Information about the ASA Section on Historical and Comparative Sociology

Section Information

Introduction - Scope and objectives; How to join the section.
Section By-Laws - Mission and organization of the section.
Email Listservers - Announcement and Discussion lists.
Section Activities - Awards; Annual meeting; Committees.
Section Council - Elected officers of the section Council.

INTRODUCTION

Objectives of the Section
How to Join the Section

Objectives of the Section

The purpose of the Comparative and Historical Sociology section of the American Sociological Association is to promote sociological research and teaching on cross-national variation and the temporal dimensions of social life. Section members are distinguished by their range of theoretical perspectives and methodological approaches. The thematic themes of investigation addressed by section members are likewise manifold, including such issues as revolution, the welfare state, state formation, aspects of culture, law and social control, and political economy.

Recent chairs of the section have addressed some of the current and future directions in the areas of comparative and historical sociology. Former chair Charles Ragin (Section Chair in 2000-2001) has most recently argued that there is a trend to be discerned in comparative-historical research over the last three decades from theory to cases. This increasing importance of case study research, Ragin maintains, has brought about a greater need for scholars to integrate and synthesize the results of case study research. Of course, this also implies a growing need for more discussion of case study methods as well as the characteristics of a valid and reliable case study (see Ragin's essay and related papers in the Newsletter, Fall 2000).

Recently, David Stark (Columbia University, Section Chair in 1998-1999) urged us to broaden the legacy of sociological thought inherited from the 19th century to not only consider state and class but also "racial, ethnic, and gendered forms" as well as other and new "organizational forms that are emerging at the interstices of the structures of states." Professor Stark specifically included attention to multinational corporations; the global organization of women's groups; international provisions on human rights; international criminal networks and transnational police agencies; and new patterns of migration and new forms of marginality. The task for comparative and historical sociologists is to develop categories that are "better for understanding the momentous social transformations in which we are living." (quotes from an essay by David Stark in the Newsletter, Fall 1998).

Ewa Morawska (University of Pennsylvania, Section Chair in 1999-2000) has also sought to extend our section's mission, specifically by confronting the challenges of the 'here and now' head-on. Recognizing the distinct recognition of a now no longer recent generation of now no more young scholars in comparative and historical sociology, Professor Morawska cautions us to not just rely on our areas' success. She argues that we still have much to do to convince our mainstream colleagues that historical sociologists are not mere students of what happened long ago and comparative sociologists not mere students of what happens elsewhere.

How to Join the Section

Membership in the section includes:

access to the section's email lists;
opportunity to submit your work for consideration of the section sessions;
and a chance to meet fellow scholars with similar interests in teaching and research.

Membership in the ASA is required for section membership and also comes with a variety of additional benefits, such as access to publications, such as the ASA newsletter Footnotes (online current and previous issues), and opportunities to engage with fellow sociologists from other sections. Please consult the ASA homepage for ASA Membership Information.

To join the section, click here. You will be redirected to the "join or renew" page of the main ASA website. From there, you can either click on "join" if you are not already an ASA member, "renew" if you need to renew your membership, or "update" if you would like to update your membership (by adding a membership in the Comparative and Historical Sociology section, for example). Fill out the relevant information on the subsequent pages, and click through until you get to the section page. Scroll down until you get to the Comparative Historical Sociology section, and check the box next to it to add it.

For more information please contact the ASA membership division at:

American Sociological Association
1307 New York Avenue, N.W., Suite 700
Washington, DC 20005-4701
Phone: ( 202) 383-9005
Fax: (202) 638-0882
Email: membership@asanet.org

SECTION BY-LAWS

Mission
Officers
Powers of Officers
Elections
Committees
Membership & Dues

Mission

The Section on Comparative-Historical Sociology seeks to promote comparative and historical scholarship in Sociology. Comparative and historical scholarship is one of the oldest, most varied and distinguished traditions in sociology, now undergoing a renaissance. The Section seeks to promote the research, teaching and professional activities of those who work within this broad intellectual tradition. To this end, the Section may sponsor meetings and conferences, newsletters and publications, and other means of communication deemed appropriate by the council of this Section.

