Incorporating Comparison within a World-Historical Perspective: An Alternative Comparative Method Author(s): Philip McMichael Reviewed work(s): Source: American Sociological Review, Vol. 55, No. 3 (Jun., 1990), pp. 385-397 Published by: American Sociological Association Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2095763 . Accessed: 06/11/2012 16:48 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at . http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp
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INCORPORATING COMPARISON WITHIN A WORLD-HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE: AN ALTERNATIVE COMPARATIVE METHOD PHILIPMCMICHAEL
CornellUniversity Recentcritiquesof modernization theoryhavequestionedthecomparabilityof its central organizingconcept,the "nationalsociety." The logic of comparativeinquiryrequires independentor independentuniform"cases"andformal quasi-experimental designsfor comparative generalization. Global conceptions of social change violate formal comparative requirements, necessitating an alternative form of "incorporated comparison," that takes both multipleldiachronicand singularlsynchronicforms. Incorporatedcomparisonis usedto conceptualizevariationacross timeand space when timeand space dimensionsare neitherseparatenor uniform.Thefixed unitsof analysis and world-systemtheoriesyield to an alternativestrategyof employedby modernization groundingthe analyticalunits of comparisonin the world-historicalprocesses under investigation. Recent studies illustrate this alternative to formal comparison and incorporatecomparisoninto theprocess of substantiveinquiry.
The
comparativemethod has been under scrutinylately as sociologists attemptto clarify its role in social science. Four authors' assessments of its potential divide into questions of rigorversus interpretivescope. On the side of rigor,Skocpol (1984) andRagin (1987) arguethatthe comparativemethod, when used with certainlogical strategies,can approachthe "scientific"rigorof statisticalor variable-based inquiry. On the interpretiveside, Wallerstein (1974) andTilly (1984) arguethatcomparison, when it revealsthe interconnectednessof social phenomena,can advance the cause of historically-groundedsocial theory. Where Skocpol and Ragin are concernedwith the comparative method's formal properties vis-a-vis socialscientificinquiry,WallersteinandTilly wantto employ comparisonto question the positivist' categories inherited from nineteenth-century social theory. While these alternativeconcerns are recognizable in substantiveresearch,they have not
been adequately specified in methodological terms.Thereis a lack of fit between extanttaxonomies of comparative-historical research strategiesandrecentcomparativeinquiriesthat eschew the formal comparativemethod. The comparative-historicalresearch strategies offered by Skocpol and Tilly (as representatives of the two alternativeconcerns)display a basic convergence.Whatis missing is a specification of an alternativenon-experimental"historicalcomparative"researchstrategy.To addressthat alternative,it is necessary to first evaluate the interpretivechallenge to sociological positivism. The perspectivesof Tilly andWallersteinare similar: Tilly urges the development of "historicallygroundedanalysisof big structuresand large processes as alternativesto the timeless, placeless models of social organization and social change that came to us with the nineteenth-centuryheritage"(1984, p. 2). Wallerstein contends:"Thefundamentalerrorof ahis* A version of this paper was presented at the torical social science (including ahistorical 1988 meetings of the AmericanSociological Asso- versions of Marxism) is to reify parts of the ciation. For their constructivesuggestions, I espe- totality into such units and then to compare cially thankWalterGoldfrank,TerenceK. Hopkins, these reified structures"(1974, p. 388). "Sociand FrederickH. Buttel as well as Craig Calhoun, ety," for example, is assumed to be a self-eviHarrietFriedmann,Jess Gilbert, Gary Green, Tsz dent and discrete social unit, and therefore Man Kwong, JosephPark,RichardRubinson,Marcomparable.Both consider such assumptions garet Somers, Dale Tomich, RichardWilliams, and ahistorical, as modem social change is not several anonymousreviewers. I The term"positivist"here designates the appli- simply the propertyof individualsocieties. However, the intellectual goals of Wallercation of natural-science-likemodels to social phenomena. stein and Tilly differ. For Wallerstein, social AmericanSociological Review, 1990,Vol. 55 (June:385-397)
