The Agenda for Historical Sociology. In conversation with Dennis Smith in ISA E Bulletin no 13 July 2009 151 71 (original) (raw)

See pages 151-71 for interview with Karen O'Reilly in 2009. Dennis Smith reviews his career till then as a historical sociologist. Two key themes are: how to study complexity and the big picture; and how theory emerges from empirical practice. Discussion covers Dennis Smith's books on Barrington Moore, Norbert Elias, Zygmunt Bauman, the Chicago School, Capitalist Democracy on Trial, Globalization-The Hidden Agenda. Also, his classic text, reissued in 2016, entitled Conflict and Compromise - Class Formation in English Society 1830-1914.

A brief intellectual biography of Dennis Smith global historical sociologist

I enjoy research that is historical and comparative. Within that framework I search for complex connections between different processes and structures, including the dynamics of displacement. I am especially interested in processes of forced downward displacement (or humiliation) and how people respond to being ejected or excluded from, or otherwise denied, the social position and sense of identity that they feel entitled to. For example, when this happens do they try to reject, accept or escape their plight, or do they, perhaps, seek reconciliation and restitution? This theme could not be more relevant and contemporary, especially in the light of the current recession, and the re-emergence of social and political dangers last seen after the First World War.

Comparative & Historical Sociology Newsletter Summer 1999

2004

Comparative history as a field of scholarship and a method of inquiry has paid particular attention to predominantly class-based societies where social class has historically been considered as the major divide. This is the case in the research of scholars who have considered a broad spectrum of macrostructural issues, such as Barrington Moore, Theda Skocpol, Charles Tilly, and Ann Orloff, even though they have differed markedly in their interpretation of the relationship between state and class. In political sociology and comparative history, social class understandably has occupied a privileged position in debates on the proper basis for explaining politics and the development of states. There is a range of societies, however, in which the complex, reciprocal and varied relationships between state and society cannot be fruitfully studied in terms of the state/class paradigm alone, whatever its particular emphasis.

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Historical Sociology

‘Historical Sociology’ (with John Hobson and Justin Rosenberg) in Robert Denemark et al (eds.), The International Studies Encyclopaedia (New York: Wiley-Blackwell, 2010).