Comparative sociology refers to cross-cultural and/or cross-national research, and also includes comparisons of civilizations, historical periods, regions, commuities, and institutional sectors. Historical sociology refers to studies that examine processes over time and that describe and explain social phenomena that have been delimited historically. Comparative-historical sociology is thus interpreted to encompass a wide variety of theoretical positions, methodological styles, and substantive topics.

Officers of the Section

The officers of the Section shall be a Chair, a Chair-elect, a Past-Chair, and a Secretary- Treasurer. The Chair- Elect shall serve for one year, after which he or she will assume the Chair. The Chair shall serve for one year, after which he or she will become Past-Chair. The Secretary-Treasurer shall serve for a period of three years. There shall be a council, consisting of six members each serving for three years, with two council seats being vacated each year. Officers shall not succeed themselves. The Chair, Chair-elect, and the Secretary-Treasurer shall serve as ex officio voting members of the Council, with the Chair of the Section acting as Chair of the Council. The duty of the Chair-elect will be to plan the program for the Annual Meeting of the association. All other Section business will be handled by the Chair. Newsletter editor(s) shall be appointed by the Council and serve ex officio on it. No member can hold two offices simultaneously or serve more than two terms in any ten-year period for all official roles in the Section (except for newsletter editorship). If an elected officer is elected to another office, the prior office shall be declared vacant. If an elected office is vacated before the term is completed, it shall be filled through appointment by the Chair for the unexpired term, subject to confirmation by the Council at its next meeting. Only voting members of the Association shall be eligible to hold office.

Powers of the Officers

The Council shall make decisions by majority rule of its attending members, acting as the representative of the membership of the Section in order to carry out all necessary operations. Any action of the Section, including changes of the By-Laws, may be brought to the vote of the Section by the Council, or by a petition of 10 percent or twenty-five of the members, whichever is less. Questions that are interpreted by the Council to be matters of new program development or policy shall be brought before the membership for discussion.

Elections and Voting

The elections of the Section shall be carried out in cooperation with the American Sociological Association and coordinated to their schedule. Newly elected officers and Council members shall assume office on the day following the annual business meeting of the Section at the American Sociological Association's Annual Meeting. Newly elected officers and Council members are urged to attend meetings of the Council prior to assuming office as non-voting members.

Committees

There shall be a Committee on Nominations, formed each year at the annual business meeting of the Section. The Nominating Committee shall consist of three members: the Past-chair, one member appointed by the Council, and one elected from the floor at the business meeting. No member shall serve on the Nominating Committee for more than two consecutive years. Two candidates will be presented for each office by the Committee on Nominations. Other Committees shall be appointed by the Chair with the approval of the Council on an ad hoc basis.

Membership & Dues

The membership of the Section is open to any member of the American Sociological Association without regard to the classification of the membership. Members who do not pay their Section dues shall be suspended, and dropped from the rolls after two years.

Dues shall be set by the Council to cover the operation of the Section in accord with the requirements of the American Sociological Association.

Revised 1989,1997.

EMAIL LISTSERVS

Our section provides to members only two email listservs:

Announcement List - Messages from the section List Manager.
Discussion List - Discussion with other members.

Consult the CHS Online Resource page for general information on finding your way around the site.

Announcement List

Our section Announcement List is used to send out information of interest to the Section (e.g., calls for papers, nominations, etc.). This list will be used very sparingly by a List Manager who is solely responsible for messages. In our section, the Newsletter Editor of any year also serves as List Manager.

The Announcement List (and this list alone) is populated with the email addresses of all section members. In the exceedingly unlikely event that a member might request that he/she be excluded from the list, an email should be sent to infoservice@asanet.org. The list should now be populated with all 2007 section members. Non-members cannot join the Announcement list.

For substantive comments, get in touch with the List manager: owner-comp_historical_soc@listserv.asanet.org

For technical information, e.g., to have your email address changed: infoservice@asanet.org

Discussion List

The Discussion List of our section provides a forum for intellectual exchange on any and all topics within the confines of our section's areas of interest. The section encourages its members to subscribe to the Discussion list for anything members find useful to their research and teaching needs in comparative as well as historical sociology. The Discussion list is not prepopulated with email addresses. Therefore, every section member who is interested in participating in the Discussion List needs to subscribe as follows:

Address an email to: majordomo@listserv.asanet.org
Leave the subject field blank.
In the text area or body of the message, type in:
subscribe comp_historical_soc
The remainder of the email message must be blank!
Send the message.

