Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-rdxmf Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-25T07:16:48.916Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Remaking Power and Politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  04 January 2016

Ann Shola Orloff
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

I contend that we should remake conceptions of power and politics, taking off from the project of remaking “modernity.” Here, I perform a similar move for “power and politics,” core concepts for history and the human sciences, building on the foundational work of the 1970s and 1980s and bringing in key elements of institutionalist and culturalist critiques. The theories of the early days of social science history were usually materialist, and the character of state policies and political structures was understood to reflect the “balance of class forces,” interests to flow from class position, and power to work in a juridical vein, as “power over.” By the 1980s these common understandings were widely criticized. There were new emphases on the multiplicity of identities and structures of inequality, new questions about the adequacy of materialist accounts of politics. Dissatisfactions were also stimulated by “real-world” developments. However, we see a parting of the ways when it came to addressing these new political conditions and analytic challenges. Moves to “bring the state and other political institutions back in” have been focused on politics, while the scholars taking the various cultural turns have focused on power. The conceptualizations of power and politics have been sundered along with the scholarly communities deploying them. I address both communities and argue for new ways of understanding power and politics emerging from renewed encounters between institutionalist and culturalist analyses. Such encounters and the conceptual work that they will produce can help us reforge a productive alliance between history and the social sciences.

Type
Presidential Address
Information
Social Science History , Volume 36 , Issue 1 , Spring 2012 , pp. 1 - 21
Copyright
Copyright © Social Science History Association 2012 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Adams, J. (1994) “The familial state: Elite family practices and state-making in the early modern Netherlands.” Theory and Society 23 (4): 505–39.Google Scholar
Adams, J. (1999) “Culture in rational-choice theories of state formation,” in Steinmetz, G. (ed.) State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press: 98–122.Google Scholar
Adams, J. (2005) The Familial State: Ruling Families and Merchant Capitalism in Early Modern Europe. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Adams, J. (2011) “1-800-how-am-I-driving? Agency in social science history.” Social Science History 35 (1): 1–17.Google Scholar
Adams, J.Clemens, E.Orloff, A. S., eds. (2005) Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Adams, J.Padamsee, T. (2001) “Signs and regimes: Rereading feminist work on welfare states.” Social Politics 8 (1): 1–23.Google Scholar
Adut, A. (2010) “Interest, collusion, and alignment: A critical evaluation of Ruling Oneself Out.” Social Science History 34 (1): 83–89.Google Scholar
Althusser, L. (1970) For Marx, trans. Brewster, Ben. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Aunesluoma, J.Kettunen, P., eds. (2008) The Cold War and the Politics of History. Helsinki: Edita.Google Scholar
Bannerji, H. (2001) Inventing Subjects: Studies in Colonialism, Patriarchy, and Colonialism. London: Anthem.Google Scholar
Beauvoir, S. de (1952) The Second Sex, ed. and trans. Parshley, H. M.. New York: Knopf.Google Scholar
Béland, D. (2010) What Is Social Policy? Understanding the Welfare State. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Bellingham, B.Mathis, M. P. (1994) “Race, citizenship, and the biopolitics of the maternalist welfare state: ‘Traditional’ midwifery in the American South under the Sheppard-Towner Act, 1921–29.” Social Politics 1 (2): 157–89.Google Scholar
Benjamin, W. (1969) “Theses on the philosophy of history,” trans. Zohn, H., in Arendt, H. (ed.) llluminations. New York: Schocken: 253–64. Quotation taken from “Walter Benjamin,” en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Walter_Benjamin (accessed October 27, 2011).Google Scholar
Biernacki, R. (2000) “Language and the shift from signs to practices in cultural inquiry.” History and Theory 39 (3): 289–310.Google Scholar
Biernacki, R. (2005) “The action turn? Comparative-historical inquiry beyond the classical models of conduct,” in Adams, J.Clemens, E.Orloff, A. S. (eds.) Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 75–91.Google Scholar
Boris, E. (1995) “The racialized gender state: Constructions of citizenship in the United States.” Social Politics 2 (2): 160–80.Google Scholar
Butler, J. (1997) The Psychic Life of Power: Theories in Subjection. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Calhoun, C. (2010) “Welcoming remarks.” Social Science History 34 (3): 385–88.Google Scholar
