Colin J. Beck

The World-Cultural Origins of Revolutionary Waves: Five Centuries of European Contention

The existence of revolutionary waves is a well-known feature of history. This study contends that revolutionary waves are best understood as systemic phenomena occurring during periods of rapid world-cultural expansion. Rapid expansion and deeper penetration of cultural linkages is theorized to generate contradiction between idealized models and local political practices, empower oppositions, and fracture elites, resulting in waves of revolution. The theoretical logic is illustrated with the example of the Atlantic Revolutions. Multivariate analyses examine the correspondence among a new indicator of world culture, additional systemic processes, and revolutionary waves across five centuries of European history. Results suggest that the occurrence of revolutionary waves is positively associated with relatively rapid world-cultural growth and hegemonic decline, as indicated by periods of hegemonic warfare.

The Structure of Comparison in the Study of Revolution

The social scientific study of revolution has been deviled by a lack of progress in recent years, divided between competing views on the universality of patterns in revolution. This study examines the origins of these epistemologies. Drawing on an insight that different modes of comparison yield different types of knowledge, I argue that the network structure of how cases are compared constrains or enables the development of a field’s theoretical sensibilities. Analysis of comparative studies of revolution published from 1970 to 2009 reveals that the field overall is most amenable to knowledge about particular cases rather than the phenomenon of revolution broadly. Analysis of the changing structure of comparison over time reveals that comparison precedes the development of an epistemology. The results suggest that conclusions about the possibility, or lack thereof, of generalization may be an artifact of the comparative method.

The Comparative Method in Practice: Case Selection and the Social Science of Revolution

Abstract:Formalization of comparative case methodology has given the appearance of growing consensus and cross-disciplinary acceptance around a set of best practices. Yet how researchers use a method may differ widely from what methodologists believe, which is the crux of institutionalization of a method. This study examines whether comparative methodology has, in fact, institutionalized within the social sciences using evidence from the entire corpus of comparative studies of revolution published from 1970 to 2009. Content analysis of methods of case selection within the revolution subfield reveals a wide diversity of strategies with only modest methodological awareness by practitioners, a lack of consensus among which case selection strategies to use, and little convergence over time. Thus, the comparative method has not yet institutionalized in its practice. Methodological practice has implications for the coverage of cases of revolution and what is substantively known about the phenomenon.

The Surveillance-Industrial Complex: A Political Economy of Surveillance

United States, there would be little or no systematic injustice in our backyard. Historically weak citizenship rights are a function of ‘‘American exceptionalism,’’ especially individualism, a history of slavery, privatization, political dynasties, and federal fragmentation. This difference between the two orders of rights was fully recognized by Judith Shklar, who was one of the very few American scholars to write specifically about American citizenship. Human rights, therefore, tend to be invoked when all else has failed, and in this sense they are rights of last resort, or in John Rawls’ terminology, ‘‘urgent rights.’’ Citizenship is recognized off and on throughout this volume. One chapter by Katie Acosta is specifically about sexual citizenship. There is also an excellent discussion by Shweta Majumdar Adur, who, in her study of the experience of guest workers, poses the basic question ‘‘do human rights endure across nation-state boundaries?’’ and in so doing pinpoints the conundrum of the tangled relationships between states, citizens, and the globalization of labor markets. She notes that ‘‘In the absence of citizenship entitlements in the host countries, there is little that the governments of the host countries are obligated to do for them. Plus, once guest workers have voluntarily left the jurisdiction of the countries where they have citizenship rights there is also little that the governments of these countries are required to do for them’’ (p. 163). There’s the rub, so to speak. There is, finally, another way in which we can express this dilemma: by asking, given the importance of human rights as the rights of last resort, who or what will enforce them? Second, who or what will pay for these rights to security, health, employment, education, and freedom from slavery? Generally, only states can do the enforcing, and to do so they need to raise taxes; but in a global, neoliberal environment, raising taxes has become deeply politically unpopular. Here is the abiding question as to why citizens vote and generally act against their own interests. However, as this volume amply demonstrates, there is an emerging global network of NGOs, alongside such institutions as the International Criminal Court, that is beginning to do the work of enforcement and provision—but there is a long way to go. In conclusion, this is an excellent and timely collection that does justice to Blau’s view that sociologists have an important contribution to make to the study of human rights, especially at the meso-level rather than the state level. Its theoretical weakness is shared by the majority of recent sociological contributions to this field precisely because the problematic relationship between human and citizenship rights is intractable. Do these essays fruitfully address ethical issues? They can all be said to promote a sociology of care as a precondition of the study of human rights. In this regard, we might conclude that caring comes before resisting.