim, and cannot be taken for granted. the 1970’s, and their role in its rise and fall. I This is not to say that culture is secondary in all hope to have something to say about this soon. matters economic. Certainly, in many activities that are properly economic, cultural factors play a Elisabeth Clemens raises some very far-reaching critical role – in the constitution of certain norma- points with regard to the possibilities that might tive codes at the workplace, in the setting up of have been opened up had I paid greater attention what a “fair wage” means for labor, in the manner to the role of culture. There would be no way to in which capitalists choose to spend their wealth, address them adequately in the short space pro- etc. But there is a range of activities in which, I vided here. So let me offer some thoughts to her would argue, cultural norms are forced to adapt to specific points. I argue that capitalist responses to economic circumstances: the compulsion to work state-building were generated by underlying struc- for a wage if you are a proletarian, the resistance tural – in particular, economic – conditions. In- to shop floor despotism, and – for our purposes – dian industrialists fought a developmental state the acceptance of the profit motive by firms and because the adoption of import substitution made their managers. In the latter domain, culture it rational for them to do so; Korean capitalists might color the perception of economic pressure, accepted such a state because the adoption of an but I do not believe that it constitutes. Of course, export-led development model generated incen- this is far too serious a matter to be settled here. I tives for them to do so. Clemens offers that I merely wish to register my agreement that culture might have adopted a different attitude to the rela- 12 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 can be relevant, and my resistance to the injunc- References tion that we insist on its relevance in every case. Adams, Julia, Ann Shola Orloff, and Elisabeth S. On the other hand, for some of the dynamics that Clemens, eds., Remaking Modernity: Politics, His- Clemens points to – especially the willingness of tory, and Sociology (Duke University Press, Korean capitalists to ally with their political elite 2005). around state-building – there is good reason to pursue the cultural angle. There was certainly Davis, Diane. 2004. Discipline and Development. more homogeneity within the Korean power bloc Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. than there was in the Indian counterpart. Perhaps that did allow for an easier state-building agenda. Johnson, Chalmers. 2000. Blowback: The Costs But that is an empirical matter and any verdict will and Consequences of American Empire. New have to not only show it, but also contend with the York: Henry Holt. more properly materialist explanation offered here. I am quite confident that the very cultural Tilly, Charles. 1984. Big Structures, Large Proc- turn to which Clemens makes reference will pro- esses, Huge Comparisons. New York: Sage. duce some analyses to this effect. We will then be in a better position to adjudicate between the con- Vanaik, Achin. 2004. “Review of Locked In tending approaches. Place,” New Left Review 29 (Sept-Oct):153-160.

In the current neo-liberal age, it might seem quaint to call for more research on the politics of devel- opmental states. As Paige notes, it might be that their age has passed. But I would urge that devel- opmentalism is still of relevance for two reasons. First, and most generally, developmentalism was just one form of a dynamic that, within capitalism, is more or less constant, as Polanyi argued long ago – the pressure for states to intervene in mar- kets, to bend them, to block their spontaneous ef- fects. Hence, while a particular state form might no longer be dominant, the impulses behind re- main very much present. Hence, the study of how they took root over the course of the twentieth century will be bound to have continuing rele- vance for future efforts at state intervention. Sec- ond, the forces that have made national develop- ment strategies are not natural or physical – they are the effects of legal and institutional changes, and are thus liable to be changed or even rolled back. It has happened before, when the last great globalization – stretching from the late Victorian era to the 1920’s – was reversed after the Great Depression. Today, with the abject failure of neo- liberalism and its rejection in large parts of the Global South,. there is again a call for returning to national development projects. Néstor Kirchner of Argentina has explicitly called for such a turn, and it has found an echo across political elites in South America. As long as such calls persist, the lessons of the past will certainly have continuing rele- vance for building a better future. 13 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Author Meets Author Meets Author

William H. Sewell, Jr. ples, testing hypotheses, and modeling causes, Art University of Chicago dares his readers to craft different methods for dif- ferent problems, to design samples that over- Arthur Stinchcombe represent the extremes of the distribution, to tack Northwestern University back and forth between clarification of theory with data and clarification of data with theory, to en- Charles Tilly gage in Levi-Straussian bricolage, to combine eth- Columbia University nography with surveys – in short, to be as uncon- ventional and inventive sociological craftsmen as The 2006 meeting of the American Sociological Art Stinchcombe himself has always been. Association featured an “author meets author meets author” panel, in which William H. Sewell, The book is full of wonderfully astute off-the-cuff Jr., Arthur Stinchcombe, and Charles Tilly dis- observations and bons mots. Let me cite a couple cussed each others’ recent books: Sewell’s Logics of them. of History, Stinchcombe’s The Logic of Social Re- search and Tilly’s Trust and Rule. This sympo- On methodology: “Our job as a methodologist is sium presents their original comments, plus re- to turn what it takes a genius to do the first time sponses by each author. into something that all of us can recognize and work on” (86-7)

Sewell Reviews On methodological individualism: “Methodologi- cal individualism in its rational action variety Stinchcombe and Tilly counts individuals only as arenas in which changes in the situation, operating through stable It’s a privilege to be able to engage in a three-way preferences in the individual, affect other vari- dialogue with Art Stinchcombe and Chuck Tilly. ables…Rational action…is in some sense an ‘in- I’ve been going round with both of them for some dividualism’ without any individuality in it” (173) time. Art and I taught a joint course on social his- tory and historical sociology at the University of He’s witty and self-deprecating: He says “I think, Arizona in 1980. Chuck’s first book, The Vendée, in general, that a sociologist pontificating on epis- was the intellectual model I took into the archives temology is a sign of weakness: I’m guilty again when I began my dissertation work in 1967, and as charged.” One hopes that some of Art’s origi- our paths and our work have intersected and over- nality and deadpan wit, as well as his methodo- lapped many times since. logical acumen, will rub off on the students who read this book. I’ll begin with The Logic of Social Research. This is an unusual and on the whole a very attractive The odd thing is that although I agree with almost book. Theda Skocpol once wrote that Theoretical all of Art’s practical methodological judgments, I Methods in Social History was essentially a publi- disagree profoundly with his fundamental prem- cation of Art Stinchcombe’s reading notes, but ises. Art sees all methodology as being about cau- that in Art’s case it’s a privilege to be able to read sation. “Almost all sociological theories,” he over his shoulder. Art has now decided to publish points out at the very beginning of the book, “as- his lecture notes from many years of sociological sert that some social condition or conditions cause methodology classes; and once again the notes or produce one or more other social conditions” definitely repay a close reading. The book is a (1). This, as far as it goes, is a perfectly accept- kind of methodology un-text book, one that both able statement. But the devil’s in the detail, be- supplements and subverts typical sociological cause “causation” can mean a lot of different methodology. Rather than providing the reader things. Initially it appears that Art must have a with a set of standard procedures for taking sam- broad definition of cause, since he specifies that Page 14 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 the methods of addressing causal questions in so- could not test these causal claims without good cial science include not only quantitative and ex- ethnographic studies that tell us about how, for perimental methods, but also ethnographic and example, the Nuer or the Mongols organized their historical methods. And it’s well known that eth- kinship and economic life. But note that Art’s nographers and historians tend not to see eye-to- methodological remarks about herding societies eye with experimental psychologists or statistical are not actually about how to do ethnographic re- sociologists when it comes to conceptions of cau- search effectively. Rather, they’re about how a sation in social life. But when, in chapter 2, Art clever macro-sociologist can use the research of actually lays out his account of causal reasoning, he adopts a purely quantitative conception of cause, one that would seem to leave most histori- ans and ethnographers out in the cold. “All causa- tion,” he says, “is a relation between a distance of The odd thing is that al- some sort on a cause, and a distance of some sort though I agree with al- on an effect…the minimum piece of causal infor- mation is two distances” (22). Stinchcombe’s most all of Art’s practi- thinking about cause, then, is avowedly geometri- cal: the world of the sociologist is made up of cal methodological variables related to other variables in a Cartesian judgments, I disagree space. Cause is detected by an increase in dis- tance on one variable that results in some measur- profoundly with his fun- able change in distance on another variable. In spite of the quirky originality to be found scattered damental premises. through this book, Art paradoxically begins by planting himself squarely in what Andrew Abbott has trenchantly analyzed as the “general linear re- ethnographers to develop a “distance-based” ality” of quantitative sociology. Art’s claim – one method to test theories about the relationships be- I don’t think he manages to sustain in practice – is tween property forms, kinship, and forms of pro- that all forms of thinking about cause, even in his- duction in herding societies. (The method is dis- torical or ethnographic research, can be assimi- tance-based because herding societies can be lated to the problem of plotting distance on one ranked according to how fully dependent they are axis against distance on another. on herd resources as opposed to horticulture and on how salient inheritance of herds is in their I can’t claim to give a competent evaluation of property/kinship systems.) The problem is that Art’s arguments about quantitative method. But I scholars who actually carry out such ethno- think I’m reasonably well placed to evaluate his graphies face a very different set of methodologi- thoughts on ethnographic and historical method. cal questions, none of which Art addresses – about For lack of time, I’ll just discuss ethnography. identifying good informants, analyzing rituals, Art’s treatment of ethnography seems to me dis- grasping the semiotics of language use, classifying tinctly peculiar. Two examples of ethnographic kinship structures, and the like. Although Art research are elaborated intermittently in the book. pays lip service to ethnography as a constitutive The first has to do with herding societies; the main methodology of sociological research, he ad- question is the saliency of land versus herds in in- dresses none of the distinctive methodological heritance practices. The causal claim is that the problems facing the ethnographers – mostly an- more nomadic the society, the more salient are thropologists rather than sociologists – who carry herds and the less salient is land – although there out this sort of study. are many interesting side claims about horse- herders vs. cattle-herders vs. goat-herders, and The second salient mention of ethnography in The about the variations in kinship structures between Logic of Social Research has to do with the work differently organized herding societies. All of of Erving Goffman, who is clearly one of Stinch- these claims about causal relations are reasonable combe’s heroes – the only sociologist Stinch- and interesting, and it certainly is true that we combe hails in the book as a “genius” (86). The 15 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 discussion is in a chapter on “refining concepts of who inhabit it; the question of the meaning of distances between units of analysis,” but distance peoples’ experiences is primary. They certainly figures in the discussion of Goffman only in the look at comparative cases in order to gain perspec- question of at how many feet apart people lower tive on their own, but their ultimate interest is in their eyes upon contact in order to maintain “civil how the intertwined lives that make up their own distance” – the work in question here is Goffman’s cases fit together and get transformed. Behavior in Public Places. Art observes, appro- priately enough, that the distance at which people This contrast between ethnography and Stinch- lower their eyes when they meet on the street can combian sociology is, of course, a restatement of only be answered by ethnography, but it would be issues as old as the late-nineteenth century Metho- a stretch to claim that measurement of this kind of denstreit – which asked whether the human sci- distance was crucial to Goffman’s method. In ences, because their object was an intelligent and Art’s discussion of Goffman, there are some inter- culture-bearing humanity, required distinct meth- esting observations about ethnographic method: he ods, or whether the methods of the natural sci- argues that Goffmanian ethnographers work by ences were adequate to the human sciences as finding what he calls “contrary instances,” cases well. Art and I both argue in our books for meth- when people seem not to be following the general odological eclecticism, endorsing both quantita- norm. But how this or anything else about Goff- tive and interpretive methods, but we do so from man articulates with Art’s fundamental principle fundamentally different positions in the never- of distance in a variable space remains unclear, at ending Methodenstreit debate. Art attempts to least to me. As I read him, Art officially grants stretch his natural-science-based geometrical recognition to ethnography as a form of research, model to embrace the interpretive methods of eth- but fails to grasp its logic, which rarely has much nography and history. As I have indicated in my to do with Stinchcombian “distance.” (Although I discussion of ethnography, I don’t think this effort don’t have the space to argue the point here, I is successful. think the same is true of his treatment of historical method.) In the final chapter of Logics of History, I concep- tualize the social world as fundamentally made up How, then, might we grasp the methodo-logic of of articulated streams of semiotic practices, or ethnographic research? I think we have to begin “language games,” and try to show that it possible from a very different starting point. For a Stinch- to build up from this starting point a conception of combian sociologist, the world is made up of a set social science that includes something like Stinch- of abstract laws and transportable mechanisms combian mechanisms and quantification. In some about distance relations; the job of the sociologist ways this is the reverse of Art’s effort in The is to ferret these laws out from the messy concrete Logic of Social Research. But there is an impor- social relations in which they are enmeshed – very tant difference. My position is that there is one much as the Newtonian physicist shows that the underlying social reality: human beings engaging fall of an apple to the earth and the orbiting of in interconnected semiotic practices; but that the Jupiter around the sun are instances of the same social life elaborated on the basis of this ontologi- law of gravity. The actual social relations in cal starting point creates complex patterns, some which people engage are of no interest for their of which can be grasped by interpretive methods own sake, but only to the extent that they can be but some of which also require quantitative meth- made to provide evidence for the roving sociolo- ods and mechanical reasoning. Although these gist, who is always looking for new instances of distinct methods get at aspects of the same under- his or her posited law or looking for new laws to lying reality, I definitely do not claim, as Art does, posit. Ethnographers or historians begin from a that the methods are therefore fundamentally the very different starting point. They conceptualize same. In the end, I think we are on firmer ground the world not as a complex matrix of intersecting if we recognize that sociological methods are irre- social laws, but as a concrete space- and time- deemably diverse. Instead of what Art calls “the bound complex of human interactions. Ethnogra- logic of social research” I think we need to recog- phers (and historians) want to find out how the nize “logics of social research,” with logics em- world is experienced and understood by the people phatically in the plural. 16 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Charles Tilly’s Trust and Rule lacks the grand such actions for them. Trust of this sort is only ambitions of either Logics of History or The Logic possible when there is a very strong boundary be- of Social Research. (Mercifully, it’s also only tween members and non-members of the networks about half as long.) Chuck takes as his task in this – trust networks are, as Chuck puts it, “segre- book to theorize and make us aware of the impor- gated” and have “high costs of entry and exit.” tance of a particular form of social relation that he Chuck does a nice job of spelling out commonal- thinks is quite consequential for understanding the ities in an extremely diverse set of examples, in- historical dynamics of states and societies, and cluding the medieval Waldensian heretical sect; especially for understanding democratization. the Jewish community of Johnstown, Pennsyl- Chuck does have a brief metatheoretical moment, vania (as studied by Ewa Morowska); “intentional on page 25, where he distinguishes three types of communities” such as communes (as studied by accounts of social life: the systemic, the disposi- Benjamin Zablocki and Rosabeth Moss Kanter); tional, and (the one he prefers) the transactional. Provençal confraternities (studied by Maurice Systemic accounts posit large, coherent, self- Agulhon); an assortment of trade diasporas and sustaining entities (most often societies, but some- migration chains; a sixteenth-century English Par- times world-systems) and account for events by ish (studied by Eamon Duffy); and the al-Qaeda their location within these systemic wholes. Dis- terrorist network. For my money, any concept that positional accounts posit a different kind of coher- enables us to recognize the common features and ent, self-sustaining entity: individuals endowed social processes of Waldensians, migration chains, with preferences, culturally determined beliefs, or and al-Qaeda is definitely worth adding to the so- dispositions whose motivated actions aggregate ciological vocabulary. into events at the social level. Transactional ac- counts, in Tilly’s words, “take interactions among Chuck points out that trust networks have typi- social sites as their starting points, treating both cally stood in a very guarded relation to states, events at those sites and durable characteristics of which, from the point of view of the trust net- those sites as outcomes of interactions.” Interac- works, are usually regarded as at least potential tions, not individuals or societies, are primary. predators. States want a piece of these networks’ Transactional accounts have the advantage, Tilly sequestered economic resources as taxes or pro- adds, “of placing communication, including the tection money; they often want allegiance as well, use of language, at the heart of social life.” Any- and sometimes adherence to specific religious be- one who has read my book can imagine that I cer- lief and practices. Segregated trust networks tainly strongly agree with Tilly’s metatheoretical nearly always seem at least vaguely threatening to preference, although I would add that transactional states. Typically, trust networks respond with accounts must be able to account in their own downright concealment (as for the Waldensians or terms both for the emergence and durability of al-Qaeda), with dissimulation (by not making such quasi-systemic entities as nation states or clear to the outside world crucial portions of their global capitalism and for the relatively stable dis- activities), or by seeking patronage. Becoming the positions of actors. Tilly does not elaborate a de- client of some patron (parishes or confraternities tailed argument in favor of his metatheoretical linked to the Church, guilds chartered by the king) preference. Rather, he tries to show the value of had the advantage of regularizing the trust net- transactional analysis by working out the logic of works’ status, but this always came at a cost in one particular sort of transactional entity: the trust terms of supervision, financial demands, and the network. like. There was also the possibility for the net- work itself to engage in predation, like pirates or The defining features of trust networks are that bandits, but this was highly risky. Trust networks they undertake “valued, high-risk, long-term ac- tended to proliferate in premodern states, which, tivities” that are exposed to “malfeasance, mis- because they had limited infrastructural power (to takes, or failures on the part of network members.” use Michael Mann’s term), were willing to settle The key feature of such networks, as I understand for patron-client relations with trust networks. it, is that their members rely on people whom they But modern states, whether democratic or totali- don’t know intimately to carry out potentially tarian, tend to look with less favor on segregated costly actions and in turn are willing to carry out trust networks. 17 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

