Historical and Comparative Methods Essay ⋆ Sociology Essay Examples ⋆ EssayEmpire

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Among the classical figures, Max Weber stands out from the others in his devotion to comparative historical sociology. His lifelong quest was to find through the study of ”rationalization processes” what sets the west off from the non-western civilizations. Concretely, the concern was with modern, rational or bourgeois capitalism, its origins and development. Weber’s series of studies is ”macro” and it deals with changes over long stretches of time. These characteristics are shared by the genre of comparative historical sociology today.

Weber, a leading inspiration of comparative historical sociology, came closest among the classical writers to making major use of John Stuart Mill’s method of (indirect) difference. Of Mill’s two principal procedures, the method of difference is the one that usually features in explicitly comparative research; it is the most powerful of the ”logics” he identified and studies usually try to approximate it as closely as possible.

Mill’s method of agreement works as follows: (1) several cases are found to have the phenomenon to be explained (y); (2) they also share the hypothesized causal factors (x) (this is the crucial similarity); but (3) in other ways that might seem causally relevant according to alternative hypotheses, they vary (i.e., overall there are differences). Mill’s method of difference, on the other hand, requires that the investigator take (positive) cases in which the explanandum and the explanans are present (x—y); these are then to be contrasted to other (negative) cases in which the explanandum and the explanans are absent (not x — not y). These negative cases are as similar as possible to the positive cases in other respects. Comparative historical sociologists, in particular, can supplement the method of agreement by introducing into their analyses the method of difference; in short, a research design combining elements of both is possible. Or the method of agreement can be applied twice over so as to approximate the method of difference.

Max Weber did this in his comparative studies of civilizations. Essentially, he conducted two sets of studies, of European societies that developed capitalism and non-western ones that did not. Weber thought he could see a number of factors linked to the former which the latter set of societies did not possess. But what if other factors he had not identified were operating? By comparing the two sets of societies, stressing as much as possible their likenesses, Weber was able to strengthen the presumption in favor of his selected factors as the cause of capitalism in the west, their absence as leading to its absence in China and India. Logically, differences among each set of societies, the European and the non-western, were reduced, i.e., made parametric, in order to highlight crucial similarities in each in the independent variable, the type of religion, and the dependent one, respectively the occurrence and non-occurrence of economic rationality (a ”this-worldly asceticism”). Placing the two sets side by side — the differences again being reduced (made parametric) — amounts logically to displaying the crucial difference between east and west.

Research in the social sciences is restricted by the relatively small number of societies in which the investigator is interested for theoretical and substantive reasons. This means that the investigator has, usually with theoretical models of any degree of sophistication and realism, far more variables than cases in which to study them. The relative paucity of cases rules out often the use of sophisticated statistical techniques, such as multivariate analysis that permits study of the simultaneous relations of different kinds among a number of significant independent variables.

In addition to being historical, most monographs by historical sociologists study one, two or three cases. Why is there this tendency to a limited number? The argument for such a limitation is: (1) that the cases are intrinsically interesting (they may even exhaust the phenomenon in question); or (2) that they are the most representative (multivariate analysis is by contrast sometimes possible with large data sets but these are not historical). Unravelling complex compacted causes can only be attempted in a small number of cases treated as wholes. With respect to (1) (inherent interest), one can say that these cases matter to people generally, not just to statistically-minded social scientists pursuing autonomous, expert or specialized questions. In respect of the practical problem of complexity, any increase in the cases will so expand the number of relevant variables that the complexity becomes unmanageable. Or if resort is had to statistical methods contact with the detail of empirical case material must be sacrificed.

Bibliography:

Bendix, R. (1963) Concepts and generalizations in comparative sociological studies. American Sociological Review 28: 532—9.
Mahoney, J. (2003) Strategies of causal assessment in comparative historical analysis. In: Mahoney, J. & Rueschemeyer, D. (eds.), Comparative Historical Analysis in the Social Sciences. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp. 337—72.
Ragin, C. C. (1987) The Comparative Method: Moving Beyond Qualitative and Quantitative Strategies. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.