Comparative and Historical Sociology

The 1960s was not just an era of civil rights, anti-war protest, women's liberation, hippies, marijuana, and rock festivals. The untold story of the 1960s is in fact about the New Right. For young conservatives the decade was about Barry Goldwater, Ayn Rand, an important war in the fight against communism, and Young Americans for Freedom (YAF). This book examines the generation that came into political consciousness during the 1960s, telling the story of both the New Right and the New Left, and including the voices of women as well as men. The result is a narrative that explains how politics became central to the identities of a generation of people, and how changes in the political landscape of the 1980s and 1990s affected this identity.

Is Marxism a reflection of the conceptual system it fights against, rather than a truly comprehensive approach to human history? Drawing on recent work in anthropology, history, and philosophy, this book confronts this problem in analyzing a radically different social order: the former Maale kingdom of southern Ethiopia.

This book traces the phenomenon of the “odyssey” experience as it shapes, informs, and defines our lives. Drawing on a range of examples, the book focuses on how such experiences enhance our lives and provide us with meaning and dignity. The odyssey experience, as the text advances it, is generic, widespread, and recurring. It is a finite period of disengagement from the routines of life and immersion into a simpler, transitory, often collective, usually intense period of involvement that culminates in some kind of regeneration. By examining a variety of topics as part of a larger, overarching phenomenon, the book transforms this study from the particular to the comparative. The book thus reaches beyond a simple description of where and how transformations occur in daily life to offer an explanation for why they are there.

In 2004, Michael Burawoy, speaking as president of the American Sociological Association, generated far-reaching controversy when he issued an ambitious and impassioned call for a “public sociology.” Burawoy argued that sociology should speak beyond the university, engaging with social movements and deepening an understanding of the historical and social context in which they exist. In this book, renowned sociologists come together to debate the perils and the potentials of Burawoy's challenge.

This work, the culmination of 30 years of systematic, comprehensive comparison of 19 rich democracies, answers two basic questions: What is distinctly modern about modern societies—in what ways are they becoming alike? How do variations in types of political economy shape system performance? The text specifies similarities and differences in the structure and interplay of government, political parties, the mass media, industry, labor, professions, agriculture, churches, and voluntary associations. It then demonstrates how differences in bargaining arrangements among these groups lead to contrasting policy profiles and patterns of taxing and spending, which in turn explain a large number of outcomes: economic performance, political legitimacy, equality, job security, safety and risk, real health, the reduction of poverty and environmental threats, and the effectiveness and fairness of regulatory regimes. Drawing on quantitative data and case studies covering the last 50 years and more than 400 interviews conducted with top decision-makers and advisors, the book provides a richly detailed account of the common social, economic, and labor problems modern governments confront and their contrasting styles of conflict resolution. The result is new light on the likely paths of development of rich democracies as they become richer. Assessing alternative theories, the book offers a critique of such images of modern society as “post-industrial” or “high-tech”, “the information age” or the alleged dominance of “globalization”.