One of the themes Chuck treats in this book is the states, I think Chuck might better have used his relationship of trust networks to democracy and theorization of the trust network as a sociological democratization. I’m afraid I didn’t find this as- category to explain what it is about social relations pect of the argument very satisfying. What I think in modern democracies that has either enabled works best in this book is Chuck’s elaboration of preexisting segregated trust networks to remain in trust networks as a kind of transhistorically valid operation or has given rise to new social niches in category of sociological analysis, parallel, one which such networks are invented anew. I’m con- might say, to Weber’s discussions of bureaucracy fident that this question can be answered by using or patrimonialism as sociological categories. The Chuck’s general analysis of trust networks. As discussion of democractization and trust intro- this final remark should make clear, even if I’m duces into the analysis a diachronic, historical di- not convinced by Chuck’s account of democratiza- mension that seems to me less adequately devel- tion, I certainly am convinced that his book has oped. introduced an important new category into the so- ciological lexicon. Chuck’s chief claim here is that democratization can be understood, at least in part, as the integra- tion of trust networks into the state. I certainly agree that trust is an important issue for democ- ratic states. As Chuck points out, in order for de- Stinchcombe Reviews mocratic states to function effectively they must be able to gain the trust of the citizenry. Citizens Sewell and Tilly must be willing to pay taxes, honor conscription, and, eventually, contribute to state managed pen- My main methodological argument in this com- sion and medical schemes. They must, in other mentary is a simple one, namely that the central words, assume that the state can be trusted to use methodological canon for historical methodology wisely or at least honestly the valuable human and is: Know a Lot. This sounds as if I was trying to economic resources that they render up to it. Citi- resist having any epistemology, as T. S. Eliot no zens believe this in part because they are able to doubt meant when he said the analogous, ap- influence governmental decisions by means of proximately “The only method for literary criti- voting and freely expressing their opinions in the cism is the application of a very great intelli- public sphere. But, for the most part, the big story gence.” Not so for historical sociology. here seems to be not the integration of pre- existing trust networks into the state, but rather the First I will illustrate this by using two examples. I creation of a new form of trust that is universal have been corrected by each of my co-panelists in between citizens rather than segregated and tightly a reckless theoretical statement, because they bounded like the trust networks Chuck has so viv- knew more about it than I did. Then I will argue idly described earlier in the book. It is certainly that the central requirement of all methodology is true that trust networks persist in modern democ- that one be able to refute theories that are false, racies. For example, many of the intentional com- and the quicker and cheaper that refutation is, the munities and migration chains discussed in this better the method is. Knowing a lot makes it book occur in the context of modern democracies. much easier and cheaper to refute theories with I would say that extensive proletarianization and facts one already knows. bureaucratization of social life, together with the vast increase in the infrastructural power of states, Once I was giving a sketch of a mathematical has undermined the conditions that made segre- model of how it might happen that unions and la- gated trust networks so ubiquitous in pre-modern bor or socialist parties start being organized at societies. Citizens of modern democratic states do around a given time in the history of one country, in fact trust states to pay their pensions and (ex- later in another, and how it might happen that the cept in the United States) their health costs. labor movement declined in vigor, especially in new organizing and conquest of higher votes in Rather than pursuing the question of how trust elections, at later times, also sequenced by coun- networks are integrated into modern democratic try. The basic idea of the model is built around 18 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 the model in physics of the decay of heavy radio- thusiasm played a bigger role than coercion. It active atoms into an intermediate radioactive iso- wasn’t worth my twisting around to explain suc- tope of another element, then on into a stable cessful coercion as nationalism, though being a lighter atom. It is obvious that if there is one rate model builder, I imagine I could do it, to be of probability of the heavy atom to decay, and knocked down by another fact Tilly knows. then a different one, per- haps slower, for the decay Now I am pointing to of the intermediate isotope these things not because into the lighter stable one they are an encourage- (for instance the metal lead My main methodologi- ment to my modesty. I’m atom is stable and “lighter” cal argument is: Know not going to be any good than the uranium one), then at modesty. Instead I the number of atoms of the a Lot. want to make the point intermediate might first that if I am going to set grow as the heavy atoms out to explain why the decay but the isotope advance of the labor doesn’t decay as fast, and then finally decline as movement to massive organization and power all of it decays into the stable atoms. So much for came and went, and that it wasn’t nearly as strong the mathematical model of labor movement in the 1790s or so that starts E.P. Thompson’s growth and decay, with farmers taking on the Making of the English Working Class, as in the heavy role, proletarians the intermediate isotope, last chapter in the 1840s or so, I’d better do it with and services workers the lighter stable ones. So I more subtle tools than intermediate isotopes. And recklessly set the equations for England so that I will do better if I know that I can’t start with no they would produce lots of workers in the late 19th working people when and where E.P. Thompson and early 20th centuries, then declining, reset them started his book. Similarly if I have a theory about so for Spanish ones so there would be lots of enthusiasm building an army for the Bonapartist workers in the 30s, in time for the civil war, and empire, I should know what actually happened in so on. Bill Sewell raised his hand and said some- the recruitment for national glory. thing like, “Back there where you have England having 3 or 4 % workers, they were actually I will now argue that Sewell and Tilly have a good somewhere from a third to a quarter of the work clean epistemological advantage by knowing more force. Does that undermine your main argument?” than I do, at least about these particular things. In Well the answer I gave was that it didn’t really, experiments in social psychology with control except that one could tell which was the model, groups, and in surveys with attitude scales with which was the truth. high and low values, we have a way to disprove and throw away hypotheses. A researcher then Then one time I sent a paper to Charles Tilly in can plan ahead how to test them. And if they get which I said something casually about how French lost, they can look for new theories almost as fast nationalism allowed Napoleon to successfully as Tilly remembers a book to recommend to me, raise a much larger army for foreign conquests and I can read a correlation matrix even faster than than the other European countries could raise. Tilly can read a paper of mine, because I’m really Tilly sent me what is, for him, a stiff note that said quite good at matrix algebra. But it’s a lot harder something like: “You should find out what actu- to build historical research in advance so that, if it ally happened before you write about it.” He re- was really for Napoleon hard to make young men ferred me to a book that told what a difficult time go to the army, that disproves enthusiasm as a the Napoleonic government had getting conscripts cause of military discipline. That “if” came into into that army. They tried this and that, until fi- Tilly’s mind because he knew the answer, and not nally they structured it so that the whole village into mine because I didn’t. So my methodological was punished if they did not deliver enough young sub-point is, if you don’t know a lot, have friends men. So I rewrote that part. I had recklessly that do. And if you are stuck to get a theory of adopted what was a more or less conventional in- survey data when your first one didn’t work, send terpretation of Napoleon’s success, in which en- the relevant correlation matrix off to me. 19 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Other things being equal, the more investigators tending sides, including the buildup of the cha- know about a subject, the more likely they won’t risma of the leaders of national workshops, their build a foolish theory about it, because beforehand culture of organization that made them more like they can disprove in their minds a bunch of theo- an army, without the guard’s devotion to the con- ries that don’t work. Historical workers don’t servative side. This new culture had been no- have to tell their audiences about all the null hy- where to be found before, and was not, as Marx potheses that were really null, that only stayed in thought, a prior division within the working class their minds until they remembered a scrap from of the lumpen and craftsman subcultures. And of somebody else’s book or some document they ran course the new national guardsmen had not been across last summer. Now comes the crucial point: armed before, had not been supervised in an or- because investigators won’t know very far in ad- ganizational culture developed by army officers, vance what it is that they are going to theorize and so on. That is, it was the culture changing about when they start their research, they will rapidly, but by small changes per day, using a va- want to know a lot so that they will know when riety of elements in the repertoire of French rebel- they are being foolish, more or less whatever the- lions and revolutions, that created the precondi- ory they stumble across in looking over the facts. tions of the events that Sewell is so interested in. That is why it is important that history itself is di- But that event became important because it first vided by times and places in the first place, so that manifested a rapid change of culture on the two it is easier for a historian to know a lot about the sides, starting with the same social materials, and place and time he or she is investigating. I once one of those sides could start being disassembled tried to show in my Economic Sociology that I once the “event” left the other newly grown side knew a lot about the economies of 18th century still on the field. France, the Karimojong herding tribes of Uganda, and the United States in the 1960s, so I make less The same is, I would argue, even more true of the mistakes there. event of Captain Cook’s death in Hawaii from Sahlins, that Sewell gives such a good summary Now let me turn briefly to the specific books of of. Sahlins argues that there was a repertoire of my critics and colleagues. First I will address what might be called the King versus church some things that I think are missing in Sewell’s (against priests, anyway) conflicts in the Hawaiian fundamental concept of an “event” that transforms culture, played out in the year or so between old structures into partially new ones, such that in Cook’s first contact in Hawaii and the second one the new ones different causes operate, and the in which he was killed. In that time Cook had be- same causes have different effects. This seems to come a totem in the priestly culture as a God come say that little causes have big effects, like an acorn to Earth. After the death, Cook’s bones were to becomes a big tree, changing the carbon dioxide become a totem instead in the royal repertoire of from the air into wood ready to be installed on liv- conquest of the other islands. The importance of ing room floors. The acorn has to grow for some bones to the Hawaiians was shown by their mis- time before it can start making wood, and for a lot understanding that the English who wanted of time before it can become a living room floor. Cook’s body back to bury him as a Christian could make do with a few bones, that the priests appar- This logic of “events” and “conjunctures” and ently stole back from the King. While Cook had changes in what causes what over time is not spe- been in Alaska talking to the Russians, there de- cific to human history. But by thinking of how an veloped in Hawaii a claim of priestly religious acorn grew into a huge cause of living room autonomy much like Thomas à Beckett developed floors, we may get an idea of how events become in a short time, based on an interpretation of forces. I will take Mark Traugott’s lovely demon- Cook’s visit. As in England, a killing, the “event” stration that Marx was wrong about the lumpen- gave the King the title: “Defender of the Faith,” proletarian composition of the National Guard and which is still Elizabeth’s title, NOT that of the the proletarian composition of the national work- Archbishop of Canterbury. Sahlins’s account of shops. Sewell’s own recounting shows, I would that rapid cultural change in Hawaii is nearly as maintain, that there was a very rapid change in exciting as T.S. Eliot’s, or Traugott’s. We just the internal culture of what became the two con- have no concept in sociology of how fast cultures 20 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 can change, except when a good historical soci- democratization when the governing elite invades ologist or anthropologist knows more than we do. to disable such loyalty and trust networks that guard the big essentials of life. And he skipped a The main general epistemological point here is few that we sociologists generally skip over, that that usually big things have big causes; if we think the United States had a slave system and a Civil we have found big effects of small causes, we are War that both violated a lot of the prerequisites of well advised to look for massive changes in cul- democracy, and that the decentralized or “federal- ture in a short period of time, and particularly big ist” genocide of the Native Americans invaded changes in its relation to (perhaps new) structures trust networks of indigenous communities. Many of institutionalized power, so that the new culture of the states that seceded in the Civil War had can be extended in time and space, as Giddens has wider suffrage among white men than most North- taught us to think of institutionalization of culture. ern ones that opposed them. Where village de- mocracy was the most developed on the frontier at So the second big methodological principle is that that time, whites were often mobilized into de- when the facts you know so well tell you that cul- mocratic militias to kill many Indians and to take ture sometimes changes faster than social organi- their land. I hold an emeritus professorship com- zation and resources, listen. memorating a Methodist layman who organized the slaughter of a peaceable Indian tribe when he Now to Tilly: only by knowing a lot about several was governor of Colorado. My point here is that countries could Tilly even tackle the big question there doesn’t seem to be a very strong correlation he is after in this book. He wants to locate those between the formation of groups with very strong networks of loyalty and trust that enable people to ties of deep loyalty, so others will trust their lives trust their fates to each other: kinship groups, ma- to them, and democracy. But they tend to become fias, religious underground movements, and the big causes of movement in whatever direction like. Such networks have to consist entirely of they take, because such subcultures can grow rap- relationships such that each person is monitored idly into structures of power with a great capacity for trustworthiness by many others in the trust net- to change social structure. work. Each then may be entrusted with bringing up the children, not betraying fellow jihadists, and So the third methodological principle I will offer the like. When it’s really serious, a matter or life is: go after the big things in peoples’ lives, life and and death, only strong ties at each node will do. death and reproduction, that move people to The strength of weak ties can only come about if change their culture and social organization. nobody knows enough to betray you to the secret police; with weak ties you get dominated by the So the conclusion I take from this is, Know a lot; Nazi neighborhood bully, the Gauleiter, who has When the facts show that in fact culture changed strong ties within the Party and to the Gestapo. rapidly, notice it; and Go after the big things in people’s lives, because they can build strong Tilly then distinguishes these high loyalty net- structures that become big causes. works according to whether they are in the politi- cal-military elite, the commercial and economic “second estate,” or are trust networks that evade or oppose the elite, or ones that just live their lives in Tilly Reviews areas of low elite governance. The reason he needs this distinction is that unless these big Sewell and Stinchcombe things in the life of the general population (sex, children, care and subsistence in old age, security Apple, orange, and kumquat? The three of us have of the home and within the home from violence) taken on an intimidating task. The three books we are integrated into political life, democracy is both are comparing and criticizing here include a col- superficial and unstable. lection of essays, a graduate level textbook, and a synthetic monograph. Having published essay Tilly then gives lots of examples of democratiza- collections, textbooks, and monographs of my tion that satisfy this criterion for a while, and de- own, I can hardly complain about our heterogene- 21 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 ity. But it does rule out the simplest strategy for Pettit also makes a useful distinction between two such a comparison: an item-by-item scorecard philosophical concepts of persons, one decision- with judgments as to who does what better. For- theoretic, the other discourse-theoretic. Decision- tunately, the outstanding books we are discussing theoretic persons act in response to interactions of come from Bill Sewell and Art Stinchcombe, au- their beliefs and preferences, discourse theoretic thors whose work I have followed and admired for persons in response to interactions with other per- decades. Although I could certainly review them sons, mediated by the surrounding culture. In – and praise them -- for writing style, fresh in- these terms, both Sewell and Stinchcombe engage sights, or challenging claims, another less obvious the philosophy of reason; the word “logic,” after tack seems more likely to raise valuable points for all, appears in both their books’ titles, although debate. Let me assess the two books as contribu- characteristically as a singular in Stinchcombe and tions to the philosophies of history and social sci- a plural in Sewell. Yet on the whole Stinch- ence. That means asking whether they supply vi- combe’s book draws more heavily on the philoso- able visions of the presuppositions historians and phy of reason, Sewell’s on the philosophy of soci- sociologists must adopt in order to do work that ety. Stinchcombe, furthermore, stays much closer reduces our collective ignorance. It means dealing to decision-theoretic conceptions of persons than with ontology, epistemology, logic, and method. Sewell, whose persons mostly inhabit a discourse- theoretic world. But don’t worry: I have no intention of bludgeon- ing you with esoteric philosophical concepts. On What problems is Sewell trying to solve with his the contrary, each of the two books, in its own dis- discourse-theoretic philosophy of society? In a tinctive way, broadcasts a strong message con- collection of ten disparate essays, more than one cerning the proper way to generate reliable knowl- problem sometimes takes charge. Individual edge of human affairs, taking history into account. treatments of Clifford Geertz and Marshall For Sewell, relations between history and social Sahlins, for example, necessarily take up different science occupy the foreground of his analysis. For issues from a chapter boldly labeled “Refiguring Stinchcombe, historical methods take their places the ‘social’ in social science.” Nevertheless, one along side quantitative, ethnographic, and experi- immense organizing question recurs throughout mental methods. But Stinchcombe, a seasoned the book: how should historians and social scien- historical analyst on his own, gives history plenty tists represent interactions of time, culture, and of attention. social structure? Such a question might seem to cover the entire field. In fact, it leaves out a whole In a recent clarifying essay on the philosophical series of problems that occur to a philosophically foundations of political analysis, Philip Pettit dis- alert reader as the book proceeds, for instance how tinguishes five relevant branches of philosophy: exactly to detect cause-effect connections and philosophies of reason, of nature, of mind, of soci- what sorts of formal models plausibly represent ety, and of value. Although we could search out social processes. Since Stinchcombe’s book fea- Sewell’s and Stinchcombe’s presuppositions in all tures just such problems, we see that Sewell has five regards, their books commit them most ex- substantially narrowed his field. plicitly on questions of reason and society. The philosophy of reason, according to Pettit, “expli- Sewell takes up time, culture, and social structure cates and examines the presuppositions we make separately at various points in his book, but brings as to what follows from what when we reason on them together in his grandest efforts at synthesis. any topic whatsoever, whether of the kind related Remember that bold essay on refiguring the so- to deductive or inductive logic, epistemology, or cial? It starts by teasing readers with a long expo- the philosophy and methodology of science” sition of semiotic approaches to social life, but (Pettit 2006: 36). The philosophy of society, he ends by substituting social construction for lan- continues “deals with presuppositions about the guage as its preferred metaphor. As Sewell puts nature of conventions, norms, and laws, about the it, possibility of joint intention, communal life, and group agency, and about the character of the citi- I claim that discursive or semiotic proc- zenry, democracy, and the state” (Pettit 2006: 37). esses (that is to say, meaningful human ac- 22 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

