What Is Sociology?

What Is
Comparative Sociology?

Department of Social Sciences

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Outline
Obesity

Types of causes of human behavior

What do we mean by social context?

The goal of sociology

The distinctiveness of comparative sociology

Causes of that distinctiveness

The retreat from methodological nationalism

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Obesity

We all know of cases of people over &

underweight
Obesity: BMI>30; BMI=(kg)/(m2)
Obesity varies in prevalence across social groups, countries and periods:
Low income, low education, non-physically active people (Wellman 2003)
Worldwide the obesity rate has tripled since 1975 (WHO 2020)
Larger in more open economies (Ruopeng et al. 2019)

-> Obesity is related to the ‘social context’, broadly understood

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Types of causes of human behavior
Cultural orthodoxy: obesity perceived from an individual perspective

Obesity yet proven to have genetic, individual and contextual causes

Individual perspective: focus on actions by people and their consequences
Sociological perspective: consider the ‘social causes’ of human behavior

Perspectives in analysis of human behavior

Individual Genetic Social

Phenomena of interest Individual behavior Individual/common Common situations

behavior
Explanation Individual Individual gene load Social contexts
characteristics
Source: van Tubergen 2020

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“What sociologists aim to understand is how, human behavior typically results from shared
contextual conditions, and how, subsequently, this gives rise to collective outcomes” (van
Tubergen 2020: 7)

The individual, genetic and sociological perspectives are not mutually

exclusive but complementary

Can individual, genetic and social causes be causally related? Yes!

Ultimate causes ≠ proximate causes

Social contexts act as ultimate causes of many proximate – individual and

genetic – causes
e.g. Number of fast food restaurants related to obesity (Maddock 2004)
Social context -> temptation & number of consumers -> unhealthy
eating habits -> obesity

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Social context ≈ an aggregation of people
Me
We live embedded in different social contexts Fam Town
Country
Micro context: social conditions that people share with close
friends and relatives; everyone knows each other

Meso context: social conditions that people share with others

in schools, neighborhoods and other middle-size human
groups; members are in direct contact with only small portion
of the population (no more than 10%-20%), but can reach
almost everyone indirectly (2nd and 3rd degree of separation
with almost everyone)

Macro context: Social conditions shared by people in a large

human groups, such as cities or countries; members are in
direct contact with a tiny portion of the population
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What’s the social in ‘social context’?
Interactions form the basis of ‘social contexts’

We constantly engage in interactions that influence the

resources and ideas we hold

Interactions: actions we conduct taking others into

consideration
(e.g. listening to a friend, writing an essay, breaking up a relationship)

Interactions do not occur randomly! They are patterned

Patterned interactions: interactions with recurring processes

and outcomes
(e.g. breaking up a relationshp)
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Some interactions are so recurring and patterned in process
and outcomes that they generate stable social relationships
and social structures

Social structures: Stable relationships that stabilize the social

order
(e.g. education system, politics, families)

By social context, sociology thus means mainly social

structures around us: stable patterns of social relationship with
a concrete objective.

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Social structures affect our lives by shaping the resources we
have, the ideas we use
(e.g. growing up, educ system)

We can identify three levels of social structure (Brym and Lie

2006):

(a) Microstructures: patterns of close social relationships

Made through face-to-face interactions
E.g. weak-strong ties

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(b) Mesostructures: Relationships between groups in a limited
social space, mainly in a region
e.g. interactions between different types of park users

(c) Macrostructures: Relationships between groups in a nation-

states
E.g. Collective agreements

(d) Global structures: International relations, international

exchanges between countries and individuals
E.g. global capitalism

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Sociology studies how patterned interactions at different levels
of aggregation influence human action and human thought

Sociology seeks to provide tools to better human’s quality life

-> examines personal problems

Personal problems: Situations that clash with one’s perceptions

of what is appropiate and non-distressing
(e.g. homelessness in modern or nomad societies)

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 Social
structure

e.g. Role-setting
Unintended
e.g. Resource social change
allocation
Social
mobilization

Personal
troubles

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Examples of troubles and social issues at the microstructural,
macrostructural and global level

Microstructural Macrostructural Global

Feelings of Being a victim of Perception of

Troubles
inferiority discrimination powerlessness

Status inequality
Juniority in a Being a citizen of
Social issues of reference
group a micro-state
group

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Sociology is the scientific discipline that seeks to enlighten our
lives by revealing the complex, causal connection between (a)
highly recurrent social relationships and (b) individual
unhappiness and distress.

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Why don’t we already know all the consequences of social
contexts?

“Seldom aware of the intricate connection between the patterns of

their own lives and the course of world history, ordinary men do not
usually know what this connection means for the kinds of men they
are becoming…” (Wright Mills 2000[1959]: 3-4).
e.g. Plumber or politician and European integration
Understanding structure-problems link requires overcoming
important intellectual hurdles:
-> Requires abstract thinking and introspection
-> Fight against false conscience & intelectual inertia
-> Growing social complexity
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Collective gains from sociological research
It produces two main positive effects (Mills 1959):

Explanatory effect: We gain a better understanding of the

meaning of our lives and can better account for major personal
events

Chances of becoming free and rational actors

Aware of the social causes of our troubles, they deflate

Pinpoint moments of consequential individual freedom

Helps avoid the social contexts that produced problems

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“We study the structural limits of human decision in an attempt to find
points of effective intervention, in order to know what can and what must
be structurally changed if the role of explicit decision in history-making is
to be enlarged” (Mills 1959: 174, emphasis added).

e.g. Who should be my romantic partner?, what should I study?

