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Monday 5 – Friday 9 August
09:00–10.30 and 11:00–12:30
This course offers a methodologically pluralist introduction to historical methods for social scientists.
Rather than take any specific stance on what the valued terms 'historical' and 'method' do / should mean, the course emphasises and examines the perennial cleavages and contentions between methodologically diverse scholars who all understand themselves to be doing 'historical' work.
While some such social scientists see the critical use of primary sources as the core of their historical method, others make statistical data and analysis, formal models, or macro-comparative case studies central to their study of the past.
Ranging across this spectrum, the course will survey four diverse contemporary research programs that self-identify as historical, and together encompass scholars from economists to political scientists and sociologists. For each contemporary research programme we examine both cutting-edge methodological statements and substantive examples of how its practitioners approach the past.
Robert Adcock teaches at the School of International Service at American University in Washington DC.
His interests focus on the politics and sociology of knowledge, the transatlantic history of the social sciences and their relationship to liberalism, and the philosophy and methods of the social sciences.
Robert is the author of Liberalism and the Emergence of American Political Science: A Transatlantic Tale (Oxford University Press, 2014), and was the co-editor of Modern Political Science: Anglo-American Exchanges since 1880 (Princeton University Press, 2007).
He also edited the newsletter of the Qualitative and Multi-Method Research organised section of the American Political Science Association from 2011 to 2014.
This course offers a methodologically pluralist introduction to historical methods for social scientists. If you are doing, or interested doing, social science research that engages the past, this course will enable you to:
Ever since the language of 'historical method' first came to be deployed by scholars during the mid-19th century, it has been used to identify, valorise, discipline, and contest multiple, diverse, and at times directly competing, research practices and traditions.
During our first session we explore the classic roots of recurrent methodological cleavages over such issues as the uses / limits of cross-societal comparison, and the pros / cons of making inferences about the beliefs of historical agents. Divergent approaches to these and other classic issues continue to differentiate alternative research programs—all self-avowedly historical—within the social sciences today.
Each of the following four days focuses on a contemporary research program, ranging widely from the new institutional economic history, to comparative historical analysis and historical institutionalism, process tracing, and interpretive historical sociology.
As we examine and move across these research programs we follow inter-disciplinary connections and contests to treat scholarship by economists, political scientists, and sociologists.
In our readings we engage with works of meta-reflection on the substantive and methodological orientation of each program, and examples of historical work, in order to examine and tease apart the preaching and the actual research practices of each program.
Day 1 – 'Historical Method'(s): The Classic Roots of Recurrent Cleavages
We begin by reviewing the central role 'historical method' played in crystallising positivism as both a philosophy of history and a social science methodology. Readings from Comte and JS Mill showcase:
We transition between the two sessions of the day with selections illustrating how proponents of a self-avowedly 'scientific' history came, in turn, to discuss method. In closing, we take up Durkheim and debates he engaged in that highlight cleavages among views of historical method that continue to be contested across traditions of historical social science down to this day.
Day 2 – New Institutional Economic History
We shift focus to recent decades and begin our survey of contemporary research programs with the new institutional economic history as developed by Nobel Prize-winning economist Douglass North, and especially prominent recently in the academic and popular works of Daron Acemoğlu and James Robinson. In examining the development of this research program, we will also be charting its connection to rational choice scholarship in political science.
Day 3 – Comparative Historical Analysis and Historical Institutionalism
We consider the primarily qualitative research program of 'comparative historical analysis.' This program stressing macro-societal comparison developed initially in sociology as one current within a broader upswing of historical sociology. We examine the methodological statements and practices of this research program as it came to frame itself as 'comparative historical analysis,' and as it found its disciplinary home increasingly in political science, where it has steadily become interwoven with political science’s internally developed agenda of 'historical institutionalism'.
Day 4 – Process Tracing and International History
The belief that critical use of sources provides the essential evidentiary foundation for 'scientific' study of the past is today perhaps most evident beyond the discipline of history (which has in recent decades left behind much of its earlier scientific self-identity). Far from disappearing, however, this methodological concern is prominent in contemporary social science in connection with the practice of process tracing. Process tracing is, moreover, applied especially to the political and diplomatic actors and events that were central to traditional history.
On this day we join the Advanced Process Tracing Methods course in an exercise critically analysing sources for an international history case.
Day 5 – Interpretive Historical Sociology
While the macro-causal analysis current of historical sociology that became 'comparative historical analysis' has increasingly gravitated into political science, in sociology recent decades have seen historical scholars creatively pursue an array of new trends. On this final day we review these changes in historical sociology, with a focus specifically on the development of what may be called interpretive historical sociology and the ways in which sources are approached in such research.
This course presumes no prior detailed familiarity with historical methods or debates around them.
All I assume is that you have done, or are interested in undertaking, social science research that engages the past, whether from positivist or interpretive methodological orientations.
Each course includes pre-course assignments, including readings and pre-recorded videos, as well as daily live lectures totalling at least two hours. The instructor will conduct live Q&A sessions and offer designated office hours for one-to-one consultations.
Please check your course format before registering.
Live classes will be held daily for two hours on a video meeting platform, allowing you to interact with both the instructor and other participants in real-time. To avoid online fatigue, the course employs a pedagogy that includes small-group work, short and focused tasks, as well as troubleshooting exercises that utilise a variety of online applications to facilitate collaboration and engagement with the course content.
In-person courses will consist of daily three-hour classroom sessions, featuring a range of interactive in-class activities including short lectures, peer feedback, group exercises, and presentations.
This course description may be subject to subsequent adaptations (e.g. taking into account new developments in the field, participant demands, group size, etc.). Registered participants will be informed at the time of change.
By registering for this course, you confirm that you possess the knowledge required to follow it. The instructor will not teach these prerequisite items. If in doubt, please contact us before registering.
Day | Topic | Details |
---|---|---|
1 | 'Historical Method'(s): The Classic Roots of Recurrent Cleavages |
1st session 9.00–10.30 2nd session 11.00–12.30 |
2 | New Institutional Economic History |
1st session 9.00–10.30 2nd session 11.00–12.30 |
3 | Comparative Historical Analysis and Historical Institutionalism |
1st session 9.00–10.30 2nd session 11.00–12.30 |
4 | Process-Tracing and International History |
1st session 9.00–10.30 2nd session 11.00–12.30 |
5 | Interpretive Historical Sociology |
1st session 9.00–10.30 2nd session 11.00–12.30 |
Day | Readings |
---|---|
1 |
Auguste Comte John Stuart Mill Fustel de Coulanges Charles-Victor Langlois and Charles Seignobos Emile Durkheim |
2 |
Johan Myhrman, and Barry R. Weingast Douglass C. North, and Barry R. Weingast Daron Acemoğlu, Simon Johnson and James A. Robinson Daron Acemoğlu and James A. Robinson |
3 |
Theda Skocpol and Margaret Somers James Mahoney James Mahoney and Dietrich Rueschemeyer James Mahoney Kathleen Thelen and James Mahoney |
4 |
Andrew Bennett Derek Beach and Rasmus Brun Pedersen Ian S. Lustick Course packet on Cuban Missile Crisis |
5 |
Julia Adams, Elisabeth S. Clemens and Ann Shola Orloff William H. Sewell, Jr William H. Sewell, Jr Simona Cerutti and Isabelle Grangaud |
None
None
Summer School
Case Study Methods
Process-Tracing Methods
Philosophy of Science
Introduction to Interpretive Research
Winter School
Philosophy of Science
Introduction to Interpretive Research
Summer School
Process-tracing
Analysing Discourse
Qualitative Data Analysis
Winter School
Advanced Process-tracing