SOC 110 Fall 25 Midterm

Historical Methods

Techniques for researching what people did + thought in the past

• Historical bc thing being studied isn’t in present day world - happened in the past

• May be interested in a past institution

  • Origin of institution

  • Diffusion/spread of institution

Longitudinal Research

• Interview same people over long period of time 

• Methods we use to collect info about the world + methods we use to analyze the world

• Techniques for finding + evaluating sources 

  • Documentary research etc

• Also includes techniques for analyzing + synthesizing information 

  • Narratives, etc

• Form of synthesis

Who Uses Historical Methods?

historians + some sociologists
- primarily historians

Goals of Historical Research

1) Accurate description of “what happened”

2) Accurate description of people’s views + experiences

• Can go w/ goal 1 but potentially some tension between them

3) Explanation of specific historical outcomes

• Need both goal 1 + goal 2 to get goal 3

4) Explanation of general patterns

• Can go w/ goal 3 but potentially some tension between them

  • Tradeoff w/ specificity vs generality

5) Testing/refining existing theories

6) Developing new theories

• Direction different than w/ 5 - 5 starts w/ a theory + then go look for evidence to prove the theory 

• W/ 6 starting from the opposite direction - have evidence + analyze it = develop theory

Differences in Goals of Historians + Sociologists

• Historians focus more on descriptive goals - 1 + 2

  • When seeking to explain more often stick to a specific outcome - goal 3

• Historical sociologists focus more on explanation + theoretical goals (3-6)

  • Why this happened instead of just what happened 

  • Broader claims

Historical recurrence

•  patterns/repetitions, similar kinds of things happen in 1 historical period and in other historical periods

  • Ex: existence of personality cults - cults constantly being formed

Primary source

A source that was created around the time of the events/experiences described in it 

Secondary source

A source that was compiled on the basis of primary sources and/or other secondary sources 

• Most things written by scholars/researchers 

• Historian/sociologist writings

• Books by journalists

Evaluating (Written) Sources

• Authenticity

• Representativeness

• Credibility/trustworthiness

• Relevance 

• Usefulness

Evaluating (Written) Sources: Credibility/trustworthiness

The source is a sincere attempt to present an accurate account, and is an accurate account

• Motives of author 

• Accuracy of information

  • First vs secondhand accounts 

• For secondary sources - think about expertise + reputation

Evaluating (Written) Sources: Authenticity

The source is what it appears to be

• verify authorship

• authenticity of text - complete + author’s own words

  • First vs secondhand accounts 

• For secondary sources - think about expertise + reputation

Evaluating (Written) Sources: Representativeness

The source is typical of some set of people, or some set of documents 

• For primary sources:

  • Social variation in production of written materials 

  • Variation in survival of sources

  • Variation in availability of sources 

• For secondary sources:

  • Think about extent to which it’s ‘representative’ of secondary sources on topic

Evaluating (Written) Sources: Relevance/usefulness

The specific way(s) in which the source is related to a researcher’s research question

• For this class:

  • Source describes the historical outcome

  • Source presents evidence related to explaining the historical outcome

  • Source argues in favor of/against a particular explanation for the outcome

  • Source reviews someone else’s explanation for the outcome

Insurgency

a social movement challenging a government (according to McAdam)

Black insurgency

 the civil rights movement + other Black activism of the 60s (according to McAdam)

The Classical Model

A strain in the social structure changes peoples’ states of mind, leading them to form a movement

Resource Mobilization Theory

Social movements emerge when resources, such as money + labor, are available

• Need resources to meet, get signs, etc

McAdam’s Political Processes Model

Three sets of factors that explain when social movements emerge 

• Structure of political opportunities 

• Organizational strength

  • Can people mobilize organizations that provide places to meet 

  • Emphasis less on money/labor more on organizations - specifically Black churches/colleges

• Collective perceptions (“cognitive liberation”)

  • People realize they don’t have to put up w/ oppression + if work together might be able to change it

  • Nod to classical model - what people think + believe important 

• Chart from book shows how all three work together

Analysis (in general)

Breaking a thing into its constituent parts + viewing them in relation to the whole 

• In historical research possible to go back + forth between data collection + analysis

