Ronald Aminzade

Historical Sociology and Time

Historical sociologists have criticized their discipline for a tendency to ignore the temporal dimensions of social life, either by studying the correlates of outcomes rather than the character of temporally connected events or by treating events as surface manifestations of large-scale and long-term processes of change. These critiques have led to a reassessment of the value of narratives and to new methods for mapping historical sequences of events. Yet there has been relatively little discussion of the concepts needed to create a more event-centered historical sociology. This article explores the way in which four different concepts of time-duration, pace, trajectory, and cycle-have been used in recent historical social science. These concepts allow one to analyze the temporal characteristics of connected events that constitute long-term historical processes as well as the way in which actors understand and experience the temporal flow of events. They are most useful, the author argues when employed in a manner that is attentive to the understandings of social actors and the problematic reconstruction of the past. These concepts constitute building blocks for the construction of a more event-centered historical sociology.

From race to citizenship: The indigenization debate in post-socialist Tanzania

Neoliberal economic reforms in post-socialist Tanzania heightened racial as well as anti-foreign hostilities, while liberal political reforms made possible the expression of these antagonisms in electoral politics. Newly formed opposition parties mobilized popular support by advocating anti-Asian indigenization of minority rights. This prompted the ruling party, which had initially denounced advocates of indigenization as racist, to alter its position. In doing so, ruling party leaders redefined the meaning of indigenization, shifting the focus of the debate away from racial issues and Asian control of the economy toward issues of free trade, foreign investment, and foreign economic domination. By implementing indigenization measures targeting non-citizens and featuring anti-liberal economic policies, including tariff barriers, local content laws, and restrictions on property ownership, the government faced the danger of losing international support from foreign donors and international financial institutions. The trajectory of the indigenization debate reveals the role of electoral competition and party formation in shaping race relations and national identity in post-socialist Tanzania. It suggests the need for event-centered studies of the way in which political identities are constructed in processes of conflict within the institutional arenas created by liberal political reforms.

The politics of race and nation: Citizenship and Africanization in Tanganyika

After experiencing decades of a tripartite colonial racial order that denied Africans political and civic rights, the newly independent nation of Tanganyika defined the rights and obligations of citizenship in terms of territory rather than race, rejecting rapid Africanization and exclusionary policies toward its minority Asian population. This rejection of racial nationality as a fundamental social category was an outcome of conflicts among nationalist elites over whether to use civic exclusion of the Asian minority to foster national unity among the black majority. Nationalist leaders imagined different communities of the nation. Some advocated inclusive citizenship and a nationalist vision based on color-blind policies while others appealed to popular racial animosities rooted in the inherited tripartite racial order and contended that race-blind policies would reinforce the dominance of an already privileged racial minority. Which of these visions triumphed and became institutionalized was a result of conflicts within and between nascent political parties. An event-centered analytical narrative of nation-building documents three causally linked sequences of events — the conflict within TANU over whether to participate in the racially-based election of 1958, the 1961 parliamentary controversy over whether to define citizenship in terms of race or residence, and the 1961–64 Africanization struggle over preferential treatment for black Africans. The outcomes of these conflicts produced the political forms in which national identities became institutionalized, including electoral rules, citizenship laws, and civil service recruitment policies. These outcomes were a result of the shifting balance of power within and between political parties. The analytic narrative pinpoints class, organizational, and international factors responsible for these shifts and identifies political party formation as a central determinant of the trajectory of nation building.

Class, Politics, and Early Industrial Capitalism: A Study of Mid-Nineteenth-Century Toulouse, France

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Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Post-Colonial Africa: The Case of Tanzania

1. Introduction Part I. The Struggle for Independence and Birth of a Nation: 2. Colonialism, racism, and modernity 3. Foreigners and nation building 4. Race and the nation-building project Part II. The Socialist Experiment: 5. African socialism: the challenges of nation building 6. Socialism, self-reliance, and foreigners 7. Nationalism, state socialism, and the politics of race Part III. Neoliberalism, Global Capitalism, and the Nation-State: 8. Neoliberalism and the transition from state socialism to capitalism 9. Neoliberalism, foreigners, and globalization 10. Neoliberalism, race, and the global economy 11. Conclusion: race, nation, and citizenship in historical and comparative perspective.

