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A Handbook for Historical Sociologists

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John T. Flint
Affiliation:
State University of New York at Binghamton

Abstract

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Type
Review Articles
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1968

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References

1 Zetterberg, Hans, On Theory and Verification in Sociology, Third Edition (The Bedminister Press, 1965)Google Scholar. Homans, George C., Sentiments and Activities (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1962)Google Scholar; Harsany, John C.i, “Explanation and Comparative Dynamics in Social Science”, in Behavioral Science, Vol. V (1960), pp. 136145.Google Scholar

2 Bellah, Robert N., Tokugawa Religion (Glencoe, 111., The Free Press, 1957)Google Scholar; Barber, Elinor G., The Bourgeoisie in 18th Century France (Princeton, New Jersey, Princeton University Press, 1955)CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Erikson, Kai I., Wayward Puritans, A Study in the Sociology of Deviance (New York, John Wiley & Sons, 1966).Google Scholar

3 A useful exception to these explications of historical explanation is to be found in Goldstein, Leon J., “Theory in History”, Phil, of Science, Vol. 34, No. 1 (03, 1967), pp. 2340.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Swanson, Guy E., Religion and Regime: A Sociological Account of the Reformation (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1967).Google Scholar

5 Here might be classified some portions of the multi-volumed Cambridge Medieval and Modern Histories - new and old editions upon which Swanson is notably dependent.

6 John T. Flint, “Some Observations on the Use of Historical Data in Sociological Research by Means of the Culture Case Study and Constructive Typology”, an unpublished working paper.

7 Marsh, Robert M., The Mandarins: The Circulation of Elites in China (The Free Press of Glencoe, 1961)Google Scholar; Smelser, Neil J., “Sociological History: The Industrial Revolution and the British Working-Class Family”, in Journal of Social History, Vol. I, No. 1 (1967), p. 19.Google Scholar

8 Andreski, Stanislav, The Uses of Comparative Sociology (University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Marsh, Robert M., Comparative Sociology (New York, Harcourt, Brace & World, Inc., 1967).Google Scholar

9 Eisenstadt, S.N., The Political Systems of Empires (New York, The Free Press, 1963)Google Scholar; Martindale, Don, Social Life and Cultural Change (New York, D. Van Nostrand Co. Inc., 1962)Google Scholar; McClelland, David C., The Achieving Society (New York, The Free Press, 1967)Google Scholar. Max Weber probably remains the single most influential model in this variety of comparative history - at least for sociologists. The first ten volumes of Comparative Studies in Society and History might very well be reviewed and its rich contents classified and analyzed in terms of some refinements on this four-fold classification. All categories would contain substantial representation.

10 See the distinction made by Frederic C. Lane in the volume Enterprise and Secular Change edited by Lane, F.C. and Riemersma, J.C. (Homewood, Illinois, Richard D. Irwin, Inc., 1953), pp. 522534.Google Scholar

11 Swanson, , op. cit., p. ix.Google Scholar

12 Homans, George C., “Contemporary Theory in Sociology”, in Faris, R.E.L. (ed.), Handbook of Modern Sociology (Chicago, Rand McNally, 1964), pp. 951977Google Scholar. This essay contains a more formal and extended statement of some ideas also to be found in Sentiments and Activities, op. cit. See also, Goldstein, , op. cit.Google Scholar

13 Swanson, Guy E., The Birth of the Gods, The Origin of Primitive Beliefs (Ann Arbor, The University of Michigan Press, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

14 Swanson, , Religion and Regime, op cit., p. 24.Google Scholar

15 Ibid., p. 42.

16 Weber, Max, The Sociology of Religion (Boston, Beacon Press, 1963)Google Scholar; he cites particularly Talcott Parsons' introduction to this volume as well as the usual range of Weber's other essays in the sociology of religion.

