Understanding Society

Doug McAdam's Political Process and the Development of Black Insurgency, 1930-1970 is recognized as a leading sociological study of the...

Much of the drama of history is found in processes of large social and political change, both slow and rapid. The sudden collapse of the Sov...

Ivan Ermakoff's 2008 book Ruling Oneself Out: A Theory of Collective Abdications  is dense, rigorous, and important. It treats two h...

How do the domestic politics of China work, from 1949 to the present? This question covers many issues: Why does the Chinese state act...

What is involved in deliberating within an activist group? This isn't quite as simple a question as it might appear. Deliberation ha...

One of the books on the Chinese Revolution that I particularly respect is Odoric Wou's 1994 Mobilizing the Masses: Building Revolutio...

What is involved in assembling the history of a complicated period like the US civil rights movement?  This is a difficult question for a...

An earlier post discussed Neil Gross's attempt to understand social mechanisms from the point of view of a pragmatist sociology. Gross...

Democracy and contention are back on the front page, thanks to the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).  As always, Chuck ...