Purity Politics? Moral Sensibilities and the Commodity Form

This paper provides a comparative historical sociology of a contemporary phenomenon: the tendency to equate “ethical” goods with aesthetic quality. Studies of moral markets suggest that this equation of ethics and quality would reveal a process whereby moral sensibilities saturate market forms and processes. Yet this paper argues that we should also examine how these forms and processes can condition moral sensibilities, not just absorb them. Drawing on primary source archival materials from late eighteenth century abolitionists and turn-of-the-twentieth-century consumer activists, the author demonstrates that these activists participated in a recurring purity politics of consumption conditioned by the commodity form. This manifests in activists’ equation of: 1) the treatment of the laborers and 2) the quality of the labor with 3) the quality of the goods. To claim that goods were pure, in many instances, was also to claim that the laborers and the labor conditions behind those goods were as well. This purity politics, further, entails both public and private ways of arguing for the equation of ethics and quality, as well as distinct civic visions of ethical labor. It also opens up ways to explore certain racialized dimensions of the commodity form.

How trust was maintained in Scandinavia through the first crisis of modernity

PurposeThe aim of this article is to explain why there is a higher degree of trust in some countries compared to others – and which are the main historical factors that explain these differences. The main focus is on how governments relate to and communicate with its citizens in the times of crises.Design/methodology/approachThe analysis is based on comparative historical sociology with a modernity perspective with a special focus on Norway and Scandinavia. The authors do a parallel demonstration of history to confirm and expand the theories that could explain the high level of trust in these countries. The authors also bring in the Spanish experience in order to testify how governmental reactions affected the different levels of trust.FindingsScandinavian governments allowed open communication between different social classes on difficult and important issues, in contrast to Spain in the same period. These two factors therefore expand the understanding of the development of trust: (1) The establishment of the nation state as the organising concept and all-encompassing container of the other institutions (democracy, parliamentarism, trade unions, etc.); (2) The open hand strategy in dealing with deviant opinions, based on democratic compromises and a policing of consent ideology.Originality/valueThe article combines the understanding of the first crisis of modernity and the development of trust and contain a comparative analysis of the development of trust in four different countries. The investigation thus clarifies the correlation between specific historical factors and the levels of trust.

The History of Historical-Comparative Methods in Sociology

This chapter offers an overview of the historical trajectory of comparative-historical sociology while focusing on the issue of development of specific methodological approaches. The legacy of sociology’s founding fathers is discussed first, followed by an overview of the post–World War II U.S.-based academic research program that led to the institutional organization and academic acceptance of the field. The chapter then offers an assessment of the effect of the cultural turn to comparative-historical sociology by addressing the themes of temporality and narrative. It argues that in the early 21st century the field displays a variety of methodological strategies or perspectives and that this tolerance toward varied methodologies is likely to be a permanent feature. It concludes with an assessment of the new or emerging areas that seem to offer room for further research.

Understanding Institutional Diversity

Chapter 8 summarizes the main empirical implications discussed in the governance theory. It points toward public policy options for reshaping prison social order and also argues that prison ethnographers should incorporate more comparative analysis into their work. There is a large body of literature on methods and methodology of making comparisons, especially in the field of comparative politics and comparative historical sociology. Incorporating more comparative methods will increase the importance and usefulness of individual ethnographic studies and open up a large number of new research questions.

Science research regimes as architectures of knowledge in context: A ‘longue durée’ comparative historical sociology of structures and dynamics in science

The purpose of this historical-sociological study is to identify the different intellectual and organizational structures and paths adopted by science over the ages. These forms are what we call science research regimes. Our perspective is simultaneously historical, sociological and comparative. We propose a socio-historical framework that points out transverse structures in science and their changing dynamics, in a ‘longue durée’ perspective. Historical examples of regimes embrace the following regimes: what we term the ‘polycentric research regime’ of the 17th and 18th centuries; the ‘exclusionary research regime’ (disciplinarity) that emerged during the 19th century and persists today; the ‘combinatorial research regime,’ which began around the end of the 19th century; and finally the ‘interstitial research regime’ associated with transverse research- technology, also born in the late 19th century.

What Can You Do With a Single Case? How to Think About Ethnographic Case Selection Like a Historical Sociologist

Most social scientists agree that case studies are useful for “theory building,” but ethnographic methods papers often look to survey research for case selection strategies. This is due to a common but untenable distinction between theoretical and empirical generalization, which obscures how theoretically inclined ethnographers make implicit external validity claims. I analyze several exemplary ethnographies to show that (a) the distinction between theoretically and empirically oriented ethnography revolves around competing conventions for making claims that others accept as provisionally externally valid, (b) comparative-historical sociology provides a framework for evaluating how theoretically oriented ethnographies make such claims, and (c) each approach to making validity claims is optimized by different kinds of cases. Empirically oriented ethnographies make inductive claims via “pointy” cases wherein a phenomenon is pronounced or bifurcated. Theoretically oriented ethnographers are like post–Millian historical sociologist who triangulate past studies with resolutive or negative cases to make constitutive arguments.

The Relations of Rural Community to Other Branches of Social Sciences

This publication is the translation of the speech “The Relations of the Rural Community to Other Branches of Social Sciences” given by Max Weber at the International Congress of Arts and Science in St. Louis (Missouri, USA) in September, 1904. In this speech, Weber examines several prevailing themes that are characteristic for his understanding of modernity. The first of them — the narrowest one — is related to the transformation of the agrarian sector of Germany, and the significance of the “agrarian question” for the historical destinies of the German nation in the context of differences between the east, west, and south regions of the country. The second important topic of the speech is the analysis of the general dynamics in the formation and development of modernity in Europe against the backdrop of the confrontation between two structural principles, defined by Weber as “tradition” and “capitalism”. Finally, the third prevailing topic covered in the speech is a comparative analysis of European and American modernity, substantiated by the German classic in the shape of comparative historical sociology.

Max Weber in America: On the History of His St. Louis’s Paper

The paper highlights the context and the main points of the speech given by Max Weber at the International Congress of Arts and Science in St. Louis in September, 1904. It analyzes Weber’s views on the dynamics of social change as presented by the German classic in the shape of the comparative historical sociology of the European and American versions of modernity. The first part of the article covers the background and the most significant episodes of the trip to the United States undertaken by Max Weber and his wife Marianne. The second part of the article elucidates the main points of Weber’s speech in St. Louis. The third part examines the observations and conclusions of the specifics of American modernity made by Weber through his direct acquaintance with life in the United States. In conclusion, the paper proposes a brief analysis of Weber’s contribution to the development of historical sociology’s ideas about the nature and pathways of Western modernity.

Modernization Theories

Modernization theories represent one of the most important and most controversial approaches in transformation research. After their golden age in the 1950s and 1960s, they came under pressure by alternative approaches like World-Systems Analysis or actor-centred transition approaches. But modernization theories have experienced a renaissance with the epochal threshold of 1989/90 and the subsequent wave of democratization. Today, three major currents can be identified: neo-evolutionist approaches, structuralist modernization theory, and the approach of multiple modernities or comparative historical sociology. They consider transformation as a specific type of accelerated transition of traditional, partly, or alternatively modernized societies to hegemonic social modernity. Although all approaches have elaborated an explanatory interpretation framework for empirical analysis often combining various social levels, dimensions, and factors (like structures and actors, or economic and cultural factors), there is considerable need for further research and self-reflection concerning normative foundations, causal mechanisms, and their empirical operationalization, as well as ‘postmodern’ challenges.