SOC3070 - Lecture 7

Thinking Big:

Modern State, Democracy, Class

1960s-1970s: renew historical sociology with grand scale studies on the dynamics and design of history.

Theories of social structuring

A sample:

- Perry Anderson (1974)

- Eisenstadt (1963)

- Barrington Moore (1966)

Moore: which are the conditions that permit/prevent the construction of democracy in the course of industrialisation?

Anderson, Eisenstadt: which are the conditions under which the political systems of historical bureaucratic empires became institutionalised?

Anderson, Lineages of the Absolutist State

What is the social nature of absolutism?

Anomaly within Marxist theory

Absolutist monarchies: crystallizations of feudal social power. Defend interest of feudal nobility (in spite of contrasting evidence)

What evidence for this? (evidence of action vs theory of structure)

Moore looks at the functions of absolutist regimes rather than at the intentions and beliefs of actors

Meaning is revealed by function. This is a ‘soft functionalism’, without teleology

The dual character of absolutist states: functional for feudal elites and for emergent forces and capitalist relationships

The new systems of property law functions both ways. Absolute property rights

Methodology: comparative

Western EuropeEastern EuropeOttoman Empire

Japan

Feudalism/Absolutism/Capitalism

Feudalism and Absolutism brought to capitalism only under certain specific conditions

Differential factor: the heritage of antiquity, and esp. Roman Law and the institution of private property

Limits of Anderson’s approach

Moore, The Social Origin of Dictatorship and Democracy

Relationship between landed upper classes and peasantry and they way they reacted to commercial agriculture democracy, fascism, communism

England, France, USA, China, Japan

Three possible outcomes of the resolution of the lord/peasants relationship:

- Bourgeois revolution

- Conservative revolution

- Peasant revolution

Form of argument: not ‘AB’

But: ‘conditions under which A could be favourable to the growth of B’

Eisenstadt, The Political Systems of Empires

So far: - indifference to intentions and dispositions of

individuals whose lives made up the historical processes under study

- focus on change rather than persistence

Eisenstadt focuses on motives and stability

‘Historical bureaucratic empires’

(including: Inca and Aztec states, the Mogul empire, the Roman and Byzantine empires, etc.)

What they have in common are certain political characteristics, like centralisation, and esp. a certain autonomy of the political sphere from the rest of society

Also typical is the contradiction between the new goals of the rulers and their commitment to traditions

How could they survive for so long (problem of persistence)?

Rulers mange to balance opposite forces (state as a machine). The importance of bureaucracy (compare to Anderson)

E. P. Thompson, The Making of the English Working Class, 1963

Interpretive method

The role of ‘experience’.

Class consciousness: collectively created by actors using available resources to make sense of their situation

Focus on the agency of working people and they way they contributed to the making of history

Three steps:1- the political culture inherited by the laboring

classes (late 18c)2- how groups of working people experienced

the changes that constituted industrialisation3- how these groups in response to

industrialisation forged an organised working class

E.g.: the phenomenon of ‘Luddism’

Thompson’s interpretive method

Cultural resourceshuman agency

Rather than causes and effects, he tries to make sense of a process, to provide a moving picture of a class over a period of time

He is not imposing theoretical models upon history but providing interpretations