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Detecting and describing intergenerational ambivalence in historical populations is a challenge because historians are dependent, for the most part, upon the evidence that has survived, rather than on evidence elicited by researchers from participants. In this respect, the distant past is more problematic than the recent past, of course; and studies of recent (but past) generations have been able successfully to integrate documentary, statistical, and interview material (Hareven, 1982; Macfarlane, 1977). Still, such studies cover only a short stretch of past time. The purpose of this essay is to review research on family history dealing with the past three or four centuries in order to see how the subject of intergenerational ambivalence has been dealt with, if at all, and how it might need to be incorporated into historical thinking when certain kinds of situations come under scrutiny.

A number of international relations' mid-level theories about violence are inadequate to the task of explaining societal and group violence. Many of these theories, for example, confuse causality with correlation, or breakdown and then cannot explain why they fail. Building upon the theories of criminologist Lonnie Athens, both in their particulars and in their spirit of practical solution rather than entrenched debate, this article considers whether those theories of individual violence are suitable for extrapolation to the societal level. It explores some problems with the current theories in international relations, and reviews the theoretical foundations offered by Athens and some others, who have also laid strong groundwork for scaling Athens' theories to the societal level by considering their applications to communities. A number of those theories, although based upon analyses of individual dangerous violent criminals, lend themselves particularly well to groups and communities, suggesting strong suitability of scaling to these levels, and to the societal one as well. Also considering critiques of Athens' and Rhodes' work, this article ultimately argues that Athens' theories of violence, and those building upon them, constitute a strong foundation for theories of violence in international relations that relate to the societal scale.

The recent “reverse”¹ discrimination decisions by the Supreme Court involving the admissions decision-making policies at the University of Michigan² illustrate the underlying need for private and public entities to justify the need to reach or maintain diversity within an organization. Clearly, the equality of the decision-making methodology and criteria used to obtain and maintain diversity was an issue, but perhaps more pressing was the question of whether such programs were necessary. The issue of parity is at the very center of these cases. If the normal admissions process would have resulted in obtaining the predicted number of minority admissions then there may no longer be a need for such programs. While the university cases have been most publicized recently, matters involving affirmative action plans and governmental programs to enhance diversity (such as minority contractor set-asides) face similar questions of parity.

To reexamine the Weber Thesis pertaining to the relationship between ascetic Protestantism – especially Calvinism – and modern capitalism, as between an economic “spirit” and an economic “structure,” in which the first is assumed to be the explanatory factor and the second the dependent variable.

The chapter provides an attempt to combine theoretical-empirical and comparative-historical approaches to integrate theory with evidence supplied by societal comparisons and historically specific cases.

The chapter identifies the general sociological core of the Weber Thesis as a classic endeavor in economic sociology (and thus substantive sociological theory) and separates it from its particular historical dimension in the form of an empirical generalization from history. I argue that such a distinction helps to better understand the puzzling double “fate” of the Weber Thesis in social science, its status of a model in economic sociology and substantive sociological theory, on the one hand, and its frequent rejection in history and historical economics, on the other. The sociological core of the Thesis, postulating that religion, ideology, and culture generally deeply impact economy, has proved to be more valid, enduring, and even paradigmatic, as in economic sociology, than its historical component establishing a special causal linkage between Calvinism and other types of ascetic Protestantism and the “spirit” and “structure” of modern capitalism in Western society at a specific point in history.

In addition to the two cases deviating from the Weber Thesis considered here, it is necessary to investigate and identify the validity of the Thesis with regard to concrete historical and empirical instances.

The chapter provides the first effort to systematically analyze and distinguish between the sociological core and the historical components of the Weber Thesis as distinct yet intertwined components.

This paper discusses data-collection strategies that use digitized historical newspaper archives to study social conflicts and social movements from a global and historical perspective focusing on nationalist movements. I present an analysis of State-Seeking Nationalist Movements (SSNMs) dataset I, which includes news articles reporting on state-seeking activities throughout the world from 1804 to 2013 using the New York Times and the Guardian/Observer. In discussing this new source of data and its relative value, I explain the various benefits and challenges involved with using digitized historical newspaper archives for world-historical analysis of social movements. I also introduce strategies that can be used to detect and minimize some potential sources of bias. I demonstrate the utility of the strategies introduced in this paper by assessing the reliability of the SSNM dataset I and by comparing it to alternative datasets. The analysis presented in the paper also compares the labor-intensive manual data-coding strategies to automated approaches. In doing so, it explains why labor-intensive manual coding strategies will continue to be an invaluable tool for world-historical sociologists in a world of big data.

How do we make sense of urban life in the past? What do we do when we study urban history, and to what extent do our methods fully capture the complexities of historical city living? These are crucial questions for any scholar interested in the historical dimensions of urban experience. Notwithstanding the interest of most urban historians in the relationship between the physical form of urban space and its experience by inhabitants and visitors, very few scholars have written histories that systematically integrate these two areas of inquiry. In this chapter, we argue that such research requires a method and an accompanying tool that can analyze historical urban life in a more integrated, holistic way. We propose a way forward by introducing the Time Machine platform as a scalable data visualization and analysis tool for researching everyday urban experience across space and time. To illustrate the potential we focus on a case study: the area of the Bloemstraat in early modern Amsterdam. Unpacking a section of the Bloemstraat, house by house and room by room, we show how the Time Machine forms an instrument to connect spatial layouts to the arrangement of objects and to the practical and social use of the space by the inhabitants and visitors. We also sketch how this tool illuminates more dynamic spatial and temporal practices such as how people, goods, and activities are connected to locations in the wider city and beyond.

To demonstrate that, at its core, Marx’s critical theory is not a critique of a mode of class exploitation that distorts modernity, undertaken from a standpoint that affirms labor, but rather one that uncovers and analyzes a unique form of social mediation and domination that structures modernity itself as a historically specific form of social life.

Critical reconstruction, interpretation, and application of Marx’s critique of political economy as developed in the Grundrisse and Capital, to the massive global transformations of the past four decades.

Marx’s critical analysis is well-suited to function as the foundation for a theory that systematically illuminates modern society in the 21st century. It is more conducive to grasping the contemporary world than traditional Marxism or most versions of post-Marxism.

The historical transformations of the past century suggest the central significance of a critique of capitalism for an adequate critical theory today. Such a critique must be capable of grasping the core of a social formation that is generative of a peculiar dynamic of identity and non-identity, of pointing beyond itself while reasserting itself. It indicates that the realization of the possibility of the abolition of proletarian labor is a necessary response to a deep structural crisis of capitalism.

Recurrent “methodological disputes” have haunted the social sciences, again and again polarizing the case-oriented quest for specification against the natural science inspired quest for general, high-level theory. As a consequence, too much social science research is captured in either one of two vicious circles: ever more highly specified monographic case studies or preoccupation with periodically shifting general theories. The interaction of these two circles increases the risk of widespread amnesia: as social scientists are either bogged down in a stream of cases or flying high with the most recent grand (meta-)theories, social science forgets the actual empirical knowledge that is being meticulously created, maintained and revised in the daily handicraft carried out by a growing mass of researchers.