Causal Reasoning

• Why do things happen the way they do

• Outcome = thing to be explained

How to know something is a cause

• Causal order

  • Cause comes before outcome in time 

• Causal process/mechanism

• Contiguity - closeness in time + space

  • Not always though

Necessary Factor

A factor that had to be present in order for the outcome to occur

• If not X then not Y

• Relative importance 

• Ex: If the flights were cancelled 9/11 wouldn’t have happened

Sufficient Factor

A factor that inevitably led to an outcome 

• If X then Y

• If factor is present - outcome had to occur

• Ex: WWII historian argues culture of anti-semitism in Germany during 20th century led to WWII 

• More often researchers argue a set of factors is sufficient - A + B + C causes Y

  • As opposed to single factor

Necessary but not sufficient cause

The factor had to be present for the outcome to occur but only led to the outcome in combination w/ other factors

Sufficient but not necessary cause

A factor that by itself led to an outcome, but the outcome could’ve been produced by other factors

Features of (for-profit) corporations

• Businesses owned by many shareholders

  • Many people own small portions

• Corporation separate from personal property of owners 

  • Owners own shares

  • Corporation itself not a part of their personal property 

• Limited liability for owners

  • Can’t be sued 

Counterfactual Reasoning

An imagined world in which some fact of history was different than it really was

• Partly from Weber

• Should be plausible

• Particularly useful for assessing if factors are necessary

  • If not X then not Y

Features of outcomes (what scholars are trying to explain)

• Occurrence/existence of the outcome

  • Can be thought of as a dichotomous variable

    • Ex: War either happened or it didn’t happen 

• Timing (when it happened + why it happened at that time)

  • Ex: 2008 financial crash - what made it happen at that time? (proximate causes)

• Duration 

• Magnitude/scale

  • Ex: Number of people who died in a war 

Zerubavel: What are the origins of the Jewish week?

• biblical account of the Creation, which decrees people should work for six days and rest on the seventh

• originally believed to have been practiced by God when he created the universe

• number seven was regarded by many societies, including the Mesopotamians and Babylonians, as significant, and “seven-day intervals came to symbolically represent the ideas of totality and completeness, and were generally regarded as homogeneous, closed periods of time” (7).

• Zerubavel maintains that a “continuous seven-day cycle that runs throughout history paying no attention whatsoever to the moon and its phases is a distinctively Jewish invention” (8).

Zerubavel: What is the astrological week?

• The astrological week refers to a Hellenistic invention that revolves around the arrangement of the seven planets in a fixed order: Saturn, Jupiter, Mars, Sun, Venus, Mercury, Moon.

• This sequence resulted from assigning each hour in the day to a planet, starting with Saturn with the first hour, Jupiter with the second hour, etc.

• Because there are seven planets, every seven hours it restarts.

• They believed that the day belonged to whoever ruled the first hour and because of the sequence the entire first day was assigned to Saturn, and then the second one to the Sun, etc etc. 

Zerubavel: Where did the astrological week come from + how did it spread throughout the world?

• The astrological week likely originated in Alexandria during the second century BC, and evolved independently of the Jewish week.

• largely spread because of Julius Caesar’s conquest of Egypt, which spread the astrological week to Rome, which therefore spread it to the West.

Zerubavel: How did the Jewish week + the astrological week get combined into the 7 day week we have today + how did it spread through the world?

• both combined by and spread throughout the world by the Church.

• Church’s week comes from when Christ was reincarnated, which, as decreed by the Gospel, happened on the first day of the Jewish week.

• Astrology was very popular in the Roman empire and by the time the Church gained control, the astrological week had already gotten popular so they had no choice but to combine their week with the already existing astrological week.

• As the Church spread over the world, so did their week, especially because Sunday was so important.

Zerubavel: What is a calendrical contrast?

to have a different calendar from other groups of people

How did early Christians + Moslems modify the 7 day week + why did they change the week in these ways (motivation)?

• Church changed the Sabbath from Saturday to Sunday in order to distinguish themselves from the Jews.

• They also changed the first day of the week to Sunday instead of Saturn-day, possibly because Christianity has many early references to the sun.

• In Islam, Friday is the day of worship, also to distinguish them from Judaism and Christianity.

How does Zerubavel’s study show that the 7 day week is not natural but is socially constructed?

• he demonstrates how it has changed over time.

• The names for the days change, the order changes, the ‘holy’ day changes, etc etc.

• There are several different types of the seven day week - the astrological week vs the Jewish week.

• The seven day week has changed significantly over time, which shows that it is socially constructed and made up by humans

Massey + Pren: Since 1955 how has the level of legal immigration from Mexico changed over time?

• increased substantially.