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386 change can only be understoodas an historical system that operates at a different level from the conventional"nationalsociety." Cross-national comparison must place nations within systemicprocessesoperatingatlevels "beneath" and "above"the nation state. The world capitalist system, which includes statesas its essential political components,is the ultimateunit of comparison(1974, p. 390). Tilly, however, is more agnostic, believing that modem social change arises from two distinct, but interconnected, processes of development of the nation-states system on the one hand and the worldwidecapitalistsystemon the other(1984, p. 147). He details various comparativestrategies open to the analyst,including"encompassing comparisons"thatsituatephenomenawithin trans-societalstructures(1984, pp. 80-3). Where Wallersteinargues that the modem world system with its "transsocietalstructures"has been in existence for the last five centuries,Tilly is content to speculate that encompassing comparison will "come into its own" and secure a place in our "intellectualtoolbox" as we perceive moreclearlythe networksorderingsocial life (1984, p. 147). While cautious about the risks of functionalist explanation in "encompassing comparisons,"2Tilly neverthelessconcludes:
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ing an all-encompassingworld system. Rather than using "encompassingcomparison"- a strategythatpresumes a "whole"that governs its "parts"- it progressivelyconstructsa whole as a methodologicalprocedureby giving context to historical phenomena. In effect, the "whole" emerges via comparativeanalysis of "parts"as moments in a self-forming whole. I call this incorporatedcomparison. "Incorporatedcomparison"stems from the critiqueof "modernization theory,"andincludes the theoretical proposition that international organizationis continuallyevolving. The goal is not to develop invarianthypothesesvia comparisonof more or less uniform"cases,"but to give substanceto a historicalprocess (a whole) through comparison of its parts. The whole, therefore,does not exist independentof its parts. Whetherconsideringnation-statesor a singular world system, neitherwhole nor partsare permanentcategories or units of analysis. Generalizationis historicallycontingentbecause the units of comparisonare historically specified. In short,comparisonbecomes the substanceof the inquiryratherthanits framework. This essay proceeds from a discussion of extant taxonomies to a critical review of comparative methodology and the challenge of world-system theory to that methodology. It concludes with an illustrationof studies using Encompassing comparisons, however, deserve "incorporatedcomparison"to develop historimore attention than they have received. Encompassingcomparisonshave twin advantages: cally-grounded social theory. I characterize directly taking accountof the interconnectedness comparativesociology in ideal-typicaltermsin of ostensibly separateexperiences and providing two senses: (1) by accentuatingthe formal asa strongincentive to groundanalyses explicitly in sumptions governing comparative methodolthe historical contexts of the structures and ogy, and (2) by focusing on macro, cross-naprocesses they include (1984, p. 147). tionalcomparison,since this is the comparative I pursuethe Wallerstein/Tillypath,butrefor- sociology thatWallersteinand Tilly address. mulate the character of that which "encompasses," and distinguish the procedure from CONVERGINGTAXONOMIES:SKOCPOL extant taxonomies of comparativeand histori- AND TILLY cal sociological strategy.An emergentform of "historical-comparative"inquiry parallels the Incorporatedcomparisonis a researchstrategy rise of world-system theory and blends the not considered in the individual taxonomies mutualconcernsof Wallersteinand Tilly. Sys- developed by Skocpol and Tilly. Table 1 sumtemic phenomenaarecomparedwithoutassum- marizes Skocpol's and Tilly's formulationsof alternativeresearchagendasandcomparesthem 2 At issue is the question of case independence, with one of my own. Theoreticalgoals are diwhich is a formal requirementof theory testing in vided into the application of theory, such as the comparativemethod. Thus Collins asks of the establishingtheplausibilityof a causalhypotheworld-systemperspective:"Suchconceptions,however, raisea methodologicalproblem:If thereis only sis, and the construction of theory, such as one world system, how can we test a theory? The hypothesis-buildingvia comparative analysis numberof historical instances reduces to one case, linking causes and outcomes across cases. Rebecause everythingis connectedtogether"(1984, p. search goals are divided into formal concerns with the status of causal arguments(i.e., with 341).
