Big Structures, Large Processes, Huge Comparisons

Preface

PREFACE Why do other people's books behave like docile marionettes? Mine keep playing Pinocchio. They take on characters of their own and resist correction. This one, for instance. When I sat down to write it, the book was supposed to end up mild-mannered, studious, and balanced: an even-handed survey of various ways to approach large comparisons of social structures and processes. Somehow it materialized as a bit of a bully. It struts around with a confident, pugnacious air. Yet behind the bravado hides a lazy, indecisive, pusillanimous weakling, with sticks for legs. My little book often makes accusations without naming names, avoids fights one might have expected it to welcome, and fails to specify when, where, or how alleged misdeeds occurred. Incorrigible! Yet, for all its faults, I love the little rapscallion. The Russell Sage Foundation's invitation to write an essay on "comparative and interdisciplinary research in the social sciences" gave me a welcome chance to reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the schemes we customarily use to analyze large social processes and to speculate on their origins. That part of the assignment kept me in familiar surroundings; I have spent many years studying large processes such as proletarianization, urbanization, and statemaking. Given the drift of recent work on large processes, however, I felt I should also discuss the ways in which people analyze very large social structures such as systems of states and make comparisons among them. There I left my own turf: Although I have sometimes speculated on big structures and huge comparisons, and have read other people's work on the subject attentively, I have never undertaken serious empirical work of my own along those lines. When I have worked through huge comparisons for my own purposes, they have almost always fallen into the category this book calls "individualizing" comparisons: attempts to clarify the characteristics of the case at hand by means of contrast with another well-documented case. Familiarity with statemaking and collective action in France, for example, has often helped x PREFACE me think through the links between statemaking and collective action in Great Britain, and vice versa; but I have never undertaken a sustained comparison between the two states for the purpose of identifying principles of variation in statemaking, collective action, or the links between them. Thus I come to the discussion of large processes as an old hand, and to the discussion of big structures and huge comparisons as an interested outsider. Nevertheless I enjoyed whittling the new log. Scattered thoughts and dissatisfactions, long accumulating, came together in a rush. Words tumbling onto the page. Some of them looked interesting enough to keep. The resulting book falls far short of documented intellectual history, systematic review of the literature, or close textual exposition and criticism. It comes closer to what the French call a prise de position: statement of a view to be argued and explored later on. An extensive bibliography of the work I have consulted on these matters will, I hope, provide some compensation for the book's failings. (Although almost all of the text is brand new, I did borrow much of chapter 4's discussion of Fernand Braudel from my "The Old New Social History and the New Old Social History," Review 7 (1984): 363-406.) Many friends helped me chase down the nimble puppet. On very short notice, ample, thoughtful critiques of a first draft arrived from Rod Aya, Robert Cole, Frederick Cooper, Ronald Gillis, Raymond Grew, Michael Hechter, Lynn Hunt, Ira Katznelson, William Roy, James Rule, Theda Skocpol, Arthur Stinchcombe, Martin King Whyte, and Mayer Zald. They persuaded me to eliminate some defective ideas, to clarify some murky arguments, and to provide a bit more documentation for some of the book's less plausible notions. In a second round, Daniel Chirot, Robert Merton, and (again) Theda Skocpol offered various combinations of critique and encouragement. They caused another substantial series of revisions. My critics did me the great compliment of taking the work seriously and stalking its errors relentlessly. Their critiques, regrettably, made it clear that no revisions I could make in the short run would convince any of them-much less all of them-that each of the book's arguments was correct. Absolve them and blame Pinocchio. CHARLES TILLY Ann Arbor September 1984 ...