tions) are conditioned by and give rise to fects, and unconscious effects? Second, to adopt a structures or forces governed by built- term that figures prominently in Stinchcombe’s environment logics (logics of spatial fix- book, what causal mechanisms produce the trans- ing, material instantiation, accretion, and formations of culture and structure so central to duration) and that such built-environment Sewell’s model? If, for example, we reject the logics condition semiotic processes (by teleological temporality typified by Immanuel stabilizing them, undermining them, or by Wallerstein and the experimental temporality typi- subjecting them to transformative pres- fied by Theda Skocpol in favor of the eventful sure). An adequate conceptualization of temporality Sewell recommends, how shall we the social must recognize both the semiotic specify the causes that make some events more and the built-environment logics and trace consequential than other events? Must we, in fact, out their dialectical interrelationships abandon serious efforts at explaining social proc- (Sewell 2005: 368). esses? Since neither the word “cause” nor the word “explanation” appears in Sewell’s index, the Time enters this complex passage in the processes book seems to leave the two big difficulties unre- by which semiotic practices generate social envi- solved. ronments and those environments subsequently shape semiotic practices. Culture enters as what Sewell actually talks philosophy, deploying terms Sewell elsewhere in the book calls “partially co- like epistemology and ontology repeatedly. Nei- herent landscapes of meaning” (Sewell 2005: ther word appears in Stinchcombe’s index, al- 174), hence in the content of semiotic interaction. though the word epistemology does sneak into the Structure enters in the very Giddensian form of book’s main text. Stinchcombe presents himself negotiated outcomes to that interaction. Together, as more of a cracker barrel philosopher than an time, culture, and structure constitute history as Aristotle, self-consciously retaining the oral style meaningful lived experience. of his lectures to graduate students. Nevertheless, his book’s very first sentence declares as its pur- “This is the point,” comment Don Kalb and Her- pose “to analyze logically and practically various man Tak, “at which Sewell’s formulations become strategies sociologists have invented to explore confusing: for, develop, or test theories of causation in social life” (Stinchcombe 2005: 1). What’s more, David Either culture is autonomous and operates ac- Hume makes his first appearance in the same first cording to a logic of its own, roughly Saus- paragraph. That sounds a lot like philosophy, in- surean if need be; or it is not autonomous and deed like Philip Pettit’s philosophy of reason. is operated within an interlocking set of insti- tutional practices, including specialized insti- How does philosopher Stinchcombe do his work? tutions for culture production, set in motion by identifiable and interested actors, who may or He posits a world of phenomena falling onto con- may not face resistance. It is the one or the tinua along which distances vary from small to other, and it makes a difference for how we big. Those phenomena also compound into units: think and talk about social existence (Kalb and persons, places, organizations, and more. To the Tak 2005: 9). extent that those units serve not merely as conven- ient points of observation but also as efficacious Will this ambivalence do philosophically? Let me actors or sites of action, they must be real and identify two large philosophical difficulties that causally coherent. If efficacious units are not per- Sewell’s book leaves unresolved. First, the time- sons, they must nevertheless possess boundaries culture-structure model of social processes implies within which causal interdependence clearly oper- that all social construction operates through the ates. Representations of distances along the con- mediation of conscious, intentional human minds tinua occupied by distinct phenomena count as engaged in language games. Although Sewell variables, but we must be careful to distinguish makes concessions to unintended consequences, between the underlying ontology of phenomena how can we reconcile his model with incremental and their representation, which takes place effects, simultaneous effects, environmental ef- through the observer’s constructs. A Stinchcom- 23 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

number of the arguments familiar (see e.g. Brady Sewell’s model implies that and Collier 2004, King, Keohane, and Verba all social construction op- 1994). Without using the term, it incorporates a correspondence theory of truth. But with greater erates through the media- lucidity and far more well-worked examples than the average textbook, it lays out a program for in- tion of conscious, inten- ferring causes – not simply correlations – from tional human minds en- data. It stands out from conventional presenta- tions not only by identifying practical ways of gaged in language games. making causal inferences but also by showing the complementary parts that quantitative, historical, How can we reconcile his ethnographic, and experimental data can play in model with incremental ef- pinning down cause-effect relations. Neverthe- less, the book’s deep logic resembles that of stan- fects, simultaneous effects, dard social statistics. As Stinchcombe says: environmental effects, and I believe that these logics are basically the unconscious effects? same, but that statistics textbooks do not ordi- narily go into where the numbers they calcu- late with come from. We have gotten near the bian observer faces the problem of disciplining end of a long book on method before coming information drawn from the units to test theories to this point, and I believe that most of what about how the continuous phenomena affect each precedes ought to be at the beginning of a other. They affect each other by means of causal good statistics textbook (Stinchcombe 2005: mechanisms. 239).

