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Conceptual Translations in Comparative Study. A Review Article

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 June 2009

John T. Flint
Affiliation:
The State University of New YorkBinghamton

Abstract

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Type
Methods of Comparison
Copyright
Copyright © Society for the Comparative Study of Society and History 1976

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References

1 Moore, Barrington Jr, Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy (Boston: Beacon Press, 1966);Google ScholarSwanson, Guy E., Religion and Regime (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1967).Google Scholar

2 Skocpol, Theda, “A Critical Review of Barrington Moore’s Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy,” Politics and Society, 4:1 (1973), pp. 134;CrossRefGoogle ScholarSomers, Robert H., “Applications of an Expanded Survey Research Model to Comparative Institutional Studies,” in Vallier, Ivan, ed., Comparative Methods in Sociology (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1971).Google Scholar

3 Swanson, Guy E., The Birth of the Gods (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1960).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Flint, John T., “A Handbook for Historical Sociologists,” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 10:4 (07 1968), pp. 492509.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

5 “Re-evaluating the Reformation: A Symposium,” The Journal of Interdisciplinary History,1:3 (Spring 1971), pp. 379446.Google Scholar

6 Goldstein, Leon J., “Ideals of Order: History and Sociology,” V. A. Howard, “On Sociological History: A Reply to Professor Goldstein”Google Scholar and rejoinder, Goldstein’s, “Social Science, Ontology and Explanation: Some Further Reflections,” all in Philosophy of Social Science, 4:4 (12. 1974), pp. 333–68.Google Scholar

7 Hill, Michael, The Religious Order: A Study of Virtuoso Religion and its Legitimation in the Nineteenth-Century Church of England (London: Heinemann Educational Books, 1973);Google Scholar also his excellent A Sociology of Religion (New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1973), where he provides a critical review of this typological tradition (see Chs. 3, 4).Google ScholarPubMed

8 Hall, David D., The Faithful Shepherd: A History of the New England Ministry in the Seventeenth Century (New York: Norton Library, 1974). I cannot pretend to an adequate grasp of this burgeoning literature.Google Scholar

9 Pope, Robert G., “New England Versus the New England Mind: The Myth of Declension,” Journal of Social History, 3:2 (Winter 19691970), pp. 95108.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

10 Semmel, Bernard, The Methodist Revolution (London: Heineman, 1973).Google Scholar

11 Critiques, rejoinders and reviews of both abound. For the most recent synopses of these which I have seen, Moore, Robert, Pit-Men, Preachers and Politics: The Effects of Methodism in a Durham Mining Community (London, New York: Cambridge University Press, 1974), pp. 119.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For the most lucid single explication of the Halévy Thesis and the later disputations see Hill, , A Sociology of Religion,Google Scholar Ch. 9. Finally, Itzkin, Elissa S., “The Halevy Thesis—A Working Hypothesis? English Revivalism: Antidote for Revolution and Radicalism, 1789–1815,Church History, 44:1 (03 1975), pp. 4756. She includes Semmel's work in her argument.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

12 Hammond, Phillip E., “The Migrating Sect: An Illustration from Early Norwegian Immigration,” Social Forces, 41:3 (03 1963), pp. 275–83;CrossRefGoogle ScholarTavuchis, Nicholas, Pastors and Immigrants (The Hague: Nijhoff, 1963);CrossRefGoogle ScholarVecoli, Rudolph J., “Prelates and Peasants: Italian Immigrants and the Catholic Church,” Journal of Social History, 2:3 (Spring 1969), pp. 217–68.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Hall, , op. cit., p. ix.Google Scholar

14 Ibid., p. x; Mead, Sidney E., “The Rise of the Evangelical Conception of the Ministry in America: 1607–1850” in Niebuhr, H. Richard and Williams, Daniel D., eds., The Ministry in Historical Perspective (New York: Harper and Brothers, 1956). Two or three chapters in this collection would lend themselves rather easily to a conceptual translation into the language of historical role analysis.Google Scholar

15 Hall, , op. cit., p. xi, emphasis and numbers added.Google Scholar

16 Ibid., p. xi.

17 Reynolds, Paul Davidson, A Primer in Theory Construction (Indianapolis and New York: The Bobbs-Merrill Co., 1971), pp. 97107. I do not mean this in a formal sense, but the elements, if conceptually translated more fully, might be there.Google Scholar