• During the 50s, it was ~459,000, whereas during the 90s it peaked at 4.2 million

Massey + Pren: How has the level of illegal immigration from Mexico changed over time?

• Illegal immigration went from nearly zero in 1965 to peak at ~9.6 million in 2008. 

• “From 1980, when Warren and Passel (1987) first estimated the number of undocumented Mexicans living in the United States to be 1.13 million, the population grew to 2.04 million in 1990, reached 4.68 million in 2000, and then peaked at 7.03 million in 2008” (17). 

Massey + Pren: How were US immigration policies changed in the 60s?

• Congress capped visas at 120,000 for the Western Hemisphere, limiting the amount of immigrants that could come in from Mexico.

  • The previous racist quotas by the US had actually never applied to Mexico, so those new quotas significantly negatively impacted immigrants, especially those who would come in a cyclical cycle of coming during the summer months to work agriculture and then go back to Mexico during the winter. 

• The second change was the termination of the Bracero Program, a program that had previously arranged for temporary work visas for Mexican immigrants who wanted to do exactly as mentioned above, help the labor shortage in America by coming in and working in agriculture during warm months.

  • Congress terminated this program because they saw it as an “exploitive labor program on a par with southern sharecropping, and in 1964, over vociferous objections from Mexico, Congress voted to terminate it” (3). 

Massey + Pren: How did changes in US immigration policies unintentionally lead to increasing illegal immigration in the US?

• Basically, everyone continued doing what they had been doing, it was just illegal now.

• Massey and Pren show through a graph that “the end of the Bracero Program corresponded exactly in time with the rise of illegal migration” (5). 

• “The crux of the problem is that Congress routinely makes consequential policy decisions with scant consideration of the underlying dynamics of the social processes involved” (24). 

Massey + Pren: Describe the feedback loop

• phenomenon where “more restrictive legislation and more stringent enforcement operations generate more apprehensions, which politicians and bureaucrats can then use to inflame public opinion, which leads to more conservatism and voter demands for even stricter laws and more enforcement operations, which generates more apprehensions, thus bringing the process full circle” (9).

• This resulted in the vicious feedback loop, where restrictive policies led to rising border arrests, which promoted conservatism, which led to more restrictive policies, thereby increasing apprehension rates.

How do Massey + Pren explain the trend in legal immigration from Mexico in the late 20th century?

• The implementation of “the decision in 1965 to exempt close relatives of US citizens from the country quotas and a series of decisions from 1986 onward that systematically privileged US citizens, limited the rights and liberties of legally resident noncitizens (“green card” holders), and increased the vulnerability of noncitizens to deportation” (18).

• M + P go to explain that the quota exemptions on their own might not have caused such a steep spike in legal immigration from Latin America, but when combined with the “rising burden placed on noncitizens by US immigration legislation, they produced a dynamic interplay between naturalization and family reunification that drove legal immigration to new heights” (18).

McAdam: What is the classical model of social movements?

• when a strain in the social structure changes peoples’ states of mind, leading them to form a movement.

  • Emotional - frustration + anger 

McAdam: What is the resource mobilization model of social movements?

social movements emerge when resources, such as money + labor, are available

McAdam: What is the political process model of social movements?

 was created by McAdam + is three sets of factors that explain when social movements emerge

McAdam: Political process model factors

• structure of political opportunities, 

• organizational strength (Can people mobilize organizations that provide places to meet - Emphasis less on money/labor more on organizations - specifically Black churches/colleges), 

• and collective perceptions (People realize they don’t have to put up w/ oppression + if work together might be able to change it + nod to classical model - what people think + believe important)

McAdam: How was the structure of political opportunities unfavorable for Black political action in the US from 1876-1930?

• 1876 election = deadlocked.

• northern Republicans agreed to relax federal reconstruction efforts in the South in exchange for southern support for their candidate.

• Basically, the northern states said they would stop trying to help Black people in the south if southern states would support their candidate.

• After this, there were continuing disenfranchisement efforts, which resulted in Black voter numbers dropping exponentially.

• Also:

  • ‘Radical’ Republican vote being devalued 

  • Republicans basically abandoned the South

  • Black vote basically useless

  • No allies

McAdam: what three ways did disenfranchisement affected Black political prospects?

• “First, it destroyed their ability to bargain for political and economic gains through the adoption of a "balance of power" strategy vis-à-vis competing segments of the white population. 