Observers of social phenomena can choose among Thus Stinchcombe’s teaching qualifies as superior quantitative procedures, historical analyses, eth- sociology. nography, and experimental intervention as they measure distances by means of variables. To do But as philosophy? Like Sewell, Stinchcombe so, they must adopt or invent concepts. Concepts takes us to the edges of a pair of philosophical identify differences worth attending to – differ- gorges, but doesn’t tell us how to bridge them. ences in one variable that cause differences in First, what is our warrant for assuming that the other variables. But observers must also shape observable world divides neatly into continuous their theories to the contexts in which cause-effect phenomena we can plausibly represent as vari- relations are operating; as Stinchcombe puts it, ables? What if everything out there actually con- “Most causal processes in all sciences have sists of boiling plasma from which our puny at- boundary conditions” (Stinchcombe 2005: 16). tempts at measurement only capture occasional Theorizing consists of producing verifiable state- spurts of gas? Or what if every apparent contin- ments about relevant cause-effect relations within uum actually takes the form of a Moebius strip, appropriate boundaries. The wider the range of a forever turning back on itself? To what extent will theory’s empirical implications, on the average, the observational procedures Stinchcombe de- the more powerful the theory. Testing theory then scribes so alluringly then produce false positives: involves two steps: deriving observable implica- apparent verifications of theories that are wholly tions, and determining whether those implications inadequate? Could it be, as Andrew Abbott as- are true or false. That sort of two-stage test takes serts, that the general linear model, foundation of on greater weight when competing theories, all at sociological statistical analyses, “has come to in- least superficially plausible, come into play. fluence our actual construing of social reality, blinding us to important phenomena that can be Readers who have advanced beyond the first-year rediscovered only by diversifying our formal tech- graduate methods course for which Stinchcombe niques”? (Abbott 2001: 38). originally wrote his lectures will of course find a 24 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Second, what about time and its compounding into very important ramifications for the future of Ha- history? Stinchcombe generously treats historical waiian society) was entirely dependent, according analysis as one of his four major methods, and to Sahlins’s account, on the utterly contingent fact provides many an example of effective historical that he arrived in Hawaii at the beginning of that work, including his own. But his causes seem to God’s festival. Had he arrived at a different time be instantaneous, reversible, and impervious to of year, he might have been identified as a differ- sequencing effects. At a minimum, one might ent God (with different social entailments) or not have thought that the history of a social unit or have been thought a God at all. As far as I am social process would affect its behavior at a given concerned, the insistence on using the metaphor of point in time. Since Bill Sewell’s whole book ar- “bigness” as if there were a common linear scale gues such a point at length, perhaps I should leave for all sorts of social facts distracts us from using the question there. Can we possibly reconcile or effectively all that highly differentiated knowledge at least adjudicate the confrontation between time- that Art wisely counsels us to obtain. drenched Sewell and timeless Stinchcombe? I think Chuck Tilly gets the contrast between my book and Art’s about right – that mine is primarily discourse-theoretic and time-drenched and Art’s Rejoinder: Sewell primarily decision-theoretic and timeless. Chuck criticizes my book for being insufficiently con- It’s hard to disagree with the methodological con- cerned with causation, remarking that neither clusions Art Stinchombe elaborates in his presen- “cause” nor “explanation” appears in the index. tation. We are well advised to know a lot, to take But this is a matter of poor index construction on notice when cultures change quickly, and to look my part: the index does have quite extensive en- for the big things in people’s lives. I am less con- tries under both “mechanistic explanation” and vinced by his claim, in his discussion of my book, “paradigmatic explanation.” (I now see that the that “usually big things have big causes.” There entries should have been “explanation, mechanis- are two problems here. First, I think the notion of tic” and “explanation, paradigmatic.”) What is bigness simply repeats in slightly different lan- true is that I spend relatively little time talking guage the mistake of reducing all of social life to about the standard sociological protocols of ex- questions of distance. How can we compare the planation: the positing and testing of causal gener- “bigness” of an event like the Parisian insurrection alizations. My neglect in this respect is purpose- of the “June Days” in 1848 (about which Mark ful. That such protocols are valuable, even essen- Traugott wrote) to the “bigness” of the cultural tial, to good social science seems incontrovertible, changes that differently affected the National but hardly news. Both Tilly and Stinchcombe rea- Guard and the Mobile Guard in the weeks leading son in this way very effectively in their books. up to the insurrection? Or the “bigness” of the What I attempt in Logics of History, and most ex- Hawaiian chief’s assumption of the role of “de- plicitly in my final chapter on “refiguring the ‘so- fender of the faith” (about which Sahlins wrote) cial’ in social science,” is to work out an account with the “bigness” of the cultural rift between the of social life based on what is often called “inter- chief and priests over the previous year? Surely in pretive method.” Interpretive method, I argue, is neither case is there anything approaching a single based on very different explanatory protocols – metric that would allow one to compare the size of what I call “paradigmatic explanation,” which ex- a cause with that of an effect. “Bigness,” here, plains patterns of human action by specifying the seems highly metaphorical and subjective. Sec- paradigms or codes (for example, linguistic, aes- ond, to the extent that my notion of eventful tem- thetic, scientific, rhetorical, or kinesthetic) that porality implies “little causes having big effects,” enable actors to produce them. I believe that the the issue is really not about big and little causes study of culture, in sociology as in other fields, is and effects, but about the importance of contin- necessarily based on this form of explanation. I gency in social life. Thus, for example, the fact therefore think that making it explicit as a distinct that Hawaiians took Captain Cook to be the God explanatory method rather than trying to shoehorn Lono (an identification that Sahlins shows had cultural interpretation into standard sociological

25 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 methodological categories could be both clarifying Thus when I used one of Sewell’s examples of the and liberating. relation between the riot that came to mean libera- tion from the coercion of the Bastille and the reor- But I also argue that paradigmatic explanation, ganized Estates General that was a republican al- which enables us to understand semiotic practices, ternative government, to show how Giddens ought is not fully adequate to the task of social analysis. to have written the last half of his Constitution of This is because it is basically a synchronic method Society, I was talking about how the crowd and therefore fails to capture the enduring tempo- changed the legitimation process of the new gov- ral effects of semiotic action – among others, the ernment, but could never be an alternative gov- “incremental effects, simultaneous effects, envi- ernment because crowds were not sufficiently ex- ronmental effects, and unconscious effects” that tended in time and space. I was arguing that Gid- Chuck claims I ignore. Far from ignoring these, I dens was casting away the value of his revisions take them into account as “built environment” lo- of social theory inspired by Goffman and gics that are dialectically intertwined in real social Garfinkel to produce structuration, because he was processes with semiotic logics. I do not, as Chuck not looking for examples that would show its claims, “substitute” the metaphor of built envi- power. I argued in the discussion after the 3-way ronment for that of semiotic practice. Rather I critique presentations at ASA that the introduction claim that understanding the unfolding of social of the protesting crowd as a legitimator of gov- life requires us to operate on more than one causal ernments was a big cause of a lot of things in the register simultaneously. In short, I do not ignore revolution, many of them wonderfully analyzed in the philosophical problem of explanation in Lo- Markoff’s Abolition of Feudalism. Many of them gics of History. But I treat the problem in ways involved communication between crowds and that differ quite dramatically from the assumptions people in the successor representative bodies to of standard sociological methodology. I continue the Estates General. to regard this not as a weakness but as a distinc- tive strength of my book. So the argument takes the form of one observation of the dt form, that meanings sure changed fast, and that it was partly because the situation of a crowd is different than the situation of a legal and Rejoinder: Stinchcombe administrative bureaucracy topped by a specially organized crowd who used to be summarizers of Unfortunately I learned about time first in calcu- the Cahiers de Doleances, and were becoming lus, where dt, an instant of time, went into the de- legislators in communication with protesting nominator. If things were changing fast, the nu- crowd of various descriptions throughout France: merator, though just an instant, was big compared a France where the food supplies to the Paris were to the denominator. So in my examples of cultural bread grains grown on the Seine-Loire plain be- change, I pointed to cases like Traugott’s or cause of a slow creep north of the genes of grains, Sahlins’s where culture was changing very fast. I a low numerator and big denominator, the dt, in have also used my favorite longue durée fact, Le miles per century. Roi Ladurie’s presentation of the gradual evolu- tion of varieties of grain, first adapted to the Medi- The brief summary then is that I don’t see any terranean, evolving so as to tolerate colder and conflict between my simultaneous holding to time- colder latitudes in France, until the Seine-Loire less causation (because the time is in the denomi- plain became the breadbasket and Languedoc had nator, and the cultural change is in the numerator) to go over to grapes and chestnuts: time drenched. and time-drenched causation. But you still need But what Sewell is talking about is, it seems to the causal mechanism that makes meanings go on me, time that is itself meaningful, such that differ- into the future, that makes the conjoint meaning of ent times differ because what happened over time a riot and of an alternative government give a changed basic meaning structures. The definition definition of what a revolutionary government is of the meaning of time, because of the events that all about. could only happen in time, then has causal impact.

26 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Now briefly to Tilly’s worry about whether there I guess then what I really meant by the motto, is anything systematic about the relationship of “Know a lot,” was that you should have a lot of deep strong ties and their structure and democ- half-digested facts, not so theorized that they can racy. I suppose the biggest democratic revolutions be used only one way. I had thought a lot about in the United States were, on the one hand, the the problem of drovers’ roads in Scotland before I rebellion of the whites-only democracies of the could remember and use the fact that when the Southern States, resolving their differences in one Scottish government was trying to create gun con- state after another (leaving out a few border trol a couple or three centuries ago, the central states), and the counter-revolution, and the second government insisted that drovers (they herded biggest the Abolitionist movement and its allies in sheep south to be fattened and butchered in Eng- the North, eventually turned into democratic sup- land) were permitted to carry pistols, while the port for a war to bring them back in as “democ- farmers along their routes were not. How that re- ratic” non-slave provinces again. There were as lates to the theory of federalism takes about 15 or many conflicting interests in the North as in the 20 pages to explain. Briefly if drovers have to South, but there too Civil War policy was largely drive the most valuable capital and consumption resolved with democratic trucking and huckstering resource of a region through many villages and among the interests, and anti-draft riots, and the provinces of strangers, they need to have immedi- rest. ate response to raiders, and defense of their prop- erty rights in the cattle, regardless of village and One of the facts that seems to me to show the rele- provincial government interference. So the central vance of Tilly’s argument about the important, but government “had to” have the final say on legiti- ambiguous, relation between democracy and deep macy of drover property and its defense. Once I strong social networks is that after the civil war, know that theory, many of the facts about who in we find the college fraternities that had been of the lower classes could carry weapons became ir- national scope breaking apart. The short histories relevant. Now I can bring up the fact from its of many fraternities show that they were organized theoretical pigeon hole to mystify the reader. in Virginia; Robert E. Lee was in charge of a col- lege in the same state. Surely it was hard for de- As I have commented elsewhere, an antelope feated Southern young men (no sororities then, I needs good peripheral vision and eyes on both think) to be brothers with victorious Northern sides of its head to notice the lion that might at- young men. From Cincinnatus to the Post WWI tack; the lion needs its eyes to the front, so that it Freikorps to the Four Insurgent Generals of the can aim exactly where it can break the deer’s right wing half of the Spanish Civil War, such neck. Similarly knowing a lot with one’s periph- remnants of camaraderie have given trouble to eral vision has very different virtues than knowing many governments, not always “democratic.” exactly the occupational composition of the con- tending organizations in a French Revolution, that I of course agree with Tilly that besides knowing a Traugott needed to sort out. I hope he, too, lot, one has to forget a lot. I argue that the chief doesn’t remember the details. So knowing a lot value of getting the cause of something exactly within reason is the correct version of the motto. right is that, for the effect in question, we can for- get the rest of the facts that got us to it. After Newton’s straightening out gravity, we can forget all Kepler’s tedious facts about orbits. And in re- search it’s a good writing method to get some Rejoinder: Tilly parts of your argument organized into paragraphs, so you can arrange a subhead within the paper re- The author-meets-author format works best – or at membering only four or five topic sentences, and least most entertainingly -- when authors who visi- then a chapter or a paper can be organized by bly vilipend each other all qualify as sages. Hence thinking only about five or six subheads, and a my double apologies to the historical-comparative book or research program by organizing only five audience. First, as my original commentaries in- or six chapters. Nearly all of the facts in the non- dicate, I have long held colleagues Sewell and topic-sentences can be forgotten. Stinchcombe in high esteem; I’m not going to start 27 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 stomping on them now. Second, for a bit longer, I Stinchcombe points out, nevertheless, when would like to hold off becoming a sage: “A per- Sewell turns to rates of change of prevailing son, usually an elderly man, who is venerated for schemas, he arrives at an argument resembling his experience, judgment, and wisdom,” says my those that Ann Swidler offers for toolkits and I desk dictionary. Please help me delay old age! offer for contentious repertoires: All three of us Nevertheless, I appreciate the opportunity to re- see our objects of explanation as far more subject spond one more time to the sage publications of to rapid innovation and transformation in times of friends Stinchcombe and Sewell. extensive political struggle.

