Statistics In Sociology, 1950–2000: A Selective Review

Statistical methods have had a successful half-century in sociology, contributing to a greatly improved standard of scientific rigor in the discipline. I identify three overlapping postwar generations of statistical methods in sociology, based on the kinds of data they address. The first generation, which started in the late 1940s, deals with cross-tabulations and focuses on measures of association and log-linear models, perhaps the area of statistics to which sociology has contributed the most. The second generation, which began in the 1960s, deals with unit-level survey data and focuses on LISREL-type causal models and event-history analysis. The third generation, starting to emerge in the late 1980s, deals with data that do not fall easily into either of these categories, either because they have a different form, such as texts or narratives, or because dependence is a crucial aspect, as with spatial or social network data. There are many new challenges, and the area is ripe for statistical research; several major institutions have recently launched new initiatives in statistics and the social sciences.     

Explaining U.S. Federal Deficits: 1889–1998

We review and jointly test various competing theoretical and empirical models of U.S. federal deficits using annual data from 1889 to 1998. We find that tax smoothing matters and that political and interest group/distributional factors are also present in our results.     

Professor of Sociology at Sophia University.

Abstract Is the family in industrial Japan the same modern conjugal family created by the Industrial Revolution and the modern welfare state of the west? Is it also shifting toward a post-modern family? This paper attempts to analyze the nature of family changes in Japan by using the “individualization model.” The Japanese family experienced the first wave of change in the first two decades after the world war II from the prewar patriarchal stem family to the modern conjugal family. It is undergoing the second wave of change since the mid 1980s which is characterized as the process of individualization or diversification of the modern family. Though we observe phenomenal changes in contemporary Japan, the family system based on distinct gender roles will not lose its ground unless the industry-oriented family policy and family-based welfare policy become more individual-based.     

Professor of Sociology at Tokyo Gakugei University.

Abstract  In this paper I discuss methods of integrating women into social stratification studies. Traditional stratification studies have focused only on the male "heads" of households. While considering this problem within a conceptual framework of theoretical assumptions and empirical evidence, I would like to review some of the earlier work in this area.
I propose to differentiate social stratification into "occupational stratification" and "consumption stratification" in order to facilitate the integration of women into these studies. I shall use data from a nationwide survey to show how and why the traditional male head-of-household approach is inappropriate in determining the social stratification of households.
Rather than considering the occupation of the male head of the household, I use the concept of "substantive complexity of work" to compare paid work with housework. If a married woman is working outside the home, I define her occupation as that which scores higher in this comparison.
I also suggest that we further subcategorize consumption stratification. Finally, I propose integrating the suggestions made in this paper with the status inconsistency approach to social stratification.     

Bandits,Brigands and Militants: The Historical Sociology of Outlaws

Outlaws have been prominent actors in a social context which is characterized by collective dissent, conflict, and violence. Bandits, brigands, and militants emerged in societies with the decline of social justice, political stability, and economic prosperity. Their emergence and social networks with different actors and agencies provide us principal motives to deconstruct the social identity of outlaws and determine the factors that fostered collective dissent, conflict, and violence in different societies. This special issue covers a vast geography and different time periods to theoretically and methodologically advance our knowledge in the historical sociology of outlaws. In doing so, we address complex social, political, and cultural issues that rendered outlaws inextricable part of social problems. Exploring the power and activities of outlaws in different social geographies offers us new perspectives to tackle the origins and outcomes of social, political, and cultural dissent across the world.     

Interpretive Historical Sociology: discordances of Weber, Dilthey and others

Abstract Relations of several notions of historical understanding to issues of explanation, historical complexity, practical and moral reason, and the differentiation of historical and natural science are discussed. Examination of the historical context of the German Methodenstreit exhibits similarities with current disjunctions within historical sociology and allows specification of crucial questions about its methods and cognitive goals. Max Weber and Wilhelm Dilthey are discussed as proponents of radically opposed methodological positions. Claims about Weber's reliance on Dilthey are dispelled as it is shown that Weber neither developed nor practiced a 'method' of verstehen , while Weber's congruence with Heinrich Rickert is upheld. Oppositions within historiography (Droysen vs.Buckle) and economics (Schmoller vs. Menger) are analyzed as prefigurations of the Weber-Dilthey rivalry. Finally, contemporary historical strategies are summarized with reference to pertinent issues extracted from earlier debates.     

Karl Lamprecht: Pioneer of Historical Sociology?

Abstract This contribution is an outline of the life, work and scientific impact of the Leipzig cultural historian Karl Lamprecht (1856–1915); Lamprecht's work was very controversial within German historiography at the turn of the century. He was accused of writing history from a materialist viewpoint. Anong his international contemporaries, however, Lamprecht was held in high esteem. There are divergent evaluations of the consequences of his methodological and substantive suggestions in the inter-war era, in the era of the Third Reich, and later in the two German states which emerged after 1945. The article tries to highlight some lines of continuity which point especially to the regional historiography and to the sociology of the 1920s and 1930s. From there a connection with the social historiography after 1945 may be made.     

Sociology at Washington University in St. Louis: History and reflections, 1906–1989

Decisions, such as the one to abolish the sociology department at Washington University, do not happen over night. In this article, we trace the fine, if at times fraught, history of sociology at WU, from 1906 to 1989. The department has been home to two presidents of the ASA and location for exciting work in both theory and research. We note that the demise of the department has been a long time in the making, although the death blow was struck as if it constituted the necessary slaughter of the weak. A conservative university has eliminated a once-stellar department and, in so doing, dismissed the relevance of social thought in this modern era.     

Dissonant Notes on the Post‐Secular: Unthinking Secularization in Global Historical Sociology

The article criticizes the assumption that modernity is a rupture in time and space conceivable in terms of the coming of a secular age. It tackles Habermas concept of ‘post‐secular’ and denotes it as an attempt to provide new foundations to modernization narratives, in postmodern terms; it discusses Blumenberg's idea of secularization and questions the historical ontogenesis of what Blumenberg thinks of in terms of the transition to the modern age; it further elaborates on Wang Hui analysis of the relation between Western science and the role of China in global modernity. Secularization and the post‐secular, it is argued, re‐frame narratives of the disenchantment within a western geocultural ideology of western superiority.