Comparative Historical Analysis and Theory

Pierre Francois writes to announce a discussion of Sociologie historique du capitalisme:

[…]a second English-speaking online event about about our Sociologie historique du capitalisme book is scheduled for March 15: https://capitalism.eui.eu/events/ — in case you want to ask us difficult questions! […]

The March one will become a podcast afterwards; and in case are curious to learn what our book is about, but not available for online events, here are a few webpages set up by our colleagues in Cambridge following the previous one (https://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/sociologie/index.html)

A new book series has been launched for historical sociology with Cambridge University.  The editors are Stephanie Mudge (UC Davis) and Anthony Chen (Northwestern University).

In The Nation, Mabel Berezin asks how Donald Trump’s behavior compares with historical examples of fascism. She suggests:

Trump is a classic authoritarian personality with a fascist rhetorical style. That alone should ring alarm bells. Yet the label “fascist” can sometimes hide as much as it reveals about the illiberal tendencies in contemporary American politics. Trump’s presidency exposed the fissures embedded in our democracy, and concentrating only on his fascistic actions distracts from the unstable political landscape that led to his rise in the first place.

At The Hill, Shai M. Dromi compares the events of January 6th, 2021 to historical moments of political instability. He concludes:

Instead, the narrative could focus on the American public’s almost unanimous rejection of violent solutions to democratic challenges and the remarkable energy with which Congress returned to counting the electoral votes. Making this a story of triumph, rather than trauma, will bolster faith in democracy for generations to come.

At scatterplot, Zach Griffen situates COVID-driven suspensions of standardized testing in the longer history of testing and education. He concludes:

At every level of the U.S. education system, standardized testing plays a prominent role in organizational decision-making in ways that affect both diversity and status, and in many cases also affect the content of education (only sometimes by design). There are huge economies built up around nearly every individual test that involve tutoring, prep textbooks, and proctoring. To be sure, the coronavirus will be (indeed, already is) a catastrophe for education. Jobs will be lost, inequalities will be exacerbated in new and frightening ways, and learning will suffer. But we can also use this as an opportunity to think about and prepare for education’s future and our role in it: to reflect on what should change or stay the same, which forms of assessment we need and which we don’t. To ask ourselves: at this point in time, in the midst of a pandemic and facing an uncertain economic future, what is the purpose of education, and how should we measure our success in achieving that purpose? These are questions that academics are going to be asked a lot going forward. We should probably get started on our test prep.

At insidephilanthropy.com, Shai M. Dromi analyzes the spread of and public health response to COVID-19 in Africa by comparing it to the Ebola epidemic:

One of the most important lessons from the Ebola epidemic was that the additional stress on local healthcare facilities came at the expense of treatment for patients suffering from other diseases—in particular, chronic ones like HIV. The CDC estimates that more than 10,000 lives were lost during the epidemic to other diseases like HIV, tuberculosis and malaria. As hospitals overflowed with Ebola patients and healthcare workers succumbed themselves to the disease, little funding or working hands were available to treat those diseases. Philanthropists wanting to make an effective intervention during COVID-19 should turn to one of the most commonly neglected aspects of epidemic interventions: continuing healthcare for all medical conditions and supporting the local healthcare systems in affected countries. Not only will this strategy help patients in need during the pandemic, it will also help the country sustain its independent healthcare sector in the long run.