trajectories - comparative and historical...

CONTENTS

Book Symposia

Features and News

TrajectoriesNewsletter of the ASA

Comparative and Historical Sociology SectionVol 28 No 3 · Spring 2017

Section Officers

Editor's IntroductionVictoria ReyesUniversity of Michigan &University of California,Riverside

OP-ED CORNER

Comparative-HistoricalPerspectives on EuropeanPopulism

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Spring 2017 · Vol 28 · No 3

Comparative-Historical Perspectives on European Populism

Populism as CollateralDamage: Opportunities forComparative Analysis

Mabel BerezinCornell University

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...populism is not going awayanytime soon—even if populistchallengers lose elections—because the problems thatausterity, migration and securityhave generated remain unsolved.

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The F-Word and the FrenchNational Front

Dorit GevaCentral European University; and EURIASFellow, Collegium de Lyon

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Ireland in Europe: Best Child inthe Class or Canary in theCoalmine?

Seán Ó RiainNational University of Ireland, Maynooth

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Is De-democratization theFuture of Central and EasternEurope?

Besnik PulaVirginia Tech

For both domestic andexternal reasons, Ireland mayneed the European project torevitalise itself, just as muchas the countries racked bypolitical turmoil in the core.

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Finding scapegoats to blame forthe new insecurities of neoliberalglobalization is the specialty ofethnonationalist parties who fillthe void left by a sclerotic EU andthe political ineptitude andunimaginativeness of mainstreamparties who for a long time sawtheir chief task to be doing thelocal bidding for Brussels.

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How Societies and States Count

Book Symposium

Comments on Antecedents ofCensuses and Changes inCensuses

Daniel HirschmanBrown University

The Antecedents of Censusesfrom Medieval to Nation States

Changes in Censuses fromImperialist to Welfare StatesHow Societies and States Count, Vols. I & IIPalgrave Macmillan

Rebecca Jean Emigh, Dylan Riley &

Patricia Ahmed

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My biggest concern is the binaryaround which the entireargument is framed: state vs.society. This binary tends tooverly dichotomize and reify twovery blurry entities.

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...the books focus very single-mindedly on censuses. And yet,I think this focus may weakentheir ability to make some oftheir strongest theoreticalclaims that relate back to thebroader question of states’capacity to gather information.

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Comments on How Societiesand States Count

Mara LovemanUniversity of California, Berkeley

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...the historical case studies areundeniably well-researched andinteresting; and the generalexplanatory model is generalenough and flexible enough tobe somewhat hard to argueagainst. And yet, I find that I amstill left with a long list ofquestions that, to my mind,need to be clarified orelaborated in order to fullyappreciate the challenge posedby these works to existingscholarship on census historyand historical state formation.

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G. Cristina MoraUniversity of California, Berkeley

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How Societies and StatesCount: Five Variations

Jacob FosterUniversity of California, Los Angeles

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HSSC’s fusion of comparativeand genealogical methodspoints toward a new mode ofcomparative-historical analysis,one that can address this morenuanced (and empiricallyadequate) view of path-dependence. Call this a“phylogenetic” method, toborrow a term from evolutionarybiology.

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The Census and itsAntecedents

Corey TazzaraScripps College

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The major thrust of theirargument is to socialize boththe knowledge and the processof gathering demographicinformation...that seemspersuasive, but it does make mewonder how they would situatethe role of states in thisprocess.

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Tong LamUniversity of Toronto

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The authors have done anadmirable job of bringingmultiple sets of historical datatogether. Their aspirations topresent a somewhat universalmodel for making sense ofcensus practices across timeand space is also commendable.However, for those of us whostudy the “rest of the world,”we rarely would have theconfidence to make such ageneralization.

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The Past and Future ofCensuses: Reflections on HowSocieties and States Count

Jean-Guy PrévostUniversité du Québec à Montréal

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Emily Klancher MerchantUniversity of California, Davis

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...I found that the scientificcategories used by the authors,who are sociologists, did notquite line up either with the laycategories at my disposal orwith the scientific categories Iuse as a historian.