In reply to Arthur Stinchcombe, can we be sure Sewell, Stinchcombe, and I do not, however, agree that knowing a lot is always better than knowing about everything. Stinchcombe and Sewell offer less? Remember Borges’s wonderful character contradictory evaluations of my approach to trust Funes el memorioso. He remembered everything, networks and democratization. For Stinchcombe, and as a result could do nothing. All of us have it looks plausible that segregation of trust net- known specialists and enthusiasts who knew so works from public politics inhibits democratiza- much about their subjects that they paralyzed tion or even promotes de-democratization, while themselves and anesthetized their audiences. (I integration of those same trust networks into pub- hasten to add that neither applies to Stinchcombe lic politics promotes democratization. He gener- and Sewell.) We can be thankful that evolution ously interprets the argument as an application of built selective purging of memory into our nerv- his third methodological principle: “Go after the ous systems. big things in people’s lives, life and death and re- production, that move people to change their cul- More important, all knowledge of the kind that ture and social organization.” Yes, the junction Stinchcombe praises resides within mnemonic between trust networks and public politics focuses frameworks, sometimes including concepts. It network members’ hopes and fears on the per- took a long time, for example, before England’s formance of governments and major political ac- historians understood that much of the countryside tors, which doesn’t guarantee democracy, but de-industrialized during the 18th and early 19th promotes democratic participation when other centuries, hence that industrialization did not con- processes favor it as well. sist mainly of manufacturing’s intrusion into pre- viously bucolic regions. We can’t remember such Sewell voices greater doubt than Stinchcombe on things without concepts such as protoindustrializa- this point. In fact, Sewell agrees that untrusting tion, proletarianization, and capital concentration. publics undermine democracy. But he challenges the Trust and Rule account of the relationship in But those concepts in their turn easily become two regards. First, he claims that few trust net- blinders. My hard-won knowledge of the French works survive proletarianization and bureaucrati- Revolution and Napoleon helped me notice some- zation, and thus even remain available for integra- thing fishy in Stinchcombe’s original account of tion into democratic public politics. Second, he Napoleonic nationalism and military service. The suggests that democratic trust does not pass Sewell book under discussion, however, com- through interpersonal networks, but consists of plains that my fixation on the forms of collective more generalized and impersonal forms of rela- claim making leads me to underestimate the event- tionship between citizens and states. ful impact of the early Revolution on subsequent French political history. I deny underestimating By no means does Trust and Rule argue that the the Revolution’s impact, but admit that my fa- same trust networks (or even the same types of vored concepts draw attention to different conti- trust networks) generally survive democratization. nuities and discontinuities from those spotlighted On the contrary, it uses the cases of Ireland, Mex- by Sewell’s favored concepts. In my own work on ico, and major episodes of de-democratization the subject, I am trying to explain how, why, and elsewhere to demonstrate transformations of trust when the prevailing means of making claims networks in both directions. But the book does change, not how, why, and when prevailing under- make three claims on which Sewell and I appear standings of the past make significant shifts. As to disagree: 28 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

• that in democratizing regimes people con- and History” in Don Kalb and Herman Tak, tinue to pursue a wide variety of consequential eds., Critical Junctions. Anthropology and long term activities within trust networks, with History beyond the Cultural Turn. New York kinship and religious solidarities prominent and Oxford: Berghahn Books. King, Gary, Robert O. Keohane and Sidney Verba. among them 1994. Designing Social Inquiry. Scientific In- ference in Qualitative Research. Princeton: • that new and altered forms of trust net- Princeton University Press. works – for example, the integration of work- Pettit, Philip (2006): “How and Why Philosophy Mat- place relations into trade unions and the crea- ters” in Robert E. Goodin and Charles Tilly, tion of ties between providers and recipients of eds., The Oxford Handbook of Contextual Po- welfare – emerge in democratizing regimes litical Analysis. Oxford: Oxford University Press. • that integration between both surviving Sahlins, Marshall. 1981. Historical Metaphors and Practical Reason. Ann Arbor: University of and newly emerging trust networks, on one Michigan Press. side, and public politics, on the other, pro------. 1985. Islands of History. Chicago: motes democratization University of Chicago Press. Sewell, William H. Jr. 2005. Logics of History. So- So much the better. Our disagreement establishes cial Theory and Social Transformation. Chi- that the claims are not trivially true. Other schol- cago: University of Chicago Press. ars can thus bring their detailed knowledge to bear Stinchcombe, Arthur L. 1978. Theoretical Methods in on the controversy. Social History. New York: Academic. ------. 1983. Economic Sociology. As it happens, I wasn’t completely satisfied with New York: Academic Press. ------. 2005. The Logic of Social Re- the demonstration of the relationship in the chap- search. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ter of Trust and Rule that Sewell singles out. Thompson, E. P. 1966. The Making of the English Partly for that reason, I have written another book Working Class. New York: Vintage. containing a more extended treatment of democra- Tilly, Charles. 1964. The Vendée. Cambridge: Har- tization and trust networks. Democracy (Cam- vard University Press. bridge University Press, 2007) returns to Ireland, ------. 2005. Trust and Rule. Cambridge: Mexico, and salient instances of de- Cambridge University Press. democratization. But it also offers the United Traugott, Mark. 1985. Armies of the Poor: Determi- States, Argentina, and Spain as cases in point. My nants of Working-Class Participation in the persistence, to be sure, does not prove that my ar- Parisian Insurrection of 1948. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press. guments are correct. It may merely establish that my conceptual blinders have grown larger. Let other scholars – notably including comparative- historical sociologists – join the fray.

References

Abbott, Andrew. 2001. Time Matters. On Theory and Method. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Brady, Henry E. and David Collier, eds. 2004. Rethink- ing Social Inquiry. Diverse Tools, Shared Stan- dards. Lanham, Maryland: Rowman & Little- field. Goffman, Erving. 1963. Behavior in Public Places. New York: Free Press of Glencoe. Kalb, Don and Herman Tak. 2005. “Introduction: Critical Junctions – Recapturing Anthropology 29 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Identities

Comparative-historical scholars reflect on how day of street battles over reproductive rights and and why they entered the subfield. federal HIV policy. Although I enrolled in as many history classes as possible, and seemed al- On Becoming a Comparative- ways to orient my term papers to incorporate an historical perspective, in the final analysis I didn’t Historical Sociologist want to read about history. I wanted to be in the thick of the fight, making history. Despite being Amy Kate Bailey inspired to embark on this work by my own pro- University of Washington fessors’ teaching, research and activism – includ- ing Nancy Stoller, Pam Roby, Gwendolyn Mink The invitation to contribute an essay to Compara- and Bettina Aptheker, and my thesis advisor R.W. tive & Historical Sociology on my identity as a Connell – I could not imagine “making a differ- comparative-historical sociologist compelled me ence” within the walls of academe. Although to reflect on something I don’t usually think these scholars’ work passionately engaged ques- about: How does the kind of work that I do inform tions of inequality, sexuality, race and gender – all my identity as a sociologist? Is “doing” compara- issues about which I cared deeply – I did not yet tive and historical sociology akin to “doing gen- sense that my place might be among them. I spent der” (West and Zimmerman 1987)? Is “compara- a decade working in family planning, reproductive tive-historical sociologist” a role we consciously rights, HIV/AIDS, and tobacco control, defining enact to assert the kind of work we do and distin- myself as a feminist and social justice activist. guish ourselves from other kinds of sociologists? Not an academic. Not a sociologist. And cer- Or is being a comparative-historical sociologist an tainly not an historian. identity forged through a process of specialization (Becker 1981)? Do we invest in those questions I began the process of becoming a comparative- and methods from which we expect, based on our historical sociologist during my first year of comparative advantages over other sociologists, to graduate school, before I understood there were reap the greatest reward in the academic market- ways to “do sociology” that did not concern them- place? Or, do we become comparative and his- selves primarily with big ideas and big institu- torical sociologists through bargaining with other tions, with change across time and space. It was sociologists – our partners in the production and early 2002, a few months after hijackers crashed reproduction of knowledge? Do we engage in a into the World Trade Center, bringing what many continual dance of negotiation with scholars who claimed was the logical outcome of U.S. foreign have other specialties, dividing up the work in a policy crashing through our television screens and more or less egalitarian manner based on our own into our collective consciousness. It was also the collective attributes and our competing options historic moment when the first cohort of former outside the walls of academia (Lundberg and Pol- AFDC recipients was at risk of losing their TANF lak 1996)? I think that the answer, for me, is all of subsidies, and Bush II appointee Tommy Thomp- these, and it is none of them. Frankly, I had more son captained the domestic policy ship. The sense difficulty coming to terms with the “sociologist” that we were living through a time of historic so- part of this identity than the “comparative- cial change was palpable, and here I was, in my historical” portion. After years resisting the requi- early 30s, diving headfirst into a second career. I site master identity, “academic,” I now embrace it. had at last made peace with the part of me that yearned to orient my life toward the pursuit of Rewind to the late 1980s. I was an undergraduate knowledge. My new identity was being formed. I at UC Santa Cruz, a bucolic, radically left-wing could finally envision myself as an intellectual and campus 90 minutes from San Francisco. I not “just” an activist. But how did I know what bounced around academically, finally settling on a kind of sociologist I wanted to be? Was there a double major in women’s studies and health – an way to develop a research agenda that would be explosively political combination during the hey-

Page 30 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 scientifically rigorous and simultaneously allow me to maintain a sense of relevance?