Canning, K. (2006) Gender History in Practice: Historical Perspectives on Bodies, Class, and Citizenship. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1987) Gender and Power. Cambridge: Polity.Google Scholar
Connell, R. W. (1995) Masculinities. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Dirks, N. B.Eley, G.Ortner, S. B., eds. (1993) Culture/Power/History: A Reader in Contemporary Social Theory. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Eley, G. (2005) A Crooked Line: From Cultural History to the History of Society. Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press.Google Scholar
Ermakoff, I. (2008) Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Ermakoff, I. (2010) “Motives and alignments: Response to Kimeldorf’s, Adut’s, and Hall’s comments on Ruling Oneself Out.” Social Science History 34 (1): 97–109.Google Scholar
Evans, P.Rueschemeyer, D.Skocpol, T., eds. (1985) Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Gal, S. (1994) “Gender in the post-socialist transition: The abortion debate in Hungary.” East European Politics and Societies 8 (2): 256–86.Google Scholar
Goodwin, J. (1997) Gender and the Politics of Welfare Reform: Mothers’ Pensions in Chicago, 1911–1929. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Gordon, L. (1994) Pitied but Not Entitled: Single Mothers and the History of Welfare, 1890–1935. New York: Free Press.Google Scholar
Gorski, P. (2003) The Disciplinary Revolution: Calvinism and the Rise of the State in Early Modern Europe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Hall, J. H. (2010) “Abdication, collective alignment, and the problem of directionality.” Social Science History 34 (1): 91–96.Google Scholar
Hanchard, M. (1998) Orpheus and Power: The Movimiento Negro of Rio de Janiero and São Paolo, Brazil, 1945–1988. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Hanchard, M. (2006) Party/Politics: Horizons in Black Political Thought. New York: Oxford University Press.Google Scholar
Haney, L. (2002) Inventing the Needy: Gender and the Politics of Welfare in Hungary. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Haney, L. (2010) Offending Women: Power, Punishment, and the Regulation of Desire. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Hobson, B. (1993) “Feminist strategies and gendered discourses in welfare states: Married women’s right to work in the United States and Sweden,” in Koven, S.Michel, S. (eds.) Mothers of a New World: Maternalist Politics and the Origins of Welfare States. New York: Routledge: 396–430.Google Scholar
Huber, E.Stephens, J. D. (2001) Development and Crisis of the Welfare State. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Jenson, J. (2009) “Lost in translation: The social investment perspective and gender equality.” Social Politics 16 (4): 446–83.Google Scholar
Joas, H. (1996) The Creativity of Action. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Katznelson, I. (1999) “Du Bois’s century.” Social Science History 23 (4): 459–74.Google Scholar
Katznelson, I. (2010) “On the practice of originality.” Social Science History 34 (3): 389–94.Google Scholar
Kestnbaum, M.Mann, E. S. (2004) “Arms and the man: War and hegemonic masculinity at the turn of the eighteenth century.” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the American Sociological Association, San Francisco, August 14.Google Scholar
Kimeldorf, H. (2010) “Social science as if history mattered: Reflections on Ruling Oneself Out.” Social Science History 34 (1): 75–81.Google Scholar
Korpi, W. (2000) “Faces of inequality: Gender, class, and patterns of inequalities in different types of welfare states.” Social Politics 7 (2): 127–91.Google Scholar
Korpi, W.Palme, J. (1998) “The paradox of redistribution and strategies of equality: Welfare state institutions, inequality, and poverty in the Western countries.” American Sociological Review 63 (5): 661–87.Google Scholar
Koven, S.Michel, S. (1990) “Womanly duties: Maternalist politics and the origins of welfare states in France, Germany, Great Britain, and the United States, 1880–1920.” American Historical Review 95 (4): 1076–1108.Google Scholar
Lake, M. (1994) “Between Old World ‘barbarism’ and Stone Age ‘primitivism’: The double difference of the white Australian feminist,” in Grieve, N.Burns, A. (eds.) Australian Women: New Feminist Perspectives. Melbourne: Oxford University Press: 80–91.Google Scholar
Loveman, M.Muniz, J. O. (2007) “How Puerto Rico became white: Boundary dynamics and intercensus racial reclassification.” American Sociological Review 72 (6): 915–39.Google Scholar
Mahoney, J.Thelen, K. (2010) Explaining Institutional Change: Ambiguity, Agency, and Power. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
Martin, I. W.Mehrota, A.Prasad, M., eds. (2009) The New Fiscal Sociology: Comparative and Historical Approaches to Taxation. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.Google Scholar