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The long time span of the booksemphasizes that informationgathering did not originate withstates in the historical sense;rather, censuses drew from andbuilt on earlier modes of datacollection that originated in thesocial domain. But this long timespan also obscures very realruptures that accompanied thefirst censuses in the UnitedStates, the United Kingdom, andItaly.

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Reply to Critics

Rebecca Jean EmighUniversity of California, Los Angeles

Dylan RileyUniversity of California, Berkeley

Patricia AhmedSouth Dakota State University

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...censuses are not an inevitableproduct of state formation nor isstate formation an automaticproduct of censuses. Instead, itis an empirical question as towhether state formationproduces census formation (orvice versa).

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We...disagree...that weclassified all actorsdichotomously as state or socialones. In fact, we consideredextensively the nature of therelation of actors in thesedomains by borrowing themechanisms of co-option,usurpation, imitation, andinnovation from Loveman.

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Our claim is that a surveyinstrument can produceknowledge from that instrumentonly to the extent to whichpopulations can answer thequestions that the survey isasking. Thus, both state andsocial actors, must in somesense, “know” the sameinformation for it to be compiledand widely accepted as usefulsocial knowledge.

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Postcolonial Thought and Social Theory

Julian Go’s World: Postcolonialthought, Social Theory, andHuman Liberation.

Aldon MorrisNorthwestern University

Postcolonial Thought andSocial TheoryOxford University Press

Julian Go

Book Symposium

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The idea of starting on theground is problematic. Where isthe ground? It is true that thesubjugated stands on its uniquegrounds. Likewise, the powerfulstands on its grounds. Yet, thepowerful have experiences andpractices as do the dominated.Therefore, rather than alwaysstarting on the ground of thedominated, would it not betheoretically fruitful toinvestigate the grounds of thesubjugated and powerfulsimultaneously, constantlycomparing and reworking eachperspective in pursuit oftheoretical synthesis?

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Towards an UngovernableSocial Theory: PostcolonialThought, Social Theory and theColoniality of the Present

Zine MagubaneBoston College

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Whereas the postcolonial theoristfrom whom he drew inspirationwrote polemically, Go’s text is amodel of social scientific restraint.

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I would like to suggest thatthere is a particular urgency tohaving race theory undergo thekind of radical upheaval thatGo’s work provides an openingfor. How much of it will survivethe disruption is an openquestion.

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Comments on Julian Go’sPostcolonial Thought andSocial Theory

Marco GarridoUniversity of Chicago

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To the extent that there is asubaltern standpoint, it doesnot consist in the repudiation of“Western” categories. It doesnot consist in the invocation ofnew, “indigenous” categories.These are the gestures ananalyst makes in the name ofthe subaltern. Differencebecomes knowledge not in theform of new categories but inthe re-inflection of familiarones.

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The long argument postcolonialthought has been having with“Western” thinkers is, as I thinkGo shows, a sympathetic one. Itis not aimed at proving themwrong but at showing that theydid not go far enough inpursuing the spirit and promiseof the Enlightenment beyondtheir shores, and even beyondtheir stations.

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Postcolonial HistoricalSociology? A Reply to Garrido,Magubane, and Morris

Julian GoBoston University

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In short, this is the problem:social theory embeds theculture of imperialism;postcolonial thought manifestscritiques of empire. Socialtheory comes from the center ofmodern empire and was part ofthe imperial episteme;postcolonial thought rose fromits margins and offers sustainedcritiques of imperial formationswhile envisioning post-imperialfutures. This basic tension hasmore current manifestations.

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My proposal rests upon theassumption that all standpointshave the capacity to produceknowledge, just that they eachoffer only partial knowledgeThey are like different maps of acity: a map of the subwaysystem tells us something aboutthe city but not everything,while a map of the streets tellsus something different (but alsonot everything). In this sense,the subaltern standpoint istheoretically equivalent with theimperial standpoint: both aresocially-situated, both arepartial and yet (potentially)objective.