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COMPARATIVEWORLD-HISTORICALANALYSIS Table 1. Typology of Selected Strategiesfor ComparativeResearch TheoreticalGoals ResearchGoals
Application
Construction
Skocpol's research strategies for historical sociology
Formal (Concernwith "stateof knowledge")
Substantive (Concernwith "stateof theworld")
Applicationof theoretical model to history
2 Comparative-analytic
4
3 Applicationof concept to history
Tilly's strategies of comparison Formal (Concernwith "stateof knowledge")
Substantive (Concernwith "stateof the world")
2 Encompassingcomparison (juxtapositionof cases in time and space reveal systemic properties)
Comparative-analytic: Variation-findingand Universalizingcomparison (to establishprincipleof variationamong cases)
3
4
Individualizingcomparison (contrastingcases of a given phenomenonto reveal particularities)
A composite of research strategies for historical sociology Formal (Concernwith "stateof knowledge")
Substantive (Concernwith "stateof the world")
1 Generalizing(use of history to confirmhypotheses)
2 Comparative-analytic(specifies causal regularitiesin varying or convergentoutcomes)
3
4
Particularizing(conceptualization of an instancevia ideal-typical analysis)
Incorporatedcomparisons(uses comparisonin reconstructing an historicalconfigurationposited as a self-formingwhole)
"thestateof knowledge")and substantiveconcerns with some historicalprocess or situation (i.e., with "the state of the world"). These researchstrategiescan be understood as a set of "moments"in the researchprocess, that may presuppose one another - for example, a focus on the statusof a formal theory may depend on prior theory constructionvia comparative-analyticanalysis. On the other hand,they can be understoodas relatively distinct research emphases. In the top panel, Skocpol's three "researchstrategiesin historical sociology" can be classified schematically as: the applicationof a general theory to explain historical phenomena (box 1); the con-
structionof a theoryof causalregularitiesusing formal comparative-analyticmethods (box 2); and the use of a key concept or set of concepts in historicalanalysis to meaningfullyelaborate a particularphenomenon,whethera case study or informalcomparison(box 3). This is a typology of strategies;as Skocpol claims they are not "hermeticallysealed from one another"and "creative combinations are and always have been practical"(1984,p. 362). An implicitfourth strategy(box 4), constructinga theoreticalaccount of a recurringor complex historicalconfiguration,is not addressedby Skocpol. Skocpol's research strategies for historical sociology are quite compatible typologically
388 with the more focused comparativestrategies proposedby Tilly (middle panel of Table 1). I argue that Tilly's four strategies of comparison: individualizing - contrasting "specific instancesof a given phenomenonas a means of graspingthe peculiaritiesof each case" (1984, p. 82), universalizing, variation-finding,and encompassingcan be reducedto three distinct forms of inquiry. Universalizing comparison establishing"thatevery instance of a phenomenon follows essentially the same rule"; and variation-findingcomparison- establishing "a principleof variationin the characteror intensity of a phenomenonby examining systematicdifferencesamonginstances"(1984, p. 82), are in fact alternativeforms of comparative-analyticprocedure.Both Skocpol, in associatingthe strengthof comparativeanalysiswith a combinationof Mill's "methodof agreement" and"methodof difference"(1984, pp. 378-80), and Ragin, in building what he refers to as a "synthetic"comparativestrategy(1987, pp. 824), indirectlyendorsesuch a classification.This comparative-analytictype fits in box 2. "Encompassing comparison," a strategy employing a systemic ideal-type to explain variationamongcases "asconsequencesof their relationshipsto the whole" (Tilly 1984,p. 125), is placedin box 1. Tilly's depictionof Rokkan's "conceptualmaps"andhis claim thatthey "lack dynamism"(1984,p. 139)suggest