• Second, it rendered the exercise of violent control measures against [Black ppl] increasingly likely by eliminating any threat of electoral reprisals against the parties responsible. 

• Finally, because of their small numbers outside the South-only percent of all [Black ppl] lived in the North and West in 1900-disenfranchisement had the practical effect of eliminating [Black ppl] as an electoral force at the national level as well.”

McAdam: What changes occurred between 1931-1954 that increased opportunities for Black political action?

• Cotton stopped being as important for the economy - most salient factor

• Black people mass migrate North bc South sucks for them

  • McAdam says less mass exodus than just leaving the specific areas that sucked

  • moved from not voting to voting

• Black vote seen as crucial in 1948 election

  • CA, IL, + OH essential in Truman’s victory + those states had absorbed 42 percent of all black net immigration between 1940 and 1950

• Democrats began to court the Black vote bc saw how effective it was

• American racism began to be used as a propaganda weapon by communists 

• Lots of racist rulings overturned

• No civil rights bills passed though

• doesn’t mean that the govt was less racist just that other conflicts emerged that took away interest

• “Federal action during this period was thus overwhelmingly reactive in nature, both in relation to the broad historical trends summarized above and in regard to immediate political pressures” (17)

McAdam: In what ways were the organizational resources of Black people in the US very limited during 1876-1930?

• Cotton = extreme social control

• Debt bondage = can never be independent farmers

• No money = no organizing

• Also violence + physical control very common to force Black ppl to comply

  • Lynchings 

• Rural life sucked so it was hard to do anything else 

  • Tired from working all day

  • Houses super spread out so didn’t really know/socialize frequently w/ neighbors

• “​​The majority of black southerners, then, were simply too poor, too geographically dispersed, and too vulnerable to oppressive controls during this period to render social insurgency very likely” (19)

• Church only well established organization - frequently only organization

  • but almost all the time not organized enough to be effective

  • Three organizational deficiencies:

    • Small size of membership

    • Absence of adequate funds

    • 1 + 2 = 3: no high caliber minister leadership that was later hallmark of protests 

• Black colleges good organization but students from more urban areas - nothing for rural ppl (majority of population)

McAdam: What changes occurred between 1931-1954 that increased the organizational strength of the Black community?

• Cotton no longer backbone of economy → sharecroppers less of a thing → Black people able to move to better places + make more money + be closer w/ other Black ppl = organizational strength

• no more cotton = no need to force Black people to farm anymore 

  • Lynchings declined

• Increased pace of urbanization

  • Supremacist violence greater in rural areas 

• Occupational gains = more money

• “As important as the actual dollar increase was the greater financial independence that resulted from urbanization and the accompanying diversification of the southern occupational structure” (22)

  • Being agriculture workers left Black people vulnerable 

• Advances in income + occupation + education

• Urban church much better than rural for organization

• Black colleges also super important 

McAdam: What were Black peoples’ collective perceptions of the prospects for challenging racial oppression between 1876-1930?

• basically just felt very hopeless bc segregation + discrimination felt permanent + immutable

• system of social control very brutal + “At a symbolic level, the daily manifestations of this system served to dramatize both the collective resolve of the white population to resist any challenge to the prevailing order and the personal risks embodied in even the most trivial instances of black defiance” (27)

• Didn’t think they could organize

McAdam: What changes occurred between 1931-1954 that increased the Black community’s optimism + sense of political efficacy? (important Supreme Court case)

• Change in federal policy = feeling of political efficacy

• Instead of overt hostility/disinterest of previous Black protests, signs of federal responsiveness

  • idea that they can actually enact change

• As protests were effective and policies were changed = more confidence in efficacy = stimulated further growth = better mobilizing efforts

•  most important Supreme Court case: the 1954 decision in Brown v. Topeka Board of Education - no segregation in schools

How does McAdam show that the classical model fails to explain the emergence of the Black movement?

• classical model places heavy emphasis on grievance/discontent

• Sees social movement activities as a reaction against a strain in the social structure 

• McAdam says discontent doesn’t explain very much - lots of people are suffering in all different contexts - just bc suffering doesn’t mean revolution

  • In many cases most oppressed people don’t rise up

• Must need means of resisting oppression - most oppressed people often don’t have those means

How does McAdam show that the resource mobilization model fails to explain the emergence of the Black movement?

