Journal Article

The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry

Somers, Margaret, Skocpol, Theda

1980

Overview

Comparative history is not new. As long as people have investigated social life, there has been recurrent fascination with juxtaposing historical patterns from two or more times or places. Part of the appeal comes from the general usefulness of looking at historical trajectories in order to study social change. Indeed, practitioners of comparative history from Alexis de Tocqueville and Max Weber to Marc Bloch, Reinhard Bendix, and Barrington Moore, Jr. have typically been concerned with understanding societal dynamics and epochal transformations of cultures and social structures. Attention to historical sequences is indispensable to such understanding. Obviously, though, not all investigations of social change use explicit juxtapositions of distinct histories. We may wonder, therefore: What motivates the use of comparisons as opposed to focussing on single historical trajectories? What purposes are pursued—and how—through the specific modalities of comparative history?

• Publisher: Cambridge University Press
• Subject: Approaches to Historical Comparison / Case histories / Comparative history / Comparative method / Comparison/Comparisons/Comparative/Comparability / Cross cultural studies / Democracy / History instruction / History/Historic/Historical / Macrosociology/ Macrosociological / Peasant class / Political revolutions / Political systems / Social revolutions