Perhaps paradoxically, given my activist bent, I began taking traditional demographic coursework. In many ways, doing Midway through the second class – Fertility and Mortality, taught by Stewart E. Tolnay – inspira- comparative-historical tion struck. We were discussing Demographic Transition Theory and fertility decline in the his- work is very much like toric European context. I noticed that no coun- “doing gender”: my try’s fertility had declined before it experienced a democratic revolution (van de Walle and Knodel contributions often re- 1980). Given my training in feminist thought, this flect the things I know seemed to me a fruitful link, incorporating the Enlightenment’s redefinition of the individual, others expect from feminist work interrogating the role of reproduc- tion in women’s lives – particularly the relation- someone who does this ship between fertility control and women’s social kind of work. and political citizenship (thank you, Ann Orloff

(1993) and Sheila Shaver (1993-4), among others) – and the Second Wave feminist mantra, “the per- sonal is political.” It just seemed to make sense. I naively asked about the body of literature discuss- ing the relationship between political structures and fertility regimes and was shocked to learn that am also creating a data source that identifies and it was rather limited. Hence, I identified the topic incorporates census records for individuals in- for my first piece of original research, my M.A. cluded in the Beck-Tolnay inventory of lynch vic- thesis, a much-revised version of which received tims (Beck and Tolnay 2004). When completed, last year’s Reinhard Bendix Graduate Student Pa- the database we are compiling will help us better per award. understand racial violence and hate crimes in the

United States, and restore individual victims’ I had also found my mentor and cemented my identities to the study of mob violence. Both pro- identity as a comparative-historical sociologist, at jects seem to fit with both my residual identity as least in the eyes of my colleagues. In order to an activist and my new identity as an intellectual. convince myself, I had to actually build a research They braid together theory, data, and methods agenda and reflect on the character of my work. from a variety of perspectives, spanning decades Would comparative-historical work allow me to of social change. In short, both projects are firmly feel relevant? If I was to don this cloak, it needed embedded in the practice of comparative-historical to fit. Indeed, it does. My dissertation project ex- sociology and both seem to matter. plores the changing relationship between spatial and social mobility for U.S. veterans from 1950- So how do I, as a still-developing scholar, under- 2000. I am particularly interested in the mecha- stand my identity as a comparative-historical soci- nisms through which veteran status influences life ologist? Does that differ from the identity of chances under different staffing policy regimes – someone whose work falls within another disci- universal selective service and the All Volunteer plinary subfield? In many ways, doing compara- Force – and varying levels of policy commitment tive-historical work is very much like “doing gen- to veterans. I pay explicit attention to the way that der”: my contributions often reflect the things I this relationship might diverge for black and white know others expect from someone who does this men, in light of the distinct processes that have kind of work. I am the one who raises questions historically selected members of different racial of historical perspective or counterfactual exam- categories into military service. With Stew ples when attending colloquia, reviewing manu- Tolnay and his original collaborator, E.M. Beck, I 31 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 scripts, or providing my colleagues with feedback The Historical Sociologist as on their work. Why else would my input have been solicited? In other ways, this identity feels Outsider like something I do because I know how to do it. As time passes and my experience grows, it is Rebecca Emigh likely that my research trajectory will exhibit more University of California – Los Angeles than a degree of path dependence: my specializa- tion with a certain set of questions and approaches A major debate in sociology is about the relative will allow me to attain a higher level of productiv- advantages of insider and outsider knowledge. On ity if I stick to what I know best. And of course, the one hand, an insider – someone from within the process of peer review guarantees that our the society – has an understanding of it that facili- work and the parameters within which we must tates access and the interpretation of social action. operate are defined through a process of negotia- On the other hand, an outsider – someone from tion. These are all nice, tidy, academic explana- outside the society – has insights that only a new tions. But when I get right down to it and am and different perspective can bring. From a phi- honest with myself, I chose to do this work and to losophical and methodological point of view, I claim the identity “comparative-historical sociolo- could argue the advantages or disadvantages of gist” because it just feels right. either. However, from a personal perspective, I prefer the position of an outsider.

Some sociologists come to their subject from a desire to know about the forces that shaped their lives and thus they bring insider knowledge to their academic research. Their personal attributes References shape their professional lives. Of course, my per- sonal attributes shape my academic research as Beck, E. M. and Stewart E. Tolnay. 2004. “Con- well, but my background (suburban working-class firmed Inventory of Southern Lynch Victims, neighborhood north of Seattle) convinced me that 1882-1930.” Machine-readable data file avail- I wanted nothing to do with the conservative, able from authors. chauvinist, ant-intellectual climate where I grew Becker, Gary S. 1981. A Treatise on the Family. up. All I wanted was out! I certainly did not want Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. to study it. Lundberg, Shelly, and Robert A. Pollak. 1996. “Bargaining and Distribution in Marriage.” Instead, I wanted to know about something else, Journal of Economic Perspectives 10 (4): 139- anything else…. This has been formalized in my 158. choice of sociological fields, historical sociology, Orloff, Ann Shola. 1993. “Gender and the Social and in my choice of research topics. I am inter- Rights of Citizenship: The Comparative ested in finding out about times and cultures that Analysis of Gender Relations and Welfare are different from my own. In a discipline that of- States.” American Sociological Review 58 (3): ten takes for granted that whatever happened in 303 – 328. the U.S. in the past five years is of utmost impor- Shaver, Sheila. 1993-4. “Body Rights, Social tance, I am drawn to the foreign. Since difference Rights and the Liberal Welfare State.” Critical (and here Mill had it right; cf. Emigh 1997) is the Social Policy 13 (3): 66-93. best way to illustrate arguments, and since the past Van de Walle, Etienne and John Knodel. 1980. is always a referent for the future (Emigh 2005a), I “Europe’s Fertility Transition: New Evidence believe we often learn more about ourselves by and Lessons for Today’s Developing World”. studying others. But my modest upbringing is still Population Bulletin 34(6): 3-38. apparent: my work often pushes a view from be- West, Candace, and Don H. Zimmerman. 1987. low, the way that ordinary individuals, not elites, “Doing Gender.” Gender and Society 1 (2): affect social outcomes. I often use microhistorical 125-151. techniques or historical ethnography to try to cap-

32 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 ture these ordinary lives (Emigh 2003b, 2005b, My decision to go to graduate school was easy (it Forthcoming b.) was certainly better than working a real job, as I had had plenty of those already). I did an MA at Thus, my interest in historical sociology in par- Columbia and then went to the University of Chi- ticular stemmed from my long standing interest in cago. But it took me somewhat longer to choose medieval history, but it was crystallized in college my first dissertation topic on delayed transition to in a particular way. At Barnard College, where I capitalism in fifteenth-century Tuscany. The best attended on financial aid, I debated for some time thing for me about the University of Chicago was about my major. I was participating in a joint pro- the lack of requirements. Since I had a BA and an gram with the Columbia School of Engineering to MA in sociology, it seemed pointless for me to earn a joint liberal arts/engineering degree. I did take a lot of Sociology courses. However much fine; but the engineering classes interested me this damaged my reputation in the Sociology De- relatively little. I loved the classes where I did re- partment, I happily took History and Statistics search papers and gravitated towards them over courses and did whatever I wanted. I really did not time. One semester, I ran out of money, was work- need another MA in Sociology, so I did my MA in ing too many part-time jobs, and got very sick. Statistics. I also started working with Robert Bart- The double load of classes was too much and I lett, a medievalist, on the “Frauenfrage” – the role gave up the engineering ones, with some, but not a of women in religious movements in medieval lot of discomfort. Certainly, I have never been Europe, but soon realized that this was not going sorry about that decision. to be the easiest topic to combine historical soci- ology with quantitative methods. Since it seemed Several factors drew me towards sociology in par- rather useless to have an MA in Statistics and ticular. My then boyfriend (now husband of nearly write a completely qualitative dissertation, I began 25 years) was a “history-sociology” major – a searching for other topics. unique major that Columbia College offered. His major made me realize that there was a way to One day, while I was explaining this problem to combine the two disciplines and he prodded me to Bartlett, he suggested that I get David Herlihy and take courses in sociology. Fortunately, this prod- Christiane Klapisch-Zuber’s (1985) book on the ding landed me in Viviana Zelizer’s course, Intro- Tuscan Catasto of 1427, one of the first compre- duction to Sociology. She taught at Barnard at the hensive cadastral surveys in Europe that collected time and lectured to packed audiences in a particu- information for the purposes of taxation. Their larly engaging and enthusiastic style. I was 1985 edition had just been translated from the ear- hooked. When I realized that she was a historical lier and longer French version. He told me, “there sociologist, I took a graduate course (though I was must be something that you can do with those still an undergraduate) with Sigmund Diamond on numbers.” Indeed; I recognized Tuscany as an in- historical sociology, which introduced me to teresting case of delayed transition to capitalism – documentary analysis. I loved looking up obscure though it had a precocious economy in the late documents and figuring out what they meant. medieval and early Renaissance, the region did not experience early industrialization. Thus, it fit well into the sociological literature on “transitions I wonder if I am the only to capitalism” and would be able to shed new light on this subject. My research shows how inequality living sociologist to have between urban and rural sectors meant that when courses such as “Stochastic the urban capitalist market spread to rural regions, rural inhabitants no longer had sufficient eco- Processes” and “Reading nomic resources to participate in what previously had been lively local markets that were linked to Medieval Latin” on their cultural and economic practices of property devo- graduate school transcript. lution and agricultural production. Thus, as capi- talism spread in the presence of a high degree of inequality, it actually eroded the institutional sup-

port necessary for its maintenance (Emigh 2003a, 33 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

2005b, Forthcoming a). Though I had studied S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff. Durham: German all the way from junior high through Duke University Press graduate school, I began taking Latin and Italian Emigh, Rebecca Jean. 2005b. “The Unmaking of and learning to read the handwriting in the origi- Markets: A Composite Visual History.” Vec- nal documents. I wonder if I am the only living tors: Journal of Culture and Technology in a sociologist to have courses such as “Stochastic Dynamic Vernacular 1, 2005. [Online]. Processes” and “Reading Medieval Latin” on their Available: graduate school transcript. http://vectors.usc.edu/index.php?page=7&pro jectId=5 (click on “launch project”) Herlihy and Klapisch-Zuber’s book opened up the Emigh, Rebecca Jean. Forthcoming a. The Unde- archives to social scientists, including myself. velopment of Capitalism: Sectors and Mar- They created a machine readable file that con- kets in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany. Philadel- tained some of the most important information phia: Temple University Press. from the Catasto of 1427, including individuals’ Emigh, Rebecca Jean. Forthcoming b. What Influ- names and the locations where they lived. Al- ences Official Information? Exploring Ag- though most projects require the researcher to re- gregate Microhistories of the Catasto of turn to the original documents for more informa- 1427. Small Worlds: Method, Meaning, and tion than is contained in their data, Herlihy and Narrative in Microhistory, edited by James Klapisch’s data provide basic tools that make so- Brooks, Chris DeCorse, and John Walton. cial science research feasible. Their data make it Santa Fe: School of American Research. possible to sample systematically because it con- Herlihy, David and Christiane Klapisch-Zuber. tains a list of everyone in the Catasto of 1427, to 1985. Tuscans and their Families. New Ha- match other documents to Catasto records because ven: Yale University Press. it is relatively easy to search for names, and to compare and contextualize detailed research from a small area with patterns for all of Tuscany.

The rest is history…. The Man Who Mistook Sociology for Marxism:

An Intellectual Biography

References Richard Lachmann SUNY-Albany Emigh, Rebecca Jean. 1997. “The Power of Nega- tive Thinking: The Use of Negative Case My original plan, as an undergraduate at Prince- Methodology in the Development of Socio- ton, was to create an independent major in Marxist logical Theory.” Theory and Society 26:649- Studies. Politically the mid-1970s, when I was in 684 college, were still much like the 60s. Student ac- Emigh, Rebecca Jean. 2003a. “Economic Interests tivism with the end of the Vietnam War turned to and Sectoral Relations: The Undevelopment other foreign policy issues: the U.S.-backed coup of Capitalism in Fifteenth-Century Tuscany.” against Allende in Chile, apartheid in South Af- American Journal of Sociology 108 (5): 1075- rica, and (thanks mainly to the efforts of Noam 1113. Chomsky) Indonesia’s anschluss of Timor. Do- Emigh, Rebecca Jean. 2003b. “Property Devolu- mestic issues absorbed less attention, although the tion in Tuscany.” The Journal of Interdisci- fact that the Chairman of Princeton’s Board of plinary History XXXIII (3): 385-420. Trustees was the CEO of the union-busting textile Emigh, Rebecca Jean. 2005a. “The Great Debates: firm J.P. Stevens did receive a good bit of atten- Transitions to Capitalisms.” Pp. 355-380 in tion and protest from students. Princeton, surpris- Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and ingly, was a fairly cozy place for leftist politics. Sociology, edited by Julia Adams, Elisabeth Right wing students, of whom there must have been many, were for the most part intimidated by 34 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 the number and assertiveness of radical classmates past contributors to the debate went wrong. When and by the fact that the majority of students, while I found a way to understand where their explana- uninvolved in protests, held views that today tions were incomplete or mistaken, I had a founda- would put them somewhere between Dennis tion on which to build an alternate analysis. At Kucinich and Ralph Nader on the spectrum. that point the substantive research and writing of the dissertation followed (relatively) quickly. I joined in a minor way in political activities but mainly drew from the ferment a curiosity about how the bastards got away with it. Why did sol- Lacking sophistication, diers line up to die in imperialist wars? Why did workers put up with bad wages and alienating and it took me a few years to dangerous labor? Even then, well before the pig- understand that mod- gishness of the Reagan and Clinton eras and still far from the unrestrained and boastful viciousness ernization wasn’t the of the current administration, I was stunned at what I read in the New York Times (and even more same as capitalism, and so when I saw the fuller reality presented in small by then it was too late. I leftist outlets). On many days I would walk out- side after reading about the latest outrages and had graduated and was wonder more than half seriously: Where are the off to Harvard. guillotines?

