how can we develop a viable vision of relations between history and social theory? A comparison of three recent books clarifies the stakes and possibilities of the question. Peter Burke’s History and Social Theory looks out at social and cultural theory from the viewpoint of historical practice, sorting theoretical resources chiefly by their contribution to that practice. Julia Adams, Elisabeth...

The ‘‘first generation’’ (Lammers, 1978, p. 486) of comparative analysis of organizations in sociology (e.g., Blau, 1965; Stinchcombe, 1959) focused on the ‘‘nuts and bolts’’ of organizational structure as the key criterion with which to derive organizational typologies (Perrow, 1967; Pugh, Hickson, & Hinings, 1969). This initial cohort of analysts saw the intrinsic features – or ‘‘organization...

This essay reviews and evaluates recent comparative social science scholarship on healthcare systems. We focus on four of the strongest themes in current research: (1) the development of typologies of healthcare systems, (2) assessment of convergence among healthcare systems, (3) problematization of the shifting boundaries of healthcare systems, and (4) the relationship between healthcare syste...

This issue of SER contains three articles on public sociology and economic sociology, which all have their origin in a session on this theme that was held at the annual meeting of the American Sociological Association in August 2006 in Montreal. The reason for organizing this session was a sense that ‘new economic sociology’ has ignored many of the issues that are associated with the term ‘publ...

Do all disciplines fret over the state of their own intellectual and policy-relevant health? Is it a symptom of our hyper-reflexive and confessional times that collective anxiety has to be rehearsed over the track record, and present and projected performance of a group of scholars? Medical sociology’s lengthy reflections on the state of its own practice are recognizable as part of a more gener...

The following is a shortened version of a plenary lecture by Steven Brint presented at the inaugural meeting of the Portuguese Sociology of Education Society in Lisbon, January 23, 2009. You have asked me to speak about the current state of the sociology of education in the United States. The temptation is great in such an assignment to applaud the subdiscipline for following one’s own cherishe...

1. Sociology's Relevance to International Relations 2. Historical Origins of Sociological Thought 3. Historical Sociology 4. The Historical Sociology of the State and International Relations 5. Principles of Historical Sociology 6. Problems with Historical Sociology 7. Sociology of Globalization 8. Global Versus Historical Sociology? 9. The Future Sociological Agenda in International Relations ...

This Social Relations and Policy major " explores the domain of public issues that are especially affected by relations among groups. The field is explicitly historical and comparative, looking at social relations in the United States and internationally, over time. " Syllabi for courses taught by JMC faculty in all four programs at James Madison College can be found at http://jmc.msu.edu/sylla...

■ Abstract The sociological, economic, political, and anthropological literatures are devoting increasing attention to globalization. This chapter discusses the various connotations of the term and puts it in historical perspective. Existing theoretical and empirical research on globalization is organized around five key issues or questions: Is it really happening? Does it produce convergence? ...

The essays in The Politics of Method in the Human Sciences contribute to a historical and comparative sociology of social science by systematically comparing the rises, falls, and absences of ‘‘methodological positivism’’ across the human sciences. Although all of the essays are of extremely high quality, three contributions develop the argument most fully: George Steinmetz’s introduction and W...