NARRATIVE ANALYSIS AND THE NEW HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY

While many scholars assert the importance of the narrative mode in historical inquiry, none have demonstrated how it is used specifically to analyze historical events and social action in processual, action-oriented ways. In this essay, we examine recent research on capital-state relations and urban development to demonstrate how political sociologists and urban sociologists are using narrative mode to examine the interconnectedness of human agency and social structure and the temporality of historical events in processual ways. We find that this newest research is utilizing narrative to generate new meanings of causality and to redefine the role of theory and explanation. We conclude by considering the implications of these developments for the future of sociology.

[1]  Andrew Abbott,et al.  From Causes to Events , 1992 .

[2]  Mark S. Mizruchi,et al.  Cohesion, Structural Equivalence, and Similarity of Behavior: An Approach to the Study of Corporate Political Power , 1990 .

[3]  P. Hall.  The Consequences of Qualitative Analysis for Sociological Theory: Beyond the Microlevel , 1995 .

[4]  C. Offe,et al.  Contradictions of the Welfare State , 1985 .

[5]  M. Gottdiener.  IDEOLOGY, FOUNDATIONALISM, AND SOCIOLOGICAL THEORY , 1993 .

[6]  Edgar Kiser,et al.  The Role of General Theory in Comparative-Historical Sociology , 1991, American Journal of Sociology.

[7]  S. Sassen.  Economic Restructuring and the American City , 1990 .

[8]  H. Prechel.  Steel and the State: Industry Politics and Business Policy Formation, 1940-1989 , 1990 .

[9]  R. Aminzade,et al.  Historical Sociology and Time , 1992 .

[10]  B. Agger.  Derrida for Sociology? A Comment on Fuchs and Ward , 1994 .

[11]  J. Quadagno,et al.  Have Historical Sociologists Forsaken Theory? , 1992 .

[12]  E. Shils,et al.  The Methodology Of The Social Sciences , 1949 .

[13]  M. Weber.  Science as a Vocation , 1919 .

[14]  Charles Tilly,et al.  As sociology meets history , 1983 .

[15]  J. Feagin,et al.  Free Enterprise City: Houston in Political and Economic Perspective , 1988 .

[16]  M. Maynes.  Autobiography and Class Formation in Nineteenth-Century Europe: Methodological Considerations , 1992, Social Science History.

[17]  Reflections on the Role of Social Narratives in Working-Class Formation: Narrative Theory in the Social Sciences , 1992 .

[18]  P. Burke,et al.  History and Social Theory , 1994 .

[19]  Joel Smith.  A Methodology for Twenty-First Century Sociology , 1991 .

[20]  Jonathan H. Turner,et al.  Classical sociological theory : a positivist's perspective , 1993 .

[21]  Mark D. Gottdiener.  The Decline of Urban Politics: Political Theory and the Crisis of the Local State , 1987 .

[22]  L. Griffin.  Temporality, Events, and Explanation in Historical Sociology , 1992 .

[23]  Joe R. Feagin,et al.  Building American Cities: The Urban Real Estate Game , 1990 .

[24]  J. Feagin,et al.  The Paradigm Shift in Urban Sociology , 1988 .

[25]  T. Skocpol,et al.  The Politics of Social Policy in the United States , 1988, American Political Science Review.

[26]  N. Carroll.  Interpretation, History and Narrative , 1990 .

[27]  V. Burris,et al.  The Political Partisanship of American Business: A Study of Corporate Political Action Committees , 1987 .

[28]  D. Bartelt.  CHAPTER 4: Housing the "Underclass" , 1993 .

[29]  J. Kasarda.  STRUCTURAL FACTORS AFFECTING THE LOCATION AND TIMING OF URBAN UNDERCLASS GROWTH , 1990 .

[30]  David R. Maines,et al.  Narrative's Moment and Sociology's Phenomena: Toward a Narrative Sociology , 1993 .

[31]  Gordon H. Chang.  History and Postmodernism , 1995 .

[32]  R. Beauregard.  Voices of Decline: The Postwar Fate of Us Cities , 1993 .

[33]  William Julius Wilson,et al.  The Cost of Racial and Class Exclusion in the Inner City , 1989 .

[34]  R. Miliband,et al.  The state in capitalist society , 1969 .

[35]  R. Collins.  Prediction in Macrosociology: The Case of the Soviet Collapse , 1995, American Journal of Sociology.

[36]  M. Katovich,et al.  Postmodern Thought in Symbolic Interaction: Reconstructing Social Inquiry in Light of Late-Modern Concerns , 1993 .

[37]  P. Joyce.  HISTORY AND POST-MODERNISM , 1991 .

[38]  H. Molotch,et al.  Urban Fortunes: The Political Economy of Place , 1987 .

[39]  Patrick J. Akard.  Corporate Mobilization and Political Power: The Transformation of U.S. Economic Policy in the 1970s , 1992 .

[40]  Stanley Lieberson,et al.  Small N's and Big Conclusions: An Examination of the Reasoning in Comparative Studies Based on a Small Number of Cases , 1991 .

[41]  Steven Watts.  The Idiocy of American Studies: Poststructuralism, Language, and Politics in the Age of Self-Fulfilment , 1991 .

[42]  W. Wilson.  The truly disadvantaged : the inner city, the underclass, and public policy , 1988 .

[43]  John R Hall.  Epistemology and Sociohistorical Inquiry , 1990 .

[44]  B. Agger.  Critical Theory, Poststructuralism, Postmodernism: Their Sociological Relevance , 1991 .

[45]  P. Roth.  How Narratives Explain , 1989 .

[46]  Gary Gerstle,et al.  The Power of culture : critical essays in American history , 1994 .