18 Hall, , op. cit., pp. 6671; 8892; 130–5.Google Scholar

19 Ibid., p. 180.

20 Niebuhr, and Williams, , op. cit.,Google Scholar as a resource, see note 14.I have tried to spell out the logic of historical role analysis elsewhere: see Flint, John T., “Historical Role Analysis in the Study of Secularization: The Laity/Clergy Ratio in Norway 1800–1950,” Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, 7:2 (Fall 1968), pp. 272–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar For a more extended example of this procedure, see Flint, John T., “The Secularization of Norwegian Society (from Pagan period to late 18th-Century Lutheran Rationalism),” Comparative Studies in Society and History, 6:3 (04 1964), pp. 325–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

21 For some examples, Hadden, Jeffrey K., The Gathering Storm in the Churches: The Widening Gap Between Clergy and Laymen (New York: Doubleday, 1969).Google ScholarJud, Gerald J., et al. , Ex-Pastors: Why Men Leave the Parish Ministry (Philadelphia: Pilgrim Press, 1970).Google Scholar

22 Hill, , A Sociology of Religion, p. 183. “ The Halevy Thesis’ is in many respects the political corollary, applied in a more restricted historical and geographic context, of the broader thesis put forward by Weber and there are some interesting parallels between the two.”Google Scholar

23 Semmel, , op. cit., pp. 1822.Google Scholar

24 Ibid., p. vii.

25 Ibid., p. 3.

26 Ibid., pp. 4–5.

27 Without doing proper justice to the complexity of his effort, the “ponge constructs” derived from this polemical process enter into several chapter titles, e.g., “ ‘Speculative’ Antinomianism,” “ ‘Practical’ Antinomianism,” “Evangelical Arminianism,” and “Practical Arminianism.”

28 Ibid., p. 6.

29 Thompson, E. P., The Making of the English Working Class (New York: Vintage Books, 1963).Google Scholar For the controversies surrounding Thompson’s description and interpretation of Methodist influence regionally and by social strata, see Moore, , op. cit., pp. 811;Google ScholarHill, , A Sociology of Religion, pp. 193–9. Semmel agrees with Hill in asserting that Thompson confirms the Halevy Thesis, c.f. p. 199, note 2.Google Scholar

30 Semmel, , op. cit., Chs. 5, 6.Google Scholar

31 Eisenstadt, S. N., The Protestant Ethic and Modernization: A Comparative View (New York: Basic Books, 1968). A condensed version of Semmel’s argument might well have been included in this collection.Google Scholar

32 Flint, John T., State, Church and Laity in Norwegian Society: A Typological Study of Institutional Change (unpublished Doctoral Dissertation, University of Wisconsin, 1957), pp. 279350;Google ScholarHovde, B. J., The Scandinavian Countries, 1720–1865: The Rise of the Middle Classes (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1948), Vol. I, Ch. IX; Vol. II, Ch. XIII.Google Scholar

33 Wilson, Bryan R., Religions Sects (New York, Toronto: World University Library, McGraw-Hill, 1970).Google Scholar For a particularly fine review and development of this typological tradition, see Yinger’s, J. Milton work, The Scientific Study of Religion (New York: Macmillan, 1970), Ch. 13.Google Scholar

34 Wilson, Bryan R., Magic and the Millennium: A Sociological Study of Religious Movements of Protest among Tribal and Third World Peoples (New York: Harper and Row, 1973).Google Scholar

35 Smith, Donald E., Religion and Political Development (Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1970);Google ScholarVallier, Ivan, Catholicism, Social Control and Modernization in Latin America (Englewood Cliffs, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 1970).Google Scholar

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37 Hill, , Religious Order, Chs. 2, 3.Google Scholar

38 Ibid., p. 2.

39 Ibid., p. 88.

40 Ibid., Ch. 4; Hill, , A Sociology of Religion, Chs. 7, 8.Google Scholar

41 Hill, , Religious Order, pp. 107–12.Google Scholar

42 Cohn, Norman, The Pursuit of the Millennium, rev. and expanded ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1973).Google Scholar

43 See, for example, Comparative Studies in Society and History, 3:4 (07 1961).Google Scholar

44 Hall, , op. cit.; see note 14.Google Scholar