• says that it tends to discount the important of “indigenous resources as a factor facilitating the generation of social insurgency.” (30)

• no significant rise in level of outside support in years preceding widespread Black insurgency

• instead outside support rises sharply following the movement  - which is in direct contrast to the claims of some resource mobilization theorists

• “Neither various measures of social strain nor the level of external support for the movement bear any significant relationship to the pace of movement activity between 1948 and 1970.” (35)

What is McAdam’s overall argument for why the Black movement emerged in the 50s?

• Structure of political opportunities 

• New deal = better employment 

• Hope

• Takes both external + internal factors into consideration

  • Resources + opportunities w/ want for change  

• Organizational strength

  • Can people mobilize organizations that provide places to meet 

  • Emphasis less on money/labor more on organizations - specifically Black churches/colleges

  • Migration from south to north

• Collective perceptions (“cognitive liberation”)

  • People realize they don’t have to put up w/ oppression + if work together might be able to change it

  • Nod to classical model - what people think + believe important 

• Chart from book shows how all three work together  

Causal Reasoning: Elements of explanation

• Actors (people who did something)

  • Sociology usually focuses on groups of ppl vs individuals 

• Motive, means, opportunity heuristic - from criminal investigations

Causal Reasoning: Elements of Explanation: Motive, means, opportunity

• Motives: reasons ppl acted the way they did

  • Must be mindful that motives may vary between individuals + outcomes not necessarily intentional 

• means/resources: the things ppl utilize in their actions to produce the outcome 

• opportunity/context: features of the environment that make the outcome possible/likely 

  • Cockpit doors not locking during 9/11

Trump admin attack on higher education - beginning

• Cancelled thousands of grants for scientific research + teaching (including history + social science)

• Withheld research funding from specific institutions (including UCLA) to pressure them to accept the admin’s demands 

• Offered a ‘compact’ to universities - preferential treatment in exchange for restrictions on academic freedom + free speech

Trump Demand Letter

• July 31 - Trump Admin sent demand letter to UCLA + cut off ~$500 mil in federal research funding

• Demands:

  • UCLA must pay US govt $1bil over 5 years

  • UCLA must revise its hiring practices to “remove explicit or implicit goals for compositional diversity based on race, sex, or ethnicity”

  • UCLA must revise admission policies to eliminate any “proxy for racial admission" including personal statements that mention race or national origin

  • UCLA must not admit foreign students who seem anti-Western

  • UCLA must further restrict protests on campus

  • UCLA must eliminate programs that support first-gen college students 

  • UCLA must stop providing hormonal treatment for trans youth (required by CA law)

  • UCLA must provide the govt w/ full access to all people, documents, data, + facilities relevant to the agreement

UCLA + Lawsuits

• Aug 4 - UC professors sued to overturn the funding cuts bc its illegal

• Aug 8 - Trump admin demanded UCLA pay $1.2 bil in settlement money (on top of other demands)

• Aug 12 - federal judge ordered Trump admin to restore the suspended grants (most of the funding has now been restored)

• Sept 15 - Council of UC Faculty Associations sued the University of CA to compel UC to publicly release the Trump Admin’s list of demands

• Sept 16 - massive coalition of faculty + employee unions sued the Trump Admin to block them from withholding funding to coerce UCLA into accepting their demands

  • Rumors that regents were negotiating behind the scenes w/ Trump Admin to make a deal

    • Newsom said if any CA university cuts a deal they will lose all their funding 

  • UC hasn’t been suing - faculty + employees single-handedly waging battle 

•  October 22 - CA court ruled that UC must release the demand letter - letter released October 24

roy: Limited liability

The idea that the shareholders of a company cannot be held liable for the actions and decisions of a corporate company even though they technically own a “percentage” of the company

roy: Socialized property

The dispersion of ownership of a corporation/company across multiple shareholders (people own a certain percentage of the shares of a certain company through stocks)

roy: how does the corporation differ from individual ownership of property?

• sole proprietorship = one person owns + personally bears all risks

• corporation = ownership divided into shares + the firm is its own legal person

  • law separates owners from the company

  • spreads risk, attracts investment from many ppl, + turns property into an impersonal, organized thing tied to the charter and the bylaws not one individual

• socialized = ownership distributed + legally separated

roy: Efficiency theory

• institutions last bc they are most efficient way to do the job

• rejected by roy

• corporations claim they won bc they best solved scale, coordination, + financing problems - cutting costs + raising output 

roy + critique of efficiency theory

• efficiency doesn’t explain timing/path

  • corporate firms needed law, courts, + political authorization

  • built through charter rules, liability rules, + court decisions, not just by ‘working best’ in the abstract

• only explains why actors might have been motivated to form large corporations, not why they were able to.

