Macrocomparative Methods
C.
Chase-Dunn
230.450
Spring, 1998
Tuesday 1-3 Merganthaler
526
This course covers topics in comparative methods for studying social structures. We will consider issues in the philosophy of social science, theory construction, concept formation, qualitative and quantitative methods, units of analysis, variation across time and space, etc. Grading will be based on class participation, an in-class essay exam on April 7, and a research exercise due on May 5.
Books available in the Hopkins Bookstore are:
Christopher B. Barrett and Jeffrey
W. Cason, Overseas Research: A Practical Guide
Christopher Chase-Dunn and Thomas D. Hall. Rise and Demise: Comparing
World-Systems
Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy
in Central America
Charles Ragin, The Comparative Method
Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century
Paradigms
Required readings are marked with
an asterisk (*) and are on Reserve. Other readings are recommended. Required
readings should be read prior to the time of the relevant seminar meeting.
Many of the required readings are available from
http://milton.mse.jhu.edu:8001/library/reserves/articles/chasedunn/chasedunn.html
January 27 An overview of macrocomparative methods
Relevant issues in the philosophy of social science: Explanation vs. interpretation;
induction and deduction, nomothetic vs. ideographic approaches; subject
and object problems; methodological individualism, values and social science,
teleology and scientific explanation.
Karl Marx, Grundrisse, Introduction,
"The method of political economy"
Emile Durkheim, The Rules of Sociological Method.
Max Weber, The Methodology of the Social Sciences.
Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.
Stephen Sanderson, Social Evolutionism.
February 3
Theory construction, concept formation
and theoretical research programs.
*Christopher Chase-Dunn, Global Formation, Chapter 14, "Theory
construction"
*Arthur Stinchcombe, Constructing Social Theories, Chapter 2 "The
logic of scientific inference"
Imre Lakatos, 1978 The Methodology of Scientific Research Programmes,
Vol. 1. Edited by John Worral and Gregory Currie. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press.
Bernard P. Cohen, Developing Sociological Knowledge. Chapter 7,
"Concepts, definitions and concept formation."
Joseph Berger and Morris Zelditch, Jr. 1993 Theoretical Research Programs:
Studies in the Growth of Theory.
February 10
Qualitative methods: fieldwork, case studies, qualitative variables
*Christopher B. Barrett and Jeffrey
W. Cason, Overseas Research: A Practical Guide
Robert M. Emerson (ed.) Contemporary Field Research Michael
S. Ball and Gregory W.H. Smith, Analyzing Visual Data
Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and Demise, Chapters 7, 8 and 9. (case
studies)
February 17
Historiography, ethnography, historical
sociology and comparative methods
*Immanuel Wallerstein, Unthinking Social Science: The Limits of Nineteenth-Century
Paradigms
Griffin, Larry 1993 "Narrative, event structure analysis and causal
interpretation in historical sociology" American Journal of Sociology
98:1094-133.
Ronald Aminzade, "Historical sociology and time." Sociological
Methods and Research 20,4:456-480 (May), 1992.
Aletta Biersack (ed.) Clio in Oceania: Toward a historical anthropology.
Roberto Franzosi, "The press as a source of socio-historical data:
issues in the methodology of data collection from newspapers." Historical
Methods 20,1:5-16 (Winter) 1987.
Arthur Stinchcombe, Theoretical Methods in Social History
February 24
The logic of comparison: what is the comparative method?, research design (non-experimental methods), units of analysis, conceptual equivalence, comparable measures, Galton's problem, attributes and relations, multilevel models
*C. Chase-Dunn, Global Formation,
Chapter 15, "Research Methods".
*Charles Ragin, The Comparative Method, Chapters 1-4
Adam Przeworski and Henry Teune, The Logic of Comparative Social Inquiry
Charles Tilly, Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons.
Raoull Naroll, 1968 "Some thoughts on comparative method in cultural
anthropology" Chapter 7 in Hubert M. Blalock, Jr. And Ann B. Blalock
(eds.) Methodology in Social Research. (Galton's problem)
John Stuart Mill, A System of Logic: Ratiocinative and Inductive,
Book III, Chapter 8, "Of the four methods of experimental inquiry,"
Donald T. Campbell and Julian C. Stanley, Experimental and Quasi-experimental
Designs for Research.
March 3 The logic of comparison: variation across space and time
*Beverly Silver, "Time, space
and labor unrest"
*Morris Zelditch, Jr. "Intelligible comparisons," Pp. 267-308
in Ivan Vallier (ed.) Comparative Methods in Sociology
*Morris Zelditch, Jr. "Can you study an army in the laboratory,"
in Pp. 528-39 in A. Etzioni (ed.) Complex Organizations (2nd edition)
1969.
March 10
The logic of comparison: combining qualitative and quantitative methods
*Charles Ragin, The Comparative
Method, Chapters 5-9
Nigel Fielding and Jane L. Fielding, Linking Data, Chapter 4, "Linking
qualitative and quantitative data"
Jeffrey Paige, Agrarian Revolution
March 17- Spring Vacation
March 24 Cross-national analysis using the national society as unit of analysis: Case studies, time-series, and cross-sectional comparisons.
*Jeffery M. Paige, Coffee and
Power: Revolution and the Rise of Democracy in Central America
Theda Skocpol, States and Social Revolutions, Pp. 33-40 "A
comparative historical method"
Terence K. Hopkins and Immanuel Wallerstein, "The comparative study
of national societies," in Amitai Etzioni and Frederic Dubow (eds.)
Comparative Perspectives: Theories and Methods
Fernando H. Cardoso and Enzo Faletto, Dependency and Development
in Latin America, "Preface to the English edition."