My initial reading of Marx convinced me that somewhere in those tomes were the answers to my Once I knew how I wanted to insert myself into questions. What I found, even in Capital, were the debate on the transition, it became clear that historical explanations. Hoping to learn more I the first step should be a case study of the first site looked, largely in vein, for history courses that of sustained agrarian capitalism, England in the addressed Marx’s questions. Philosophy and an- century between the Henrician Reformation and thropology were even worse. Instead it was soci- the Civil War. I also was able to identify a set of ology, a department well staffed with historical comparisons to failed, partial and delayed transi- comparativists, that seemed more promising. tions: the Italian city-states, Spain, the Nether- Lacking sophistication, it took me a few years to lands, and France. I first planned to include all understand that modernization wasn’t the same as those comparisons in my dissertation. Fortunately, capitalism, and by then it was too late. I had my advisors eventually succeeded in convincing graduated and was off to Harvard. me to save the other cases for later publications.

The great virtue of Harvard sociology during the My writing on the transition, which culminated in late 70s and early 80s, in addition to some won- Capitalists In Spite of Themselves, published 17 derful mentors, was the almost total freedom it years after I received my PhD, took me a ways gave graduate students to design and pursue their from my original confidence that Marx could an- own research projects. I arrived there with the swer my questions. I concluded, in essence, that conviction that I needed to understand the origins Marx and later Marxists asked the right questions and workings of early capitalism if I wanted to but that the answers required a heavy dose of We- make sense of contemporary society. I embarked berian and elitist analysis. on a program of reading the largely Marxist de- bates on the transition from feudalism to capital- I was not the first graduate student to find writing ism. Most of that literature I found unconvincing a dissertation all-consuming, and the following even as it all was informative in some way. The years of publishing coincided with raising two best authors (Eric Hobsbawm, Perry Anderson, children. It became easy to remain single-minded Immanuel Wallerstein) seemed to provide part of in my devotion to that project and to shy away the answer, yet spoke past each other. I sought to from topics with present-day political implica- focus my thinking by figuring out how and why 35 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007 tions. I no longer was confident that my historical As with the origins of capitalism, I again am research spoke to the problems of contemporary working on a well-studied and much debated capitalism that first sparked my interest in its ori- topic. However, this time I don’t feel that I need to gins. Perhaps more fundamentally, my withdrawal begin by taking a stance in relation to all the de- from active politics (except for some involvement bates swirling around this topic, although I am in opposition to the US-backed Contra war in sure I will have something to say about a number Nicaragua) stemmed from the almost unbroken of the triumphalist, culturalist, and world systemic series of defeats suffered by progressive forces in interpretations of U.S. hegemony. Instead I can this nation throughout my entire adulthood. begin by engaging in comparative historical soci- ology, by systematically comparing recent Ameri- can developments to the structural relations and causal processes I found in my historical studies of previous hegemons. The elite conflict model I I still remain interested developed to understand early capitalist develop- in understanding how the ment will inform my analysis of decline.

bastards get away with it. I have conflicting emotions as I work on this pro- ject. As a sociologist I feel enormously privileged to have a front row seat in observing a major his- torical transformation, and the academic articles I Once I had finished my book, I felt I had written am writing, directed at social scientists and histo- all I had to say about the origins of capitalism. I rians, will attempt to address the decline of the didn’t want to become one of those scholars who United States in rigorous analytical terms. At the spends the rest of his career defending his old the- same time as someone who has spent my life in a sis from challengers. For some time I cast around First World democracy and who would like my for a new topic of research. Then George W. Bush children to have that same option, I regard this came to my intellectual rescue. A joke of my country’s present trajectory with horror. I feel a graduate student years was that the Democrats and need to try to address a broader engaged public Republicans both were parties of capitalism; it beyond academia along with my intellectual col- was just that the former represented smart capital- leagues and think that can best be done in a book ists and the latter dumb ones. Bush seemed to be that presents the policy choices still open to citi- the embodiment of my old bon mot. What seemed zens in this country. While I feel it would be intel- remarkable and worthy of sociological inquiry lectually dishonest to deny the structural forces was not Bush’s own personal stupidity or vicious- that will propel U.S. geopolitical and economic ness but the lack until very recently of a credible decline, I do not think rising inequality and the challenge to his policies from any significant atrophy of democracy are inevitable. The histori- power base. I remembered from my historical cal relationships among decline, public participa- work that previous hegemonic powers from Medi- tion, and inequality are not automatic or unilinear. cian Florence to Victorian Britain had had policy I still remain interested in understanding how the debates over how to address geopolitical and eco- bastards get away with it, and with identifying the nomic challenges from abroad. Most of those de- strategic openings for challenges to elite rule. bates were decided by the self-interests of those elites with the structural capacity to protect their privileges, and as a result those polities followed paths that led to decline. Suddenly I had my new research agenda. I could address U.S. imperialism and the tightening grip of a tiny elite over power and wealth, the political concerns that had first brought me to sociology.

36 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Work in Progress

Comparing Climate Change Policy ence of the International Network for Social Net- work Analysis (Vancouver, April 2006), where Networks (Compon) several colleagues skilled in network analysis agreed to join. Spreading from that point, coun- Jeffrey Broadbent try-case investigators in Compon currently include University of Minnesota researchers representing 17 cases: China, Taiwan, South Korea, Japan, New Zealand, India, United Greatly reducing greenhouse gas emissions, not to States, Canada, Brazil, England, Netherlands, speak of attaining a “sustainable society” with no Germany, Sweden, Austria, Greece, Italy, and net emissions, will require the radical global trans- Russia, plus global level networks as a distinct formation of industrial civilization. To attain this “case.” Investigators come from sociology, politi- goal, humanity will have to learn to cooperate like cal science, anthropology, and mathematics. The never before. Crisis brings opportunity. Social cases represent important variation in contextual scientists can contribute to this transition by help- factors: institutional form, prosperity, “interest ing humanity understand how we have responded group,” social structural, and cultural. The Com- to this crisis, and how to respond better. pon survey project will continue until at least 2010. The survey is modular, so researchers wish- In the process of conducting extended field work ing to add new country cases are welcome to con- on environmental politics and movements in Japan tact the organizer ([email protected]). and later collecting and comparing policy network survey data, I became increasingly fascinated with networks, the policy network perspective, and the relational view of power and social processes. The Compon survey project Accordingly, colleagues and I are designing the will continue until at least Comparative Climate Change Policy Network (Compon) project from that perspective. 2010. The survey is modular, so researchers wishing to add We can only know about climate change through science. The Compon project will compare a new country cases are wel- range of nations on how they take in and use sci- come to contact the organizer entific information about global climate change from a common global source, the IPCC (Inter- Jeffrey Broadbent at: governmental Panel on Climate Change). To be [email protected] effective, issue framings, including science, must be carried by “advocacy networks,” which in- creasingly include global actors. However, theo- ries of network governance raise questions about Compon held its first conference on January 25-28 the relationship between networks, governance at the University of Minnesota. In the public con- and democratic representation, noting possibilities ference, 10 speakers discussed their existing com- of bias and co-optation. Neo-institutional and re- parative social scientific research on global envi- alist theories predict different impacts of global ronmental issues, with a focus on the science- regimes upon domestic regimes and networks. policy interface. In the following workshop, 15 Comparative research can clarify these complex network experts and country case investigators causal chains. discussed how to build on existing research and design the Compon survey. Conference presenta- To develop the Compon project, I received the tions can be viewed at: SSRC/Abe Fellowship from the Center for Global http://igs.cla.umn.edu/research/conferences.html Partnership of the Japan Foundation for 2007. I started organizing the project at the annual confer-

Page 37 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Recent Dissertations

BECOMING A CIVILIAN: MAINLAND CHI- SPACE, IDENTITY AND INTERNATIONAL NESE SOLDIERS/VETERANS AND THE COMMUNITY: NEGOTIATING DECOLONI- STATE IN TAIWAN, 1949-2001 ZATION IN THE UNITED NATIONS Yu-Wen Fan Vrushali Patil New School for Social Research University of Maryland, College Park 2006 2006

When the Nationalists (or KMT) were defeated by This work brings a transnational feminist perspec- the Communists in the Chinese Civil War in 1949, tive to the process of legal decolonization in the they retreated to Taiwan, followed by more than United Nations. Specifically, I examine colonial- half a million Mainland soldiers. This dissertation ist and anti-colonialist debates on legal decoloni- explicates how the KMT state made Mainland sol- zation within the United Nations General Assem- diers/veterans a group of “exploited honored citi- bly (UNGA) from 1946-1960 (The UN passed its zens” to consolidate its rule in Taiwan, where the declaration initiating the onset of legal decoloniza- economy had to be reconstructed and the majority tion in 1960). Informed by a critical feminist per- Taiwanese were new to the KMT. I argue that it spective, my argument is twofold: 1) First, these was the contradictory status of Mainland sol- conversations constitute the renegotiation of his- diers/veterans in economic and symbolic realms toric colonialist hierarchies of race, culture and (poor but honored) that forged a unique trajectory nation. They are unique in that for the first time, for their role in state building and socioeconomic beyond Euro-American colonialist perspectives, stability in post-WW II Taiwan. they also formally incorporate the voices of anti- colonialist Asian, African and other formerly de- The KMT’s budget-consciousness in the admini- pendent peoples. 2) However, occurring between stration and settlement of Mainland sol- elite groups of ‘colonialist’ and ‘anti-colonialist’ diers/veterans aimed at preventing the enterprise men, these conversations are profoundly gen- from extracting too much from the society; by so dered. On the one hand, colonialist speakers ar- doing, the KMT secured the support of the Tai- gue against the impetus for decolonization by in- wanese. I demonstrate this by examining marriage sisting that still dependent and newly independent restrictions in the military and the entrepreneur- peoples are ‘childlike’ and require continued care ship and thriftiness of VACRS, the government and tutelage. On the other hand, anti-colonialist institute in charge of demobilization. As a result, speakers respond that they are not children but Mainland veterans who lacked kinship, social grown men and that continued colonialism networks and a common dialect with most of the amounts to emasculation. They seek justice, de- people became the most economically disadvan- mocracy and decolonization, then, with an argu- taged group in Taiwan. Nevertheless, their eco- ment about the need to reclaim masculinity. Ulti- nomic grievances did not grow into social turmoil mately, I argue that these debates provide an im- because of their strong emotional and ideological portant—yet neglected—frame for understanding ties with the KMT. Dubbed as rongmin (honored the emerging masculinization of ‘postcolonial’ citizens), they were the exalted group in the sym- state- and nation-building projects and their prob- bolic realm of the imagined nation created by the lematic implications for women. Moreover, they KMT state to claim sovereignty over the lost also point to some of the gendered tensions in how Mainland. ‘postcolonial’ states negotiate collective identity on the contemporary world stage.