[47]  L. Griffin.  Narrative, Event-Structure Analysis, and Causal Interpretation in Historical Sociology , 1993, American Journal of Sociology.

[48]  Stuart Hall,et al.  State, Power, Socialism , 1978 .

[49]  N. Denzin.  Postmodern Social Theory , 1986 .

[50]  Wafburm.  RESEARCH IN POLITICAL SOCIOLOGY , 1995 .

[51]  C. Mills.  The Sociological Imagination , 1959 .

[52]  A. Orloff.  The Political Origins of America’s Belated Welfare State , 1988 .

[53]  Howard S. Becker,et al.  “Foi Por Acaso”: Conceptualizing Coincidence , 1994 .

[54]  Lynn Hunt,et al.  Telling the Truth about History , 1995 .

[55]  Domination and the Arts of Resistance , 1991 .

[56]  James A. Davis,et al.  What's wrong with sociology? , 1994 .

[57]  Douglas S. Massey,et al.  Migration segregation and the geographic concentration of poverty. , 1994 .

[58]  H. Prechel,et al.  Economic Crisis and the Centralization of Control Over the Managerial Process: Corporate Restructuring and Neo-Fordist Decision-Making , 1994 .

[59]  M. Gottdiener.  The social production of urban space , 1987 .

[60]  A. Kirby,et al.  In Search of the Corpse , 1990 .

[61]  K. Bollen,et al.  MACROCOMPARATIVE RESEARCH METHODS , 1993 .

[62]  A Reply to Steven Watts's "Idiocy" , 1992 .

[63]  D. Kellner,et al.  Postmodern Theory: Critical Interrogations , 1991 .

[64]  L. Mead,et al.  The New Politics of Poverty: The Nonworking Poor in America. , 1993 .

[65]  David N. Wagner.  Checkerboard Square: Culture And Resistance In A Homeless Community , 1993 .

[66]  M. Allen,et al.  Class Hegemony and Political Finance: Presidential Campaign Contributions of Wealthy Capitalist Families , 1989 .

[67]  Andrew Abbott,et al.  History and Sociology: The Lost Synthesis , 1991, Social Science History.

[68]  G. Hooks.  Regional Processes in the Hegemonic Nation: Political, Economic, and Military Influences on the Use of Geographic Space , 1994 .

[69]  A. Frank.  The Rhetoric of Self-Change: Illness Experience as Narrative , 1993 .

[70]  A. Orum.  City-Building in America , 1997 .

[71]  J. Goldthorpe.  The Uses of History in Sociology : Reflections on some Recent Tendencies , 1991 .

[72]  H. Silver,et al.  National Conceptions of the New Urban Poverty: Social Structural Change in Britain, France and the United States , 1993 .

[73]  A. Orum.  Apprehending the City , 1991 .

[75]  Charles Tilly,et al.  Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons , 1986 .

[76]  Charles C. Ragin,et al.  What Is a Case?: Exploring the Foundations of Social Inquiry , 1992 .

[77]  J. Garber.  Overcoming Ambivalence about American Cities , 1993 .

[78]  TOWARD AN ANTIFOUNDATIONAL YET RELEVANT SOCIOLOGY , 1994 .

[79]  D. Massey.  American Apartheid: Segregation and the Making of the Underclass , 1993 .

[80]  Margaret R. Somers.  Narrativity, Narrative Identity, and Social Action: Rethinking English Working-Class Formation , 1992 .

[81]  M. Gottdiener.  OH NO! NOT ANOTHER DICHOTOMY: , 1994 .

[82]  Norman I. Fainstein.  Race, Class and Segregation: Discourses about African Americans* , 1993 .

[83]  Andrew Abbott,et al.  Conceptions of Time and Events in Social Science Methods: Causal and Narrative Approaches , 1990 .

[84]  L. Hunt.  The New Cultural History , 1989, History and Identity.

[85]  S. Seidman.  The End of Sociological Theory: The Postmodern Hope , 1991 .

[86]  David Wilson.  Everyday Life, Spatiality and Inner City Disinvestment in a US City , 1993 .

[87]  Robert J. Antonio.  Postmodern Storytelling Versus Pragmatic Truth-Seeking: The Discursive Bases of Social Theory* , 1991 .

[88]  William H. Frey,et al.  The New Urban Revival in the United States , 1993 .

[89]  T. Skocpol,et al.  The Uses of Comparative History in Macrosocial Inquiry , 1980, Comparative Studies in Society and History.

[90]  G. Hooks.  The weakness of strong theories: the U.S. State's dominance of the World War II investment process , 1993 .

[91]  Dennis Smith.  The rise of historical sociology , 1993 .

[92]  T. Skocpol,et al.  Protecting soldiers and mothers : the political origins of social policy in the United States , 1993 .

[93]  J. Kasarda,et al.  Contemporary Urban Ecology , 1977 .

[94]  S. Fuchs,et al.  What is Deconstruction, and Where and When Does it Take Place? Making Facts in Science, Building Cases in Law , 1994 .

[95]  H. White,et al.  The content of the form: narrative discourse and historical representation , 1987 .

[96]  G. Hooks.  The Rise of the Pentagon and U.S. State Building: The Defense Program as Industrial Policy , 1990, American Journal of Sociology.

[97]  John D. Kasarda,et al.  Urban Industrial Transition and the Underclass , 1989 .

[98]  C. Murray,et al.  Losing Ground: American Social Policy, 1950-1980 , 1984 .

[99]  Laurel D. Graham.  CRITICAL BIOGRAPHY WITHOUT SUBJECTS AND OBJECTS: An Encounter With Dr. Lillian Moller Gilbreth , 1994 .