Hereafter you will receive an e-mail from majordomo@listserv.asanet.org with the instruction to respond back with a second email. This step is to ensure that you alone can confirm your subscription. Once the confirmation is sent back, you will receive a message welcoming you to the list. Section members can unsubscribe at any time by sending a message to majordomo@listserv.asanet.org with this command in the body of the text: unsubscribe comp_historical_soc

For substantive comments, contact the section List Manager at: owner-comp_historical_soc@listserv.asanet.org

For technical information, e.g., to have your email address changed: infoservice@asanet.org

Consult the CHS Online Resource page for general information on finding your way around the site.

SECTION ACTIVITIES

Section Awards: Moore Award & Bendix Award
Annual Meeting Participation
Section Committees

See also our section newsletter on the online Newsletters page.

Section Awards: Barrington Moore Book/Article Award

The section awards the Barrington Moore Award every year to either the best book or the best article (in alternating years) in the areas of comparative and historical sociology. Nominated publications should have appeared in the two years prior to the year in which they are nominated. Books and articles may be nominated by authors or by other section members.

This year's awards have just been announced! See the Awards and History page for details about winners!

Reinhard Bendix Student Paper Award

Ever year the section awards the Reinhard Bendix Award for the best student paper. Submissions are solicited for papers written by students enrolled in graduate programs at the time the paper was written. Students can self-nominate their finest work or can be nominated by their mentors.

This year's awards have just been announced! See the Awards and History page for details about winners!

Annual Meeting Participation

Section Sessions & Roundtables
Every year the section organizes invited and open regular sessions and roundtables at the ASA annual meeting.

ASA Comparative & Historical Sociology Sessions
Boston, 2008

Our section has helped to organize panels on the following themes:

Special Session. Setting Agendas for the Comparative and Historical Sociology of Latin America
Mon, Aug 4 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Building: Boston Marriott Copley Place

Session Participants:

Session Organizer: Jonathan Eastwood (Washington and Lee University)

Presider: Jonathan Eastwood (Washington and Lee University)

Panelist: Diane E. Davis (Massachusetts Inst. of Technology)

Panelist: Fernando Lopez-Alves (University of California- Santa Barbara)

Panelist: Natividad Gutierrez Chong (Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Mexico)

Panelist: Jeffery M Paige (University of Michigan)

Discussant: Susan Eckstein (Boston University)

Abstract:
Within comparative and historical sociology, as in sociology more generally, interest in Latin America is growing appreciably. Recent work by a variety of social scientists has laid the ground for collaborative scholarship that has the potential to increase significantly our knowledge about and understanding of the region’s past and present. The focus of this special session will be on agenda setting in this expanding and exciting area of research. It is based on the recognition that we need to review carefully the assumption that the central problems of the historical sociology of Europe (e.g., the rise of the state, of parliamentary regimes, of modern, open stratification, social revolutions, and nationalism) are or ought to be the central problems of the historical sociology of Latin America. While this does not mean that we should ignore such problems, we must consider (a) the historical specificity of Latin American cases, and (b) the possibility that the Latin American region has its own core problems of comparative-historical import that should be examined in their own right. This panel brings together some of the most important practitioners of the comparative and historical sociology of Latin America to discuss these issues.

Regular Session: The Politics of Exclusion

Fri, Aug 1 - 8:30am - 10:10am
Building: Boston Marriott Copley Place

"Citizenship and Military Service: Questioning the Link in a Post- Heroic Age." Dorith Geva (University of Chicago), John C. Torpey (Graduate Center, City University of New York)

"Locating Citizenship between Exclusion and Inclusion: The Revocation of Citizenship in the United States." Ben Herzog (Yale University)

"A Theory of Ideology, Social Structure, and Revolution: Revolutionary Contention in 16th Century Europe." Colin J. Beck (Stanford University)

"Polish Paradoxes - A Contribution to the Debate on a Problem-Solving Model of Action for (Historical) Sociology." Hella Dietz (Georg-August-University, Göttingen)
Presider: Jack A. Goldstone (George Mason University)
Discussant: Jack A. Goldstone (George Mason University)