“how the KMT state made Mainland soldiers/veterans a group of ‘exploited honored citi- zens’ to consolidate its rule in Taiwan” -- Yu-Wen Fan “brings a transnational feminist perspective to the process of legal decolonization in the United Nations” -- Vrushali Patil

Page 38 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

CULTURES OF SECURITY, CULTURES OF THE BOUNDARIES OF CONFLICT: NARRA- RIGHTS: SECURITY, RIGHTS ACTIVISM, TIVE, VIOLENCE, AND DISPLACEMENT ON AND THE GROWTH OF ANARCHISM IN THE ITALO-YUGOSLAV FRONTIER CATALUNYA (1896-1909) Tammy Smith Suzanne H. Risley Columbia New York University 2006 2007 This dissertation explores the emergence of a so- My dissertation analyzes and explains the trans- cial boundary within a formerly unified commu- formation of local political culture and the legiti- nity at the end of the Second World War. My mation and implantation of anarchism in Cata- analysis provides evidence for how individuals’ lunya in the years 1896-1909. It accounts specifi- identity narratives have been shaped through nar- cally for the defeat of state security projects and rators’ interaction within state institutions and so- the emergence of a local culture of collective cial groups. I examine these processes under both rights defense which coincided with and formed democratic and authoritarian regimes confronting the basis for anarchist mobilization in the region. similar challenges to conflict resolution at the It offers a novel explanation for the success of dawn of the Cold War. My dissertation focuses on anarchism which places practical action in the the emergence of two narratives about the same context of rights activism at its center. The study historical events in Istria, a region in the northern develops a new conceptualization of state security Adriatic. Ethnically based political violence fol- as a complex of discourses and practices charac- lowing the Second World War prompted the flight terized by three related dimensions: dangerous- of more than 200,000 inhabitants from the region, ness, prevention, and exception. It finds that secu- then under Yugoslavia. Approximately one-third rity measures in Catalunya in this era were not of those fleeing settled in Trieste, Italy. The divi- merely the province of the central state; rather, sion of this population into two states produced their development was embedded in civil society, two dramatically different narratives about the in political struggles, and in the construction of post-Second World War period. The differences in local political identities. The research also speaks the narratives reveal the impact of formal institu- to current debates concerning the relationship be- tions on the development of shared historical ac- tween rights activism and collective projects of counts and personal memories. While offering an political transformation. Rights campaigns were examination of the development of a social bound- central to the construction of a local culture of ary between former friends and neighbors, my rights defense which both constrained the ad- work also proposes methodological innovations to vance of security projects and was expanded upon the study of narrative and life histories. I apply a by anarchists and used, in a radicalization of formal relational perspective more commonly as- rights protest itself, as the basis for their own suc- sociated with analyses of social groups to the cess in the region. The collective, direct defense analysis of narrative to investigate how micro- of rights promoted by local republicans had the events relate to each other to form concepts that unintended effect of subverting their own legalist- individuals use to describe their histories. Employ- constitutionalist rights project and laying the ing such a structural approach affords a view into practical groundwork for the anarchists’ radical gaps in the narratives that have developed around rights vision and challenge to state-legal authority. politically sensitive topics since the 1950s. These silences occur in patterned ways and have struc- “The collective, direct defense of tures of their own. My work shows that an under- standing of silences within the narrative structure rights [laid] the practical is essential for comprehending overall narrative groundwork for the anarchists’ meaning, since silences alter the meaning of events to which they are connected. radical rights vision.” – Suzanne Risley

39 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

CONTESTED INCLUSION: A COMPARATIVE News and Announcements STUDY OF NATIONALISM IN MEXICO, AR-

GENTINA, AND PERU

Matthias vom Hau Stefan Bargheer received the Nineteenth Century Brown University Studies Association (NCSA) Article Award 2007 2007 for “The Fools of the Leisure Class: Honor, Ridi-

cule, and the Emergence of Animal Protection My doctoral dissertation is a comparative- Legislation in England, 1740-1840.” European historical analysis of the transformation of official Journal of Sociology 47:3-35. national ideologies in these countries during the mid-20th century. It represents one of the first The editors of Choice magazine have named The efforts to systematically compare different forms Social Construction of Free Trade: The EU, of nationalism in Latin America. Furthermore, the NAFTA, and Mercosur (Princeton University study theorizes changes of nationalism, by tracing Press 2006) by Francesco Duina (Bates College) and explaining how national discourses evolve an “Outstanding Academic Title” for 2006. over time. As such, the project provides a new theoretical framework and a corrective to the rela- Joseph O. Jewell has recently been appointed as tive absence of theories that explain historical interim director of Texas A&M’s Race & Ethnic transformations of nationalism--as opposed to its Studies Institute. His goals for the Institute include emergence. Through an analysis of primary school a comparative/historical look at race and ethnicity textbooks, I show that the three countries exhib- http://resi.tamu.edu ited liberal nationalism as a dominant state ideol- ogy during the early 20th century. This national discourse adopted a political-territorial under- Carol Schmid was recently selected to participate standing of the nation and depicted national his- in the Freeman Institute for Infusing Japan Studies tory as driven by benevolent leaders. During well- into the Undergraduate Curriculum, a 3 week in- defined periods in each of these countries, popular tensive seminar on Japan at the University of Ha- nationalism replaced liberal nationalism as official waii, May 20th-June 9th. national ideology. This national discourse pro- moted a cultural understanding of the nation and Tammy Smith has accepted a tenure-track posi- portrayed popular classes as protagonists of na- tion at SUNY Stony Brook, which she will begin tional history. To explain the extent and the timing in Fall 2007. of these transformations of nationalism I employ an institutional approach that calls attention to George Steinmetz received the ASA’s Lewis A. conflicts and alignments between state elites and Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting and subordinate movements, and to the timing of state was named Corresponding member of the Centre making. de Sociologie Européenne (Paris). In March 2007 the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales organized a conference around the work of George Steinmetz on the relations between history and sociology.

“one of the first efforts to Arafaat A. Valiani was selected for an award systematically compare from the Summer Stipend Program of the National Endowment for the Humanities for research on a different forms of national- book project, ‘Formations of Militancy: Religion, Violence, and Political Mobilization in ism in Latin America.” Twentieth Century India’ -- Matthias vom Hau

40 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

New Publications of Section Members

Agassi, Judith Buber. The Jewish Women Prison- Ejiogu, E. C. 2006. “Projecting the Future: Some ers of Ravensbrück: Who Were They? Oxford: Implications of a Transformed US Military for the Oneworld, 2007, xviii+312+ cd-rom. Third World,” in The ISA e-Bulletin # 3, spring.

Almeida, Paul D. 2007. “Organizational Expan- Ejiogu, E. C. 2006. “State building in Pre- sion, Liberalization Reversals and Radicalized Colonial Sub-Saharan Africa: The Case of Collective Action.” Research in Political Sociol- Yorubaland,” in Political Power and Social The- ogy 15: 57-99. ory Vol. 18, spring Pp. 3-40.

Bloemraad, Irene. 2006. Becoming a Citizen: In- Hopcroft, Rosemary L. and Dana Burr Bradley. corporating Immigrants and Refugees in the 2007. “The sex difference in depression across 29 United States and Canada. University of Califor- countries.” Social Forces. Forthcoming in June. nia Press. Jansen, Robert S. 2007. “Resurrection and Appro- Boswell, Terry, Cliff Brown, John Brueggemann priation: Reputational Trajectories, Memory and Ralph Peters. Racial Competition and Class Work, and the Political Use of Historical Figures.” Solidarity. SUNY Press. American Journal of Sociology 112(4): 953-1007.

Collins-Dogrul, J. 2006. Managing US-Mexico Jewell, Joseph O. Race, Social Reform, and the “border health”: an organizational field approach Making of a Middle Class: The American Mis- Social Science & Medicine, 63(12): 3099-3211. sionary Association and Black Atlanta, 1870-1900 Rowman & Littlefield. Cottrol, Robert J. 2007. “Beyond Invisibility: Afro-Argentines in their Nation’s Culture and Johnston, Hank and Paul D. Almeida. (eds). 2006. Memory was published in Latin American Re- Latin American Social Movements: Globalization, search Review vol 42 No. 1 February. Democratization, and Transnational Networks. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield. Deflem, Mathieu. 2007. Sociologists In a Global Age: Biographical Perspectives. Ashgate, Alder- Kalberg, Stephen. 2006. “Ascetic Protestantism shot, UK. and American Uniqueness: The Political Cultures of Germany and the United States Compared.” Eastwood, Jonathan. 2006. The Rise of National- Pp. 231-29 in Safeguarding German-American ism in Venezuela. Gainesville: University Press of Relations in the New Century, edited by Hermann Florida. Kurthen, Antonio V. Menendez-Alarcon, and Stefan Immerfall. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Ejiogu, E. C. “Historical Statistics as Text: Un- Littlefield. usual Indicators of How Ordinary British Folk Reaped from the World-Economy, 1800-1960,” in Khaldoun Samman. Cities of God and National- Journal of Asian and African Studies, Vol. 42 (1) ism: Mecca, Jerusalem, and Rome as Contested Pp. 73-115. World Cities. Paradigm Publishers.

Ejiogu, E. C. “Colonial Army Recruitment Pat- Lopez-Alves, Fernando, and Diane E. Johnson. terns and Post-Colonial Military Coups d’Etat in 2007. Globalization and Uncertainty in Latin Africa: The Case of Nigeria, 1966-1993”. Forth- America, Palgrave Macmillan. coming in July 2007 in Scientia Militaria: South African Journal of Military Studies. Loveman, Mara. 2007. “Blinded Like a State: The Revolt Against Civil Registration in 19th-Century

Page 41 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Brazil” Comparative Studies in Society and His- Valiani, Arafaat A. ‘Cultural Heritage and the tory.*/ /*49[1]: 5-39. Making of Militant Political Subjects in Twentieth Century Indian Nationalism-A Preliminary Out- Mukerji, Chandra. 2006. “Printing, Cartography line’ Interventions, forthcoming in 2007. and Conceptions of Place.” Media, Culture and Society. 28 (5). Valiani, Arafaat A. ‘Violence’, Entry in the Inter- national Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, (se- Mukerji, Chandra. 2007. “Stewardship politics ries editor) William A. Darity, forthcoming in and the control of wild weather: Levees, seawalls, 2007. and state building in 17th-century France” In So- cial Studies of Science Vol 37 (1) Feb. Walters, Barbara R., Vincent Corrigan, and Peter T. Ricketts. 2006. The Feast of Corpus Christi. Mukerji, Chandra. 2006. “Tacit Knowledge and University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State Classical Technique in 17th C France: Hydraulic University Press. Cement as Living Practice Among Masons and Military Engineers.” Technology and Culture, Oc- Woodberry, Robert D. forthcoming. “Pentecostal- tober, 47:713-733. ism and Economic Development.” in Markets, Morals, and Religion. New Brunswick, NJ: Trans- Mukerji, Chandra. 2007. “The Great Forestry action Publishers. Jonathan B. Imber (ed.) Survey of 1669-1671: The Use of Archives for Political Reform.” Social Studies of Science. Vol. 37 (2) April. Call for Papers Pickel, Andreas. 2006. The Problem of Order in the Global Age: Systems and Mechanisms. New Political Power and Social Theory is a peer- York: Palgrave. reviewed annual journal committed to advancing the interdisciplinary understanding of the linkages Ram, Uri. 2007. The Globalization of Israel: between political power, class relations, and his- McWorld in Tel Aviv, Jihad in Jerusalem. torical development. The journal welcomes both Routledge. empirical and theoretical work and is willing to consider papers of substantial length. Roopnarine, Lomarsh. 2006. Indo-Caribbean Indenture: Resistance and Accommodation, King- Publication decisions are made by the editor in ston: University of the West Indies Press 2006 consultation with members of the editorial board and anonymous reviewers. Potential contributors Smith, Tammy. 2007. “Narrative boundaries and should submit manuscripts in electronic format to the dynamics of ethnic conflict and conciliation,” [email protected]. Potential contributors are asked to Poetics 35: 22-46. remove any references to the author in the body of the text in order to preserve anonymity during re- Steinberg, Marc W. 2006. “Unfree Labor, Ap- view. prenticeship and the Rise of the Victorian Hull Fishing Industry: An Example of the Importance Email: [email protected] of Law and the Local State in British Economic http://web.mit.edu/dusp/ppst/ Change,” International Review of Social History. 51, no. 2: 243-276 Diane E. Davis, Editor Professor of Political Sociology Stillerman, Joel. 2006. “The Politics of Space and Massachusetts Institute of Technology Culture in Santiago Chile’s Street Markets.” 77 Massachusetts Avenue #9-521 Qualitative Sociology 29, 4 (December): 507-530. Cambridge, MA 02139

42 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

Conference

The Thunder of History: Taxation in Comparative and Historical Perspective

May 3-5, 2007

Northwestern University Harris Hall Rm. 108 1881 Sheridan Rd.

Keynote Speaker: Charles Tilly

Fred Block Elliot Brownlee Andrea Campbell Robin Einhorn Chris Howard Edgar Kiser Evan Lieberman Isaac Martin Ajay Mehrotra Beverly Moran Monica Prasad Joel Slemrod Nancy Staudt Joseph Thorndike

Image: Wat Tyler killing the poll tax collector.

“The spirit of a people, its cultural level, its social structure, the deeds its policy may prepare -- all this and more is written in its fiscal history, stripped of all phrases. He who knows how to listen to its message here discerns the thunder of world history more clearly than anywhere else.” (Joseph Schumpeter, 1918)

http://www.tgs.northwestern.edu/facultyandstaffinfo/facultyconferences/thunder/

The Thunder of History is being held in conjunction with Northwestern’s Program in Comparative-Historical Social Science (CHSS). For more information please contact Elisabeth Anderson at: [email protected]. Sponsored by: The Graduate School, the Tax Program at Northwestern Law School, Weinberg College of Arts and Sciences, Northwestern’s Institute for Policy Research, Northwestern Sociology De- partment, and the ASA Fund for the Advancement of the Discipline Award Supported by the American Sociological Association and the Na- tional Science Foundation.

Page 43 Comparative & Historical Sociology Vol. 18, No.2 Spring 2007

In the next issue of the Comparative and Historical Soci- ology Newsletter:

Nitsan Chorev (Brown University)

and

Greta Krippner (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor)

take over as newsletter editors!

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