17 Swanson, , op. cit., pp. viiviii.Google Scholar

18 Glock, Charles Y. and Stark, R., Religion and Society in Tension (Chicago, Rand McNally, 1965), pp. 86122.Google Scholar

19 Swanson, , op. cit., p. 50.Google Scholar

20 A full-scale critique of Swanson's effort here would entail a thorough discussion of the reliability and validity of his historical evidence as utilized in his empirical indicators as related to his conceptually defined variables. See Zetterberg, , op. cit., Chapter Seven, “On the Decisions in Verificational Studies”, pp. 114158.Google Scholar

21 For one recent effort congruent with Swanson's prepositional comparative testing style see, Field, G.Lowell, Comparative Political Development. The Precedent of the West (Ithaca, New York; Cornell University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

22 McKinney, John C., Constructive Typology and Social Theory (New York, Appleton-Century-Crofts, 1966).Google Scholar

23 Swanson, , op. cit., p. 33Google Scholar. The conceptual relationships between social system, regime, and gubernaculum on the one hand as distinguished from similarly interrelated concepts of association, political community, and jurisdiction are most immediately relevant.

24 Grew, Raymond and Thrupp, Sylvia L., “Horizontal History in Search of Vertical Dimensions” (review article), Comparative Studies in Society and History, VIII (1966), pp. 250264.Google Scholar

25 Swanson, , op. cit., pp. 5158, 233237.Google Scholar

26 Ibid., p. 61. Classified here were the nation-states of Austria, France, Portugal, Spain; the German states, Bavaria, Julich, Berg; the Swiss Cantons of Lucerne and Solothurn, and finally the Irish Septs beyond the Pale and the Highland Scots clans.

27 Ibid., p. 63. Here: Denmark-Norway, Sweden-Finland, England, and Saxony, Wurttemberg, Brandenburg, Prussia, and Hesse.

28 Ibid., p. 158. Here: Cleves, Mark, Bohemia, Transylvania, Hungary, Scots Lowlands, and Geneva.

29 Ibid., p. 189. Here: Poland, Florence, Venice and seven Swiss Cantons analyzed separately - Schwyz, Unterwalden, Uri, Zug, Fribourg, Glarus, Appenzell.

30 Ibid., p. 212. Here: The United Provinces, Zurich, Basel, Schaffhausen, Bern.

31 Ibid., pp. 51–52.

32 Ibid., pp. 226–227.

33 Weber, , op. cit., pp. 80137Google Scholar and also Swanson, , op. cit., p. 232.Google Scholar

34 Ibid., pp. 238–241. Here Swanson provides a very complex table summarizing his major findings on all forty-one political units in terms of fourteen columns of coded findings for a total of five hundred and seventy four items of information.

35 I should note here that Swanson explicitly disavows any claim to speak of “degrees of” immanence or penetration although considering it as a possibility.

36 Ibid., pp. 37, 42.

37 See on this, ProfessorBouwsma, 's review, CSSH, X (1968), pp. 486491.Google Scholar

38 Swanson, , op. cit., pp. 231232.Google Scholar

39 Ibid., p. 42.

40 I can only suggest here that his highest-order proposition(s) in a formalized version of his theory might prove to refer to a psychological attribute of men as men - namely some such “need for symbolic congruence”. On this variety of theory see, Homans, , op. cit., “Contemporary Theory”, pp. 967973.Google Scholar

41 I have gathered some of the necessary material in Danish and Norwegian for exploring one of his most problematic cases, i.e. “centralist” Denmark after 1660 remaining Lutheran. On the whole question of exceptions, see Köbben, A.J.F., “Why Exceptions? The Logic of Cross-Cultural Analysis”, in Current Anthropology, Vol. 8, No. 1–2 (1967), pp. 331.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42 Swanson, , op. cit., pp. 3942, 5859Google Scholar. The empirical indicator for his dependent variable (immanence) is explicitly formalistic, i.e. official doctrine.

43 For recent discussions of this literature see, Berger, Peter L., and Luckman, Thomas, The Social Construction of Reality (New York, A Doubleday Anchor Book, 1966)Google Scholar. Also, Remmling, Gunter W., Road to Suspicion (New York, Appleton-Century-Croft, 1967)Google Scholar. An older but still very helpful discussion is Merton, Robert K., “The Sociology of Knowledge”, in his essay collection, Social Theory and Social Structure (Glencoe, III., The Free Press, 1957), pp. 456488.Google Scholar

44 Tilly, Charles, The Vendee (Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press 1964)Google Scholar. The number of studies in recent years which could be justly classified as comparative/propositional, whether historical or theoretical in emphasis, is sufficiently great to merit a monograph-length critical review of their procedural as well as substantive contributions.

45 Marc Bloch, “Towards a Comparative History of European Societies”, translated from the French version of 1928 in Lane, and Riemersma, , op. cit., pp. 518519.Google Scholar