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In the book, I suggest that onebenefit of a subalternstandpoint approach is not justto find new categories andconcerns upon which to mountour postcolonial sociologies butalso to push at the limits ofseemingly universal knowledge– to draw the boundaries of theimperial standpoint from thestandpoint of the particular.

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What is it about the subfield ofcomparative-historical sociologythat has rendered it, like criticalrace theory and like othersectors of social thought,immune to postcolonialthought? And might that changein the near future?

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Partisans and Partners

Partisans and PartnersThe Politics of the Post-Keynesian SocietyUniversity of Chicago Press

Josh Pacewicz

Book Symposium

Partisans and Partners:Perceptive, Prescient, andPessimistic

Elizabeth Popp BermanUniversity at Albany, SUNY

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The power of labor and thepower of traditional businesswere both in decline evenbefore the funding mechanismchanged—a power vacuum wasalready opening up. And powerbrokers would have had to workhard to lure new businesses in,even without the change infederal financing. So I wonderwhether the emphasis onneoliberal policies specifically—versus broader political-economic transformations—ismisplaced.

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Comments on Partisans andPartners

Michael McQuarrieLondon School of Economics

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How does the partisans/partnersdivision map onto the oppositionbetween indoor and outdoorpolitics, or partisan action vs.nonprofits or civic action? Tosustain itself as a generalnarrative, which I think isplausible for a number of cities,there probably needs to be astronger explanation of how thisworks in cities that havedifferent political cultures fromthose in the cities he studies.

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Reply to Critics

Josh PacewiczBrown University

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I see this as the right startingpoint for the book: whathappened in local governancethat led local elites to cedecontrol of grassroots politics toweekend activists?

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[T]he book is about politicaleconomy, not politics or theeconomy (so I agree thatpolitical-economictransformations are what shouldbe central to the story). Thebook is also not about federalpolicy transformation per se,but about how policytransformation changescommunity governance andultimately people’s politicalintuitions.

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...swings like those between2012 and 2016 are just 21stCentury American politics asusual. That is, many peoples’political intuitions do not runthe gamut from left to right, somuch as from partner topartisan/populist—so Obamaand Trump are both normal andexpected electoral outcomes(and, as traditional voterscontinue to die off, will becomemore so).

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Working Group Spotlight

Section News

Spotlight: ComparativeHistorical Sociology SectionWorking Groups

Editor's Introduction

Marilyn Grell-BriskUniversité de Neuchâtel

Carbon Tax Problem-SolvingWorking Group

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1myGlNGAFSaxu4XtMfcZPCh1xUQrN7FN0n98l68cPLfI/edit

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The Tax Reform Problem-Solving Working Group

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New Publications

New Publications

Books and Edited Volumes

Neoliberal Apartheid:Palestine/Israel and South Africaafter 1994University of Chicago Press, 2017

Andy Clarno

Modernity and the Jews inWestern Social ThoughtUniversity of Chicago Press, 2017

Chad Alan Goldberg

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New Publications

A Social Revolution: Politics andthe Welfare State in IranUniversity of California Press, 2017

Kevan Harris

Innovation in Science andOrganizational Renewal:Historical and SociologicalPerspectivesPalgrave Macmillan, 2016

Thomas Heinze and Richard Munch(Eds.)

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New Publications

Breaking the WTO: How EmergingPowers Disrupted the NeoliberalProjectStanford University Press, 2016

Kristen Hopewell

Intimate Interventions in GlobalHealth: Family Planning and HIVPrevention in Sub-Saharan AfricaCambridge University Press, 2017

Rachel Sullivan Robinson

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New Publications

Doing Violence, Making Race:Lynching and White Racial GroupFormation in the U.S. South,1882-1930Routledge, 2017

Mattias Smångs

What is an Event?University of Chicago Press, 2017

Robin Wagner-Pacifici

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New Publications

New Publications

Articles &

Book Chapters

Trajectories News and Announcements


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DEMOCRACY CONVENTION III

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