Historical Sociology - Syllabus

New School University - Historical Studies
Fall 2004 & Spring 2005 Courses

GHIS 5140 The United States and the World - Spring 2005. New School University
David Plotke
In the second half of the twentieth century, the cold war provided a framework for thinking about relations between the United
States and the rest of the world. There was disagreement about what the cold war meant, but there was no denying its central
importance. After the end of the cold war there has been much disagreement within the United States about the direction of
American policies and the right terms of debate. The prominence of American military and political power is evident. But
arguments continue on all fronts. Larger and smaller US military efforts (from Iraq to Haiti) produce sharp arguments in the
United States and internationally. Debate continues about new and old problems, from environmental regulation to human rights
enforcement to the policies of international economic institutions.

This course analyzes the place of the United States in the contemporary world. We assess competing conceptions of how the
world is and how it should be. Is the US-led battle with terrorism and “rogue” states a means of achieving international security
or the expression of an expansive American hegemony? Does economic and social globalization require or prevent new forms of international regulation? Will new cultural encounters take the form of a war of civilizations or an intercultural dialogue? What do we make of the “democratic peace” argument against claims for emergent forms of international law and governance or claims that realism remains the best guide to understanding international politics?

GHIS 5143 Power, Culture, and American Cities - Fall 2004. New School University
American urban ethnography has historically neglected the roles of government and politics in shaping the parameters of urban
experiences. Yet community power studies have attempted to understand urban power relations formalistically, bypassing the
study of urban residents’ daily lives. As a result, we have two scholarly literatures that provide useful but incomplete visions of
modern urban life. This course brings together these two perspectives. Readings and discussions will engage with both
literatures, folding in considerations of race, ethnicity, and gender in American city life, with a focus on the relation between
culture and political economy. We reconstruct the history of the different tracks of urban studies in the United States, starting
with its roots in anthropology and sociology in the Chicago school and in political science in reform-oriented studies of public
administration. We revisit the community power debate of the 1950s through the 1970s, which shook out largely along
disciplinary lines, and examine the development of the urban political economy perspective of the 1980s and 1990s, as well as
developments within US urban anthropology. We employ local case study materials, and at every point we try to understand the trajectories of urbanism discourses in relation to urban politics and policy.

GHIS 5150 Hegemony and Empire - New School University
Eli Zaretsky
There are at present two important historical explanations of America’s world predominance. On the one hand, Giovanni
Arrighi’s Long Twentieth Century argues that capitalism is a social system which, in a sense, reinvents itself every hundred years.
In his account, American predominance rests on its invention of mass consumption and the vertically integrated corporation. On
the other hand, Philip Bobbitt’s Shield of Achilles—working from an equally capacious historical theory—explains American
hegemony as the synthesis between its domestic legal regime and geopolitical order. While Arrighi offers economics without
politics, Bobbitt offers politics without economics. In this course we will explore the possibilities of combining the two theories.
Other authors to be read include John Mearsheimer, Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Perry Anderson, Samantha Powers,
Robert Brenner, and Immanuel Wallerstein.

GHIS 5164 The Rise and Fall of New World Slavery - Fall 2004. New School University
Robin Blackburn
This course surveys the whole trajectory of slavery in the New World from the sixteenth to the close of the nineteenth century.
The evolution of conceptions of empire, slavery, and race in early modern Europe are placed in the context of state rivalry,
cultural history, political economy, and class struggle. The Baroque empires of the Iberian peninsula and France are contrasted
with the commercial and Protestant ethos of the English and Dutch. The role of capitalism in the rise of the plantation and the
reasons for the planters’ increasing reliance on the labor of captive Africans are explored. The paradox that slavery had almost
died out in Western Europe on the eve of colonization, yet was to grow to enormous scale in the Americas is addressed.
Contrasts between North America, the Caribbean, and South America are drawn and of the way the slave regimes of these
lands helped to supply the central thrust of the Atlantic economy and capital accumulation. The course will interrogate the nature of the slave regime in these zones and of the rivalries, revolts, and revolutions that they stimulated. The contribution of slave testimony and resistance to abolitionist mobilization will be explored as well as that of free people of color. The course will conclude with consideration of the achievements and limitations of emancipation and the continuing legacy of slavery.