Alex Inkeles and Masamichi Sasaki (eds.) 1996 Comparing Nations and
Cultures
Georg P. Muller, Comparative World Data: A Statistical Handbook
for Social Science, Johns Hopkins Press, 1988.
March 31 (study questions for midterm handed out today)
Cross-national research in which nation is the context
*Melvin Kohn, "Cross-national
research as an analytic" American Sociological Review 52:713-731,
1987.
*Melvin Kohn and Kazymierz Slomczynski, Social Structure and Self-Direction,
Chapter 2, "The methodology of the research"
http://www.jhu.edu/~soc/cd/courses/melchap2.htm
April 7 Midterm
Exercise Report Due May 5
April 14
Secondary data analysis , the ratio problem, reciprocal causation, the ecological fallacy and the aggregation problem, and measurement error models. Cross-lagged panel analyses , event history analysis, structural equation modeling (LISREL), multilevel research design (hierarchical linear models) and network analysis.
* Francisco
O. Ramirez, Yasemin Soysal and Suzanne Shanahan 1997 "The changing
logic of political citizenship:cross-national acquisition of women's suffrage
rights, 1890 to 1990" American Sociological Review 62:735-745.
(event history)
*Jeffrey Kentor, 1998"The long term effects of foreign capital penetration
on economic growth, 1940-1990" American Journal of Sociology
(January)(LISREL)
*Wil Hout and Frits Meijerink, 1996 "Structures in the international
political economy: world system theory and unequal development" European
Journal of International Relations 2,1:47-76. (LISREL)
Dale Wimberley, "Investment dependence and alternative explanations
of Third World mortality: a cross-national study," American
Sociological Review 55:75-91, 1990. (panel analysis)
Michael T. Hannan, "Issues in panel analysis of national development:
a methodological overview," Pp. 17-36 in John W. Meyer and Michael
T. Hannan (eds.) National Development and the World System: Educational,
Economic and Political Change, 1950-1970
David Strang, "From dependency to sovereignty: an event history
analysis of decolonization 1870-1987," American Sociological Review
55,6:846-860 December, 1990.
John Bynner 1994 "Analyzing change over time using LISREL" Chapter
5 in Angela Dale and Richard B. Davies, Analyzing Social and Political
Change: A casebook of Methods
Nancy Tuma 1994 "Event History Analysis" Chapter 7 in Angela
Dale and Richard B. Davies, Analyzing Social and Political Change: A
casebook of Methods.
Michael Hannan 1971 "Problems of aggregation," Chapter 27
in Hubert M. Blalock (ed.) Causal Models in the Social Sciences.
Gregory B. Markus, Analyzing Panel Data
Paul D. Allison, Event History Analysis: Regression for Longitudinal
Event Data
Gary King, A Solution to the
Ecological Inference Problem: Reconstructing Individual Behavior from Aggregate
Data http://gking.harvard.edu
Geoffrey M. Maruyama, Basics of Structural Equations Modeling
John Scott, Social Network Analysis.
Anthony Bryk and Stephen Raudenbush, Hierarchical Linear Models.
April 21
The world-system as unit of analysis: historical interpretation, time-series analysis, network analysis and geographical information systems.
*Chase-Dunn, Global Formation
Chapter 13
*Chase-Dunn, "Globalization: A World-Systems Perspective" NSF
research Proposal.
* Philip McMichael, "Incorporating comparison within a world-historical
perspective," American Sociological Review 55,3:385-397, June
1990.
Christian Suter, "Long waves in the international financial system:
debt-default cycles of sovereign borrowers," Review 12,1:1-49
(Winter) 1989.
Joshua Goldstein, Long Cycles: Prosperity and War in the Modern Age
John W. Meyer, "Conceptions of christendom: notes on the distinctiveness
of the West" in Melvin Kohn, Cross-national Research in Sociology.
, Chapter 16
David Kowalewski, "Periphery praetorianism in cliometric perspective,
1855-1985." International Journal of Comparative Sociology
32,3-4:289-303, 1991.
Terry Boswell, "Colonial empires and the capitalist world-system:
a time-series analysis of colonization, 1640-1960," American Sociological
Review 54,2: 180-196, 1989.
Roger J. Nemeth and David A. Smith, "International trade and world-system
structure: a multiple network analysis," Review 8,4:517-560
(Spring) 1985.
David Snyder and Edward Kick, "Structural position in the world-system
and economic growth, 1955-1970: a multiple network analysis of transnational
interactions," American Journal of Sociology 84,5:1096-1126,
1979.
Scott L. Hershberger, Peter C.M. Molenaar and Sherry E. Corneal 1996 "A
hierarchy of univariate and multivariate structural time series models."
Chapter 6 in George A. Marcoulides and Randall E. Schumacker (eds) Advanced
Structural Equation Modeling.
Charles W. Ostrum, Time Series Analysis: Regression Techniques
Jeff B. Cromwell, Michael J. Hannan, Walter C. Labys and Michel Terraza,
Multivariate Tests for Time Series Models
David Knoke and James H. Kuklinksi, Network Analysis
G. David Garson and Robert S. Biggs, Analytic Mapping and Geographic
Databases
Exercise Report Due May 5
April 28
Comparing world-systems
*Chase-Dunn and Hall, Rise and
Demise: Comparing World-Systems. Chapters 3, 10 and 12.
* David Wilkinson 1991. "Cores,
Peripheries and Civilizations." Pp. 113-166 in Core/Periphery
Relations in Precapitalist Worlds, edited by Christopher Chase-Dunn
and Thomas D. Hall. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. gopher://csf.Colorado.EDU:70/00/wsystems/books/chase-dunn%26hall/chap4
Kasja Ekholm and Jonathan Friedman, " 'Capital' imperialism and exploitation
in ancient world-systems," Review 6,1:87-110, 1982
Exercise Report Due May 5