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Remaking Modernity

Politics, History, and Sociology

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Politics, History, and Culture

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Book

Pages: 632

Illustrations: 6 illus.

Published: February 2005

Editors: Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff

Contributors: Julia Adams, Richard Biernacki, Zine Magubane, George Steinmetz, Philip S. Gorski, Edgar Kiser, Meyer Kestnbaum, Roger Gould, Nader Soharbi, Bruce Carruthers, Rebecca Jean Emigh, Ming-Chang Miriam M. Lo, Lyn Spillman, Rogers Brubaker, Elisabeth S. Clemens, Ann Shola Orloff, Justin Baer, and Russell Faeges

A state-of-the-field survey of historical sociology, Remaking Modernity assesses the field’s past accomplishments and peers into the future, envisioning changes to come. The seventeen essays in this collection reveal the potential of historical sociology to transform understandings of social and cultural change. The volume captures an exciting new conversation among historical sociologists that brings a wider interdisciplinary project to bear on the problems and prospects of modernity.

The contributors represent a wide variety of theoretical orientations and a broad spectrum of understandings of what constitutes historical sociology. They address such topics as religion, war, citizenship, markets, professions, gender and welfare, colonialism, ethnicity, bureaucracy, revolutions, collective action, and the modernist social sciences themselves. Remaking Modernity includes a significant introduction in which the editors consider prior orientations in historical sociology in order to analyze the field’s resurgence. They show how current research is building on and challenging previous work through attention to institutionalism, rational choice, the cultural turn, feminist theories and approaches, and colonialism and the racial formations of empire.

Contributors. Julia Adams, Justin Baer, Richard Biernacki, Bruce Carruthers, Elisabeth Clemens, Rebecca Jean Emigh, Russell Faeges, Philip Gorski, Roger Gould, Meyer Kestnbaum, Edgar Kiser, Ming-Cheng Lo, Zine Magubane, Ann Shola Orloff, Nader Sohrabi, Margaret Somers, Lyn Spillman, George Steinmetz

Praise

“ [Remaking Modernity] provide[s] an important indicator of the type of issues that historically oriented sociologists will be addressing over the next few decades. Recommended. - S.C. Ward , Choice

“[T]he editors and their authors have produced an expansive survey of recent work in historical-comparative analysis.” - Charles Tilly , History and Theory

“[T]he social sciences and history only thrive through debates. In stirring up the discussion in a provocative way [Adams, Clemens, and Orloff] stimulated the ‘rethinking’ of this wonderful discipline: historical sociology. Let us accept the challenge and join the debate!” - Marjolein ‘t Hart, International Review of Social History

“This book allows specialists and nonspecialists to see the state of the art in historical sociology; it serves as an outstanding demonstration for graduate students to learn what is happening in the field and offers readers a chance to see some of the best minds in the field at the top of their game.” - William G. Roy , American Journal of Sociology

“Remaking Modernity is the best representation available of the large and excellent generation of American historical sociologists now becoming prominent in the discipline.” - Craig Calhoun, President of the Social Science Research Council

“Here, all in one volume, is the best of the rising generation of historical sociologists, applying their craft to themselves, reflecting on their antecedents in order to chart our discipline’s futures. Ranging across multiple fields, wrestling with the Marxist-inspired iconoclasm of second-wave historical sociology, this is sure to become a definitive text of the third wave.” - Michael Burawoy, University of California, Berkeley

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Author/Editor Bios Table Of Contents Rights Additional Information

Author/Editor Bios

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Julia Adams is Professor of Sociology at Yale University. She is the author of The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe.

Elisabeth Clemens is Associate Professor of Sociology at the University of Chicago. She is the author of The People’s Lobby: Organizational Innovation and the Rise of the Interest Group.

Ann Shola Orloff is Professor of Sociology at Northwestern University. Her most recent book is States, Markets, Families: Gender, Social Policy, and Liberalism in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States (with Julia O’Connor and Sheila Shaver).

Table Of Contents

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Acknowledgments ix
Introduction: Social Theory, Modernity and the Three Waves of Historical Sociology / Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens, and Ann Shola Orloff  1
Part I: Historical Sociology and Epistemological Underpinnings
The Action Turn? Comparative-Historical Inquiry beyond the Classical Models of Conduct / Richard Biernacki  75
Overlapping Territories and Intertwined Histories: Historical Sociology's Global Imagination / Zine Magubene  92
The Epistemological Unconscious of U.S. Sociology and the Transition to Post-Fordism: The Case of Historical Sociology / George Steinmetz  109
Part II: State Formation and Historical Sociology
The Return of the Repressed: Religion and the Political Unconscious of Historical Sociology / Philip S. Gorski  161
Social Provision and Regulation: Theories of States, Social Policies, and Modernity / Ann Shola Orloff  190
The Bureaucratization of States: Toward an Analytical Weberianism / Edgar Kiser and Justin Baer  225
Part III: History and Political Contention
Mars Revealed: The Entry of Ordinary People into War among the States / Meyer Kestnbaum  249
Historical Sociology and Collective Action / Roger V. Gould  286
Revolutions as Pathways to Modernity / Nader Sohrabi  300
Part IV: Capitalism, Modernity, and the Economic Realm
Historical Sociology and the Economy: Actors, Networks, and Context / Bruce G. Carruthers  333
The Great Debates: Transitions to Capitalisms / Rebecca Jean Emigh  355
The Professions: Prodigal Daughters of Modernity / Ming-Cheng M. Lo  381
Part V: Politics, History, and Collective Identities
Nations / Lyn Spillman and Russell Faeges  409
Citizenship Troubles: Genealogies of Struggle for the Soul of the Social / Margaret R. Somers  438
Ethnicity without Groups / Rogers Brubake  470
Afterword: Logics of History? Agency, Multiplicity, and Incoherence in the Explanation of Change / Elisabeth S. Clemens  493
References  517
Contributors  599
Index  603

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Paper ISBN: 978-0-8223-3363-0 / Hardcover ISBN: 978-0-8223-3352-4 / eISBN: 978-0-8223-8588-2 / DOI: https://doi.org/10.1215/9780822385882

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