McLean, P. (2007) The Art of the Network: Strategic Interaction and Patronage in Renaissance Florence. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Mink, G. (1998) Welfare’s End. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Mittelstadt, J. (2005) From Welfare to Workfare: The Unintended Consequences of Liberal Reform. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press.Google Scholar
Morgan, K. (2006) Working Mothers and the Welfare State: Religion and the Politics of Work-Family Policies in Western Europe and the United States. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press.Google Scholar
Obeyesekere, G. (1992) The Apotheosis of Captain Cook: European Mythmaking in the Pacific. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.Google Scholar
Orloff, A. S. (2005) “Social provision and regulation: Theories of states, social policies, and modernity,” in Adams, J.Clemens, E.Orloff, A. S. (eds.) Remaking Modernity: Politics, History, and Sociology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press: 190–224.Google Scholar
Ortner, S. B. (1996) Making Gender: The Politics and Erotics of Culture. Boston: Beacon.Google Scholar
Ortner, S. B. (2006) Anthropology and Social Theory: Culture, Power, and the Acting Subject. Durham, NC: Duke University Press.Google Scholar
Padamsee, T.Adams, J. (2002) “Signs and regimes revisited.” Social Politics 9 (2): 187–202.Google Scholar
Palier, B. (2010) A Long Goodbye to Bismarck? The Politics of Welfare Reform in Continental Europe. Amsterdam: Amsterdam University Press.Google Scholar
Petersen, K.Lundqvist, Å., eds. (2010) In Experts We Trust: Knowledge, Experts, and the Nordic Model of Welfare. Odense: University of Southern Denmark Press.Google Scholar
Riley, D. (1988) “Am I That Name?”: Feminism and the Category of Woman in History. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.Google Scholar
Roberts, D. E. (1995) “Race, gender, and the value of mothers’ work.” Social Politics 2 (2): 195–207.Google Scholar
Rose, J. (1986) Sexuality in the Field of Vision. New York: Verso.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (1995) How “Natives” Think: About Captain Cook, for Example. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Sahlins, M. (2005) “Individual experience and cultural order,” in Spiegel, G. (ed.) Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn. New York: Routledge: 109–18.Google Scholar
Scott, J. C. (1990) Domination and the Arts of Resistance: Hidden Transcripts. New Haven, CT: Yale University Press.Google Scholar
Scott, J. W. (2010) “Remarks on the awarding of the Albert O. Hirschman Prize to Charles Tilly.” Social Science History 34 (3): 395–402.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. Jr. (1992) “A theory of structure: Duality, agency, and transformation.” American Journal of Sociology 98 (1): 1–29.Google Scholar
Sewell, W. H. Jr. (2005) Logics of History: Social Theory and Social Transformation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Skocpol, T. (1992) Protecting Soldiers and Mothers. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.Google Scholar
Spiegel, G. M., ed. (2005) Practicing History: New Directions in Historical Writing after the Linguistic Turn. New York: Routledge.Google Scholar
Steedman, C. (1986) Landscape for a Good Woman. London: Virago.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, G. (2005) “Return to empire: The new U.S. imperialism in comparative historical perspective.” Sociological Theory 23 (4): 339–67.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, G. (2007) The Devil’s Handwriting: Precoloniality and the German Colonial State in Qingdao, Samoa, and Southwest Africa. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar
Steinmetz, G., ed. (1999) State/Culture: State Formation after the Cultural Turn. Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.Google Scholar
Stoler, A. (2002) Carnal Knowledge and Imperial Power: Race and the Intimate in Colonial Rule. Berkeley: University of California Press.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1963) The Making of the English Working Class. New York: Vintage.Google Scholar
Thompson, E. P. (1978) “Folklore, anthropology, and social history.” Indian Historical Review 3 (2): 247–66.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1978) From Mobilization to Revolution. New York: McGraw-Hill.Google Scholar
Tilly, C. (1985) “War making and state making as organized crime,” in Evans, P.Rueschemeyer, D.Skocpol, T. (eds.) Bringing the State Back In. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press: 169–91.Google Scholar
Tilly, L. A.Scott, J. W. (1978) Women, Work, and Family. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston.Google Scholar
Valverde, M. (1992) “‘When the mother of the race is free’: Race, reproduction, and sexuality in first-wave feminism,” in Iacovetta, F.Valverde, M. (eds.) Gender Conflicts: New Essays in Women’s History. Toronto: University of Toronto Press: 3–26.Google Scholar
Wingrove, E. (1999) “Interpellating sex.” Signs 24 (4): 869–94.Google Scholar
Zerilli, L. (2005) Feminism and the Abyss of Freedom. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.Google Scholar