History of CSR

Since its inception in 1978, ten volumes of Comparative Social Research were published under the editorship of Richard Tomasson (University of New Mexico), and an additional four volumes followed under the editorship of Craig Calhoun (then at University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill). From 1995 the editorship has crossed the Atlantic, being the shared responsibility of the Department of Sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway, and the Institute for Social Research, an independent research foundation, also located in Oslo.

The first volume of this annual was named Comparative Studies in Sociology, but the present name, Comparative Social Research, appeared already on its second volume (1979). The change indicated a wish to promote interdisciplinary research. Normally, this would imply research combining two or more disciplines of social science, but social science should be understood in a broad sense, including for instance geography and history too. The interdisciplinary scope could be even broader, implying collaboration between social sciences and the humanities or natural sciences. The editors of the annual, however, have always been — and continue to be – sociologists.

While the first volumes consisted of collections of papers grouped according to ad hoc categories, thematic issues have been the rule since the early 1980s. The present editors will maintain both the commitment to a broad interdisciplinary approach, and the preference for thematic issues.

In his introduction to Volume 1 (1978) of Comparative Social Research, Richard Tomasson made a number of principal statements of relevance to editorial policies. The present editors have no major disagreements with these statements. Consequently, what follows should be considered as a recapitulation, with a few updating remarks added.

The 1978 introduction pointed out that comparative sociology is not a field among others. It should rather be seen as the essense, «the warp and woof of the approaches of all the substantive areas of sociology». This statement can be generalized to cover all of social research.

Furthermore, Tomasson distinguished between degrees of «comparativeness» in social research. Comparative Social Research would be devoted to strictly comparative studies which compare at least two cases, with equal attention to all the cases studied. Many studies claiming to be comparative are however only comparative in a looser sense: their main attention is to one case only, while other cases are referred to in a cursory way in order to establish a comparative context. If even this cursory reference is lacking, one may at the best find «material for comparative study». The latter type articles would only exceptionally be published in Comparative Social Research.

In a brief historical overview, Tomasson noted that the comparative approach can be found already in Aristotle’s Politics. There is then a comparative tradition from the early modern precursors of social science (Machiavelli, Bodin, Montesquieu, Vico, Smith), to the pioneers of modern social science (Tocqueville, Marx, Weber, Durkheim). This focus on comparison, however, has since the interwar period gradually been displaced — as Stein Rokkan pointed out — by a tradition of «national empiricism». The launching of Comparative Social Research, then, was one part of a broader movement to counter the consequences of this detour, reaching back to the rich comparative traditions of the social science pioneers, without, however, neglecting the technical and methodological advances of the «nationalist» phase.

Considering certain famous contributions, that is, by scholars such as Reinhard Bendix, Stein Rokkan, Barrington Moore jr. (to mention just a few) in the 1950s and 1960s, one might get the impression that the strictly comparative approach was again gaining strength within social science. The 1978 introduction, however, provided some rough empirical indicators that lead the editor to doubt if this was really so. Counting the number of strictly comparative papers presented at the 1956, 1966 and 1976 annual meetings of the American Sociological Association (ASA), he found that there had in fact been a slight decline of such papers between the mid 50s and the mid 70s. An even cruder update indicates that there had not been substantial improvement by 1995.[1] This test relates only to the ASA annual meetings, however, not to the other social sciences, and there are of course many other channels of publication that are not covered.[2]

It should also be noted that Tomasson in 1978 scanned the content of Western European journals, finding an even more depressing state of affairs. This lead him to conclude that «Western European sociology has not moved as far out of the stage of national empiricism as even the modest moves of North American sociology». With its diverse national states and its highly developed academic culture, however, Europe should be a major area for comparative studies. There are some indications that things have been improving since Tomasson made his diagnosis.[3]

In the last part of his introduction, Tomasson chose to list four points of criticism that could be leveled against the practice of comparative social science in the late 1970s. He first noted an unfortunate bias towards pure methodological discussions at the expense of substantial studies. Secondly, he noted deficiencies in sociological curricula and education, leaving sociologists with «trained incapacity» to do comparative studies. Thirdly, he held that existing data sources could be better utilized, while sociologists generally tended to go for collection of new data. Finally, he regretted the sociologists’ habit of politicizing many of their research topics.