Nation-states confront the global: Discourses of indigenous rights in Fiji and Tanzania

How do global issue constructions serve as resources for actors engaged in domestic political contention, and what does the appropriation of global ideas by domestic actors imply about the spread of global culture? To contribute to knowledge about conflict-based diffusion of global ideas, we examine the histories of global constructions of indigenous rights and national debates about indigenous rights in Fiji and Tanzania. While global models of indigenous rights emphasize self-determination for nondominant, culturally distinct groups at risk from the nation-state, advocates for indigenization policies in Fiji and Tanzania have argued for state policies to entrench political and economic rights for majority or near-majority groups that were well integrated into the nation-state. Although transnationally connected indigenous rights organizations have a greater presence in Tanzania than in Fiji, actors in Fiji remain more engaged with changes in international indigenous rights discourse than their counterparts in Tanzania. This difference reflects variations in the leverage global culture offered in the two cases because of its externality to national political debates. In Fiji, actors appropriated global culture as a means to internationalize a domestic dispute, while in Tanzania the impetus for indigenization came from global economic pressures. Our findings imply that conflict-based diffusion concentrates agency with respect to the use of global legal discourses in domestic actors rather than the globally connected actors and experts who carry global culture in consensus-based diffusion.

The Dialectic of Nation Building in Postcolonial Tanzania

The contradiction between capital accumulation in a global economy and political legitimation within the nation-state has shaped the contentious politics of citizenship and exclusion in postcolonial Africa. A historical analysis of the early postcolonial, state socialist, and neoliberal eras in the African nation-state of Tanzania reveals that this contradiction generated conflicts within the countrys political elite over various public policies, which defined inclusion and exclusion from the community of the nation, and defined the rights of citizens and noncitizens. Political contention over these policies concerned who should be allowed access to citizenship, what rights should be granted to foreigners, and whether all citizens should be granted the same rights regardless of race. Although the institutional expression of the contradiction varied over time, a key divide was between central government administrators who prioritized economic growth in a global economy, and political party leaders and members of parliament (MPs) who were more focused on securing political legitimacy and electoral support within the nation-state.

Historians and the Study of Protest

In this chapter, we reflect on the distinctive ways in which historians have contributed to our understanding of social movements and collective action. We find that historians interrogate the historical record in at least one of three ways. First, historians characterize their task as interpretative; that is, they attempt to establish not only the “actuality” of an event by constructing a textual account of it, but also its meaning by providing a detailed description of its causes, scope, and outcomes, as well as of the parties involved, their motives, and their accomplishments. A second approach is expansive. Scholars working in this vein seek to augment the historical record with respect to established events, legitimating their particular contribution to the literature by showing how it fills a gap or omission. Third, historians of social movements and collective action portray their narrative accounts of particular events as corrective. This often involves providing an interpretation that challenges the official or established view of an event.

Race, Nation, and Citizenship in Postcolonial Africa by Ronald Aminzade

1. Introduction Part I. The Struggle for Independence and Birth of a Nation: 2. Colonialism, racism, and modernity 3. Foreigners and nation building 4. Race and the nation-building project Part II. The Socialist Experiment: 5. African socialism: the challenges of nation building 6. Socialism, self-reliance, and foreigners 7. Nationalism, state socialism, and the politics of race Part III. Neoliberalism, Global Capitalism, and the Nation-State: 8. Neoliberalism and the transition from state socialism to capitalism 9. Neoliberalism, foreigners, and globalization 10. Neoliberalism, race, and the global economy 11. Conclusion: race, nation, and citizenship in historical and comparative perspective.

Entre movimiento y partido: la transformación del republicanismo francés de mediados del siglo XIX *

Resumen es: La protesta social ha sido definida, tradicionalmente, como una alternativa a la accion electoral. El autor sostiene que esta dicotomia es producto de co...