Meaningful political action

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Socio-political effect: Reporting the breath of “personal
troubles” in a society, sociologists can have a major impact in
transforming the social issues that are a matter of attention by
public opinion. ‘Descriptive goal’ (van Turbergen 2020)

“It is the political task of the social scientist continually to translate

personal troubles into public issues, and public issues into the terms of
their human meaning for a variety of individuals (Mills 1959: 187)”.

-> Democratic implication: cultivate publics knowlegable of

their own social realities.

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19
23/29
 Social
structure &
Public issues

Political Explanatory
function effect

Personal
troubles
Explanatory
effect
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The specificity of comparative sociology (CS)
The ultimate goal of CS is to produce limited and explanatory
generalizations.

“Comparative sociology is an attempt to develop concepts and generalizations

at a level between what is true to all societies and what is true of one society
at one point in time and space” (Bendix 1963: 9)
e.g. Why does social mobility rates vary cross-nationally?
e.g. Why some countries display more gender equality than
other ones?
e.g. Is there a worldwide trend towards secularization?

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Comparative sociology (CS) involves a set of means or analytical
strategies to better grasp the impact of social structures on
personal problems
It uses conceptual and methodological devices to synthesize
and contrast differences in the current world.

The core strategy is to contrast different types of groups

“Groups” are defined in multiple ways in sociology:

Large but restricted: social class, gender, ethnic group, regions…
Nations
Groups of nations

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How does it differ from other forms of sociology?
Short answer: it commonly (but not always) takes
characteristics of nation-states as dominant, explanatory factors

As an analytical strategy emerges through a complex history of

mutual influences between socio-political events and scientific
discourses

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Gradual primacy of nation-state (vs patrimonial empires/city-
states/confederacies) determined the form of CS

Four stages in comparison across societies (Teune 2010):

(a) Before WWI

Comparison of civilizations (traditional, industrial)
Founding fathers approach – e.g. Weber

(b) 1920s-1940s
Nationalism -> Growing focus on independent states
Attention to interventionist state
Two new technologies: national indexes + random sample
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(c) 1950s-1990s
Enlarged capacities in CS research (Human Relations
Area Files) & De-colonization
Cross-national databases
Internal divisions or persistent cross-national differences

(d) Since 1990s

Globalization, collective identity

-> Over time, the types of comparisons in CS narrowed down to

between societies and more specifically between nation-states

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Elements of distinctiveness:
(1) CS is multilevel

“Comparative research is inquiry in which more than one level of analysis is

possible and the units of observation are identifiable by name at each of these
levels” (Przeworski and Tenure 1970: 36-7).

Country or nation-state

Observational & Aggregate group e.g. You use data on the

explanatory unit religiosity of individuals
to measure average
religiosity and
Individual secularization trends

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(2) Commonly uses nation-state characteristics as the explanatory
factor
CS describes and explains similarities and differences in characteristics
across countries.

“Comparative analysis has come to mean the description and

explanation of similarities and differences (mainly differences) of
conditions or outcomes among large-scale social units, usually regions,
nations, societies and cultures” (Smelser 2003: 645, emphasis added).

“Comparisons of societies often became coterminous with “cross-

national” research” (Tenue 2010:4).

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 Percentage of articles in two leading sociology journals
that use the term "cross-national", 1950-2014

100

80

60

40
American Sociological Review
20 American Journal of Sociology

0
1950-1954

1955-1959

1960-1964

1965-1969

1970-1974

1975-1979

1980-1984

1985-1989

1990-1994

1995-1999

2000-2004

2005-2009

2010-2014
Source: author's calculations

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Causes for the Prevalence of the Nation-State as Explanatory Unit

Nation-state ≈ country: Political community with sovereignty over

a territory in which government is based on the principle of
equality of citizens and citizens share a cultural identity (Wimmer
2013)

(a) Cognitive effect: taken-for-granted classificatory system of

world’s population
Widespread conceptual “roadmap”
“Society and state were conceived, organized and experienced as coextensive” (Beck
2000: 65)

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(b) Nation-states have powerful capacity to homogenize and
produce ‘inwardness’

State has largest authority. It controls the use of violence -> can
coerce population /// Its claim is foundational to society.
Standardizes mental categories (educ system)
Uniformizes rules of behavior (legal system)
Has implementation capacity (bureaucracy)
Facilitates interactions (public infrastructure)

National identification. It creates an invisible bond and basis of

trust.
It smooths out conditions for collaboration with strangers. 30
 Effects of state and nation reinforce each other -> Homogenize
worldviews and behaviors
e.g. Use of language
e.g. Border regions

(c) Nation-states follow their own path of development

Early conditions affect substantially future events
e.g. US-UK: early industrialization -> expansion educ levels ->
value modernization -> post-industrial economies
Nation-states also differ widely in endowments

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Prevalence of nation-
state as classification
category Nation-states display substantial
within-country similarities
and cross-country differences
Homogenizing
capacity of the
As an explanatory unit it achieves
nation-state
maximum internal uniformization
Path-dependence and external differentiation
of nation-states
+ variation in
endowments

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Overcomming Methodological Nationalism
The identification of society with nation-state has been under
increasing attack.

Many scholars argue that previous research is hampered by

“methodological nationalism” -> Criticism that social scientists
underexplore the influence of non-national types of social
structures

Social structures ‘at higher levels of aggregations’ than the

nation-state and ‘at lower levels of aggregation’ also influence our
lives
e.g. Emergence of ‘world culture’, economic globalization
e.g. Regional customs and traditions
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Conclusions
Sociology is tasked to link social structures with personal
problems

Social structures are social relationships at three levels

Comparative sociology commonly takes structural features of the

nation-state as the explanatory factor

Nation-states produce the highest degree of internal

homogeneization and cross-case differentiation

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