We shall not engage in a discussion of whether these points of criticism apply to social science more generally and whether they are still valid today. A very cursory judgement is that there has been some improvement on all four counts. In particular, we have witnessed in the 1980s and 1990s a number of highly interesting methodological discussions that have pushed comparative social science to a higher level of methodological sophistication. These are studies such as Skocpol and Somers’ «The uses of comparative history in macrosociological inquiry» (1980), Tilly’s Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons (1984), and Ragin’s The Comparative Method (1987). These authors, it should be noted, are also among the most prominent contributors of substantial studies in the comparative tradition.

These methodological improvements have influenced scholarly discussions through the last decade. While earlier, the variable-oriented approach dominated comparative research, it has recently been suggested that the case-oriented approach is another distinct branch of social science. Volume 16 of Comparative Social Research is devoted to further discussions of the questions that this new methodological debate has brought up.

As for the education of sociologists, it seems clear that historical sociology has, through the 1970s and 1980s, emerged as a main current in sociology. Although it certainly plays a more important role in curricula now, it should be noted that not all of historical sociology is comparative. It is still the case that if at least two cases are to be treated with equal attention, research becomes more time-consuming and costly, and this may be one reason why enthusiasm for the comparative approach may not always be followed up in practical research, neither at the dissertation level nor at other levels.

As for the use of data sources, technological change has greatly facilitated access to various data sources, and it would seem that there has been a corresponding shift among sociologists as well as other social scientists towards existing data-bases. This should benefit comparative research, as collection of new data becomes quite time-consuming if one intends to cover many cases.

The question of politization, finally, has received less attention in the 1980s and 1990s. The reason is, most likely, that the student revolt is now history. While sociology still maintains a keen interest in social movements, there is no longer a social movement evolving on the campuses, and this probably relieves the polarizing pressures that were felt in all the social sciences through the 1970s.

In conclusion, it would seem that the conditions for strictly comparative studies are better at the turn of the century than when this annual journal was launched. But it also seems that more pressure is needed in order to convince scholars of the value of chosing more than one case. The editors hope that Comparative Social Research contributes its share of this pressure.

Notes

[1] The number of ASA-papers increased from about 200 in 1956 to 674 in 1976. At the 1995 ASA Annual Meeting, about 2500 papers were presented. We have had no time to calculate Tomasson’s indicators for the 1995 material. But let us just mention the following «back of a napkin»-calculation: The 1995 ASA meeting was organised in 474 sections. According to the Topics Index of the programme, 29 sessions included papers classified as «Comparative Sociology/Macrosociology». This was about 6 percent of all the sessions. Only half of these sessions, however, included comparative papers, the rests comprised non-comparative types of macrosociology. Thus, we are down to 3 percent, while in 1976, Tomasson found a share of 4 percent strictly comparative papers.

[2] Another rough indication of the growth of comparative studies may be gained by considering journals specialising in such studies. Counting the number of social science journals with «comparative» included in the title, Tomasson found 12 by 1978. Using Ulrichs International Periodical Directory, we get more accurate information. Constructing a list of journals in a strict sense, we omit newsletters, institute series, occasional paper series, monograph series, and proceedings. We also exlude a quite large number of comparative law publications, as well as comparative statistics sources. We count only journals that were still active by 1994. Social science is Schedule 300 in the Dewey Decimal Classification system. In this category, Tomasson had found 10, but there were actually by 1978 already existing 23 journals with a comparative orientation. Outside the Dewey 300 category, Tomasson had found 2, while there were 5 by 1978, according to the Ulrichs directory. In the period 1978-94, another 13 comparative journals were added in the Dewey Cateorgy 300, and at least 10 in other groups. Broken down on decades, the growth of comparative journals in the Dewey 300 category was as follows: 3 in the 1950s, 10 in the 1960s, 13 in the 1970s, 5 in the 1980s, and 4 in 1990-94. This indicates that the 1970s was the most expansive period. 23 comparative journals founded before 1978 are still active, and there has been an addition of 13 since then. As for journals that seems to be (at least partly) relevant to social science, but not classified in the Dewey 300 category, there has been an addition of 10 to the 5 that existed before 1978. The existence of 51 comparative social science journals today at least shows that there is a wide variety of publication channels for comparative work.

[3] A rough count of the articles in European Sociological Review, since its start in 1985 and through to 1994, shows that 25 percent (30 out of 120 articles) were strictly comparative. It should be noted, however, that this journal (cf. «Editorial», Vol. 1, No. 1, May 1985, p. 1) has an explicit policy of encouraging cross national comparative work.