GHIS 6134 Historical Methods and Sources - Fall 2004. New School University
Julián Casanova
This course is meant as an introduction to twentieth-century European historiography and to the different methods of historical
research and of writing history. After an overview of the diverse answers to the basic questions—What is history? How to write history?— the course will trace the main trends in the development of European historiography from historicism to
postmodernism. Special attention will be paid to the emergence of social history as a reaction to the dominant political history
and historicism of the nineteenth century and its crystallization in different national variants: the French Annales, the British
Marxist historians and “history from below,” and the German and Italian schools of social history. Following a discussion of the
interdisciplinary dialogue and the debates between social history and the social sciences, particularly historical sociology, the
course will conclude with a review of the most recent trends: the crisis of social history, the postmodern and poststructuralist
challenges, the revival of narrative and the fragmentation of the nation, and the new dialogue with anthropology, literature, and
cultural studies.

GHIS 6155 Globalization and Anticapitalism in Historical Perspective - Fall 2004. New School University
Robin Blackburn
This course will present an account of the origins and development of globalization, of the social and political traditions that have contested capitalism, and of the new forms of collectivism in the modern world. The legacy and debates of nineteenth- and twentiethcentury socialism, liberalism, and anarchism will be reconsidered in the light of the experience of the twentieth century.
The ideas of Marx and Proudhon, Engels and Bakunin, Kautsky and Lenin, Bauer and Bernstein, Trotsky and Luxemburg, the
Fabians and the syndicalists, Mao and Fidel Castro, Keynes and Beveridge, Polanyi and Bookchin, and Fanon and C.L.R.
James will be scrutinized and shown to have continued bearing on the new forms of capitalism and collectivism in the twenty-first century. The calculation debate of the thirties and forties, which pitted Mises and Hayek against Oskar Lange and Maurice Dobb, will be reexamined. The legacy of struggles for universal social security in the advanced countries will be presented for the light it can shed on inequality and insecurity in the modern world. The question will be posed as to how today’s new social movements and anticapitalism can measure up to new forms of corporate and financial power. The role of money managers and institutional funds in globalization will be explored. The potential of consumers’ campaigns, cultural contestation, social trade unionism, environmentalism, and pension fund activism will be assessed in terms of their capacity to strengthen democracy and mount an effective challenge to capitalist power.

GHIS 6240 State, Culture, and Identity - Fall 2004. New School University
Eiko Ikegami
The central concerns of this course are to explore, historically and comparatively, social processes in which various types of
personal collective and categorical identities are formulated and revised, and further, to examine the dynamic relationship
between culture and state formation in an attempt to advance beyond more conventional studies of the emergence of national
states. Readings focus on issues as diverse as etiquette, manners, national identities, and aesthetic tastes, as well as more
routinely examined social categories of social identity. The course also looks at classical works on state formation and then
moves on to more innovative approaches that deepen our understanding of the interaction between culture and political structure and practices.

GHIS 6256 Gender, Politics, and History - Spring 2005. New School University
Elaine Abelson
This course approaches the history of women from the vantage point of feminist scholarship and theories about gender. We will
examine the social, economic, and political positions of women (and men) in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in order to
explore and evaluate structures of inequality, racial categories, and debates about the nature and role of women in the United
States.

The construction of gender is shaped by concrete historical, social, and cultural factors, and the goal of the course will be to
integrate history and theory in order to more fully understand the social construction of knowledge and “truth” as well as the
categories that govern our understanding of gender.

GHIS 6801 Revolutions and Civil Wars - Fall 2004. New School University
Julián Casanova
The comparative historical analysis of revolutions and civil wars calls for interdisciplinary dialogue between sociology, political
science, and history. Revolutions and civil wars bring radical changes in social structures as well as in states’ functions and
political structures that must be studied both internally and internationally. After an introductory overview of the main
interpretative frameworks offered by sociology, political science, and historiography, the course will turn its focus to a critical
review of the most recent sociohistorical research and debates concerning revolutions and civil wars in Europe from 1914 to
1945, with special emphasis on the Russian Revolution and the Spanish Civil War. Students will be encouraged to develop
comparisons with other time periods and other regions of the world.

GHIS 6808 Culture and the Social History of Truth - Spring 2005. New School University
Ann Laura Stoler
This course explores the relationship between regimes of truth, historical inquiry, and ethnographic practice. How we imagine we can know the past is contingent on what we take to be truth claims about the past, who we take to be credible witnesses, and what kinds of evidence we marshal to construct historical accounts. Drawing on the work of Steven Shapin, Hayden White, Michel Foucault, Natalie Davis, and scholars of historical ethnography, we will look at hierarchies of credibility (documents, testimony, memory, rumor, visual vs. verbal evidence) that scholars use and that contemporary and historical actors may differently marshal to assert historical claims. Readings will be drawn from truth and reconciliation reports, court cases, philosophy, literature, history, and anthropology. This course is required for PhD students in Anthropology.