• alternative: treat corporations as social + political constructions

  • track how lawmakers + elites changed property rules, recognized corporate personhood, loosened charter limits, + normalized large firms

  • that social work made big corporations legitimate + durable 

roy: Quasi public corporations vs private

• Public corporations need to be legislatively chartered and are owned by a single individual or small group that holds all the power and liability over the company but they also make all the profit for themselves

• Private corporations are self-authorizing, permanent and profit oriented

  • private entrepreneurs wanted more flexibility and autonomy to form corporations without legislative charters; passage of general incorporation laws (allows anyone meeting basic requirements to form a  corporation)

roy: key features of corporations in the first era?

• creation method: special legislative charters w/ narrow purposes tied to public development 

• controls: explicit caps on activities, sometimes on tolls/profits, often fixed lifespans + obligations to complete named projects

• status: seen as public serving tools not private free ranging actors

• today’s contrast: modern firms are formed under open, general laws, aim at private profit, + enjoy broad powers w/ limited direct legislative oversight 

roy: what factors led to the erosion of the public corporation in mid-19th century US +  the creation of the private business corporation that exists today?

• Economic crisis of 1837

  • Failing state enterprises used by opponents of public accountability to seal off public sector from private corporations

• Procedural shift: general incorporation laws replaced case-by-case charters —> opened the door to many firms w/ fewer built in public duties

• Political-ideological shift: special charters came to look like favoritism

  • General laws signaled fairness + access but also loosened public control

  • Result: routine private business corporations 

• Anticorporation political movement split into two irreconcilable factions

  • One favoring greater public accountability

  • One advocating radical separation of public + private power + reduction of state power

Roy: What was the “corporate revolution” that occurred at the end of the nineteenth century?

• What: A wave of mergers + combinations created national, multi-unit firms

  • these used trust + later holding companies, developed management layers, + secured steady capital from banks + stock markets

  • ownership + control split - managers ran operations while dispersed shareholders owned shares

• Why (Roy’s view): not just efficiency

  • states passed enabling laws for holding companies + competed to charter firms

  • courts + financiers supported consolidation

  • politics + the law provided the scaffolding that made ‘bigness’ normal + legitimate

Roy: Era 1 - Early 19th Century:

Quasi-public charters

• Quasi bc technically privately owned but backed by the govt and supposed to only do public service projects

• corporations created one-on-one by state legislatures to do public work like canals, bridges, turnpikes, + early banking

• charters set strict limits on scope, years of operation, + profits

• lawmakers watched them closely bc they were supposed to serve public needs, not just private gain

Roy: Era 2 - mid 19th century

General incorporation + private business

• states switched to general incorporation laws

  • people could form firms w/out a special act

  • reduced day-to-day political control + made profit seeking private corporations the new normal

• states treat corporation as a legal individual

• railroads privatize, grow to unprecedented slides, + amass corporate wealth for reinvestment

Roy: Era 3 - late 19th-early 20th century

Corporate revolution

• big corporations formed trusts + holding

• firms spread across regions, hired managers to run daily operations, + separated owners from control

• national markets + finance locked in the large-scale corporate form

• railroads merge w/ manufacturing capital —> manufacturing capital merges w/ corporate capital

Roy main argument

Efficiency alone can’t explain the revolution → law and politics (elite interests, law and policy making, financial actors) (SOCIAL AGENTS) built the scaffolding that made big corporations possible and legitimate

Newman’s Rampage lecture overview: 

• Example of comparative methods

• Study cases of rampage school shootings

• First phase of study: in-depth study of 2 cases (won’t be reading)

  • Heath High School shooting 1997

  • Westside Middle School shooting 1998

  • Developed theory of rampage school shootings 

• Second phase of study: Comparative analysis of many cases (will be reading)

  • Tested their theory

  • Example of using comparison to study cases w/ same outcome 

  • Looking for ‘necessary’ factors for all cases, not just a particular case

Ragin + Amoroso’s Constructing Social Research lecture overview

• Shows how to use comparative methods to study cases w/ different outcomes

• An example of the “Boolean method”

  • When you say ‘and’ ‘not’ in search engines to weed out results 

  • ‘Dogs (not terriers)’ if want to see dogs that aren’t terriers

• Authors use term ‘comparative research’ in narrower sense than Speer