Regular Session: Historicizing Institutional Effects
Fri, Aug 1 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Building: Boston Marriott Copley Place

"How Do Organizational Imprints Stick? Identity Persistence at the Paris Opera from Louis XIV to the French Revolution." Victoria Johnson (University of Michigan)

"Norms of War: An Institutionalist Account." Edgar Kiser (University of Washington), Eric Gleave (University of Washington)

"Jane Addams and the Rise and Fall of Pragmatist Social Provision at Hull-House, 1871-1896." Erik Schneiderhan (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

"The Stimulus of a Hot Fortnight: Symbolic Rationality, Moral Mechanisms and Institutional Change in the Great Stink of London, 1858." Matthew Norton (Yale University)

Presider: Marie-Laure Djelic (ESSEC)
Discussant: Marie-Laure Djelic (ESSEC)

Perception and Political Process in Historical Perspective
Fri, Aug 1 - 2:30pm - 4:10pm
Building: Boston Marriott Copley Place

"Political Self-deception as State and Process." Ivan Ermakoff (University of Wisconsin-Madison)

"Power and Perception: The American Civilising (and Decivilising) Process." Stephen John Mennell (University College Dublin)

"Ambivalence and Control: State Action Against the Civil Rights-era Ku Klux Klan." David Cunningham (Brandeis University)

"Class, Race, Ethnicity and the National Liberation Struggle in South Africa." Jack M. Bloom (Indiana University Northwest)

Session Organizer: Meyer Kestnbaum (University of Maryland)

Section on Comparative and Historical Sociology Refereed Roundtable Session
Sun, Aug 3 - 10:30am - 12:10pm
Building: Hilton Boston Back Bay

Session Organizers: Joseph Oscar Jewell and Robert S. Mackin (Texas A&M University)

Table 01. New and Old States: Causes and Consequences

Table 02. Globalization & Neo-Liberal Politics

Table 03. Advances in the Sociology of Culture

Table 04. Methodological Issues

Table 05. Politics, Movements and Diversity

Table 06. Asia and Globalization

Table 07. Sociological Theory and Sociology of Knowledge

Table 08. Globalization and Neo-Liberal Politics, Part II

Table 09. Globalization and Neo-Liberal Politics, Part III

Table 10. Advance in the Sociology of Culture, Part II

Table 11. New Directions in Comparative Historical Methods

Section Reception (joint with Culture and Theory sections): Friday, 6:30-8:10 pm, Sheraton Boston. Should be fun!

Section Business Meeting: Sunday, 4:30-6:10 pm, Sheraton Boston.
Agenda includes: Discussion of next year's panels and presentation of section awards. Please attend!

You can visit the main ASA website for general information about the 2008 annual meeting. Additionally, you can search for panels of interest to you by searching the online meeting program.

Section Committees/Area Sessions

The section also encourages members and other interested sociologists to submit their work to the regular sessions in the area of comparative and historical sociology that are covered by the central ASA organizing committee. Consult the ASA homepage for details.

SECTION COUNCIL

Election Results for 2008-2009

Chair-Elect: Lis Clemens, University of Chicago

Secretary-Treasurer (2009-2011): Victoria Johnson, University of Michigan

Section Council (2008-2011):Jeff Haydu, University of California-San Diego, Ming-Cheng Lo, University of California-Davis

Officers 2007-2008

Chair:Philip S. Gorski, Yale University

Chair-Elect:Rebecca Jean Emigh, University of California-Los Angeles

Past Chair: William G. Roy, University of California-Los Angeles

Secretary-Treasurer: Genevieve Zubrzycki, University of Michigan

Council:
Jeffrey Broadbent, University of Minnesota (2009)
Vivek Chibber, New York University (2009)
Marion Fourcade-Gourinchas, University of California-Berkeley (2008)
Julian Go, Boston University (2010)
Mara Loveman, University of Wisconsin-Madison (2008)
Marc W. Steinberg, Smith College (2010)

Student Members:
Amy Kate Bailey, University of Washington (2008)
Chandan Gowda, University of Michigan (2009)

Newsletter Editors:
Nitsan Chorev, Brown University
Greta Krippner, University of Michigan

Website:
Dylan Riley, University of California, Berkeley