thatthis strategy is an applicationof a theoreticalmodel to history."Individualizingcomparison"is placed in box 3 since the emphasis is on particularizing a phenomenon via informal comparison. Tilly's taxonomyalso leaves box 4 empty. In the bottom panel of Table 1 I present a composite typology that combines the ideas of Skocpol and Tilly. Most important,I consider the meaningof the logical cell (box 4) thatneither Skocpol or Tilly address.This cell represents an interpretiveapproach,focusing on the constructionof causal historicalanalysis without recourse to formal methodological proceduresor a formaltheory. A typology of strategiesdoes not mean there is no relation among the types. For instance, some analystsmight see a sequence among the strategieswhere the missing strategyperforms a "groundbreaking"role. Thus, box 4 might inform a comparative-analyticconstructionof hypotheses from additionalcases (box 2), or a generalizingtheory (box 1), or a more specific conceptualizationto be elaboratedin a particular instance (box 3). Relations among the vari-
AMERICANSOCIOLOGICALREVIEW ous strategies may be sequential, supplementary,or complementary.I arguefor the relative autonomyof the strategies,especially as I see "incorporated comparison"as ananalyticalstrategy in which theoryconstructionis historically specific. Eachstrategypursuesa particularlevel of analysis governing the scope of the data addressedandthe claims of the research.In that sense, each strategyhas its own researchfocus. ENCOMPASSINGCOMPARISONOR INCORPORATEDCOMPARISON? It is particularlyimportantto distinguish "incorporated"from"encompassing"comparison. Tilly defines "encompassingcomparisons"as comparisons that "select locations within [a large] structureor process andexplain similarities or differences among those locations as consequencesof theirrelationshipsto the whole" (1984, p. 123). Wallersteinidentifiesthe "large structureor process"as the modem world system: "an alternativemodel with which to engage in comparativeanalysis, one rootedin the historicallyspecific totality which is the world capitalisteconomy." He continues: "We hope to demonstratethereby that to be historically specific is not to fail to be analyticallyuniversal" (1974, p. 391). Demonstratingthe existence of the system as an historicalentity leads him to employ an "illustrative" method of comparison using a single entity (as distinct from conventional "analytic"comparison of multipleentities),which producesfunctionalist history (Bonnell 1980, p. 165). Tilly likewise observesthat"encompassingcomparisons"risk the danger of functionalistexplanationwhere the whole determinesbehaviorof the partsand he concludes: "Lovers of risk should try encompassingcomparisons"(1984, p. 124). The risk, it seems to me, is not in employing a global perspective in which comparison is among components of a larger entity, but in how that perspective is constructed.If we begin, as Tilly suggests, with "a mental map of the whole system and a theoryof its operation" (1984, p. 125), then we are likely to proceed with an uncontestedunit of analysis. Tilly argues thatthe map andtheoryarebest left provisional, so thatthey "will improvein use"(1984, p. 125). Nevertheless, the procedureputs the development of historically-groundedsocial theoryat risk by presuminga systemic unit and unit cases within which historical observation takes place. This is common to formal com-
COMPARATIVEWORLD-HISTORICALANALYSIS procedures,whichpresuppose parative-analytic "casesas wholes, andthey comparewhole cases with each other" (Ragin 1987, p. 3). Preconceptions about cases as analytical units constraininvestigationby shaping conceptualization of causal regularitiesinferredfrom common patternsacross "cases."In eithermode of comparison,the analystmust assumethatcommon patterningderives from intrinsicproperties of either "unit-cases"or the global system encompassing"cases." Use of preconceived units is an overriding "experimental"principle of analytic comparison (e.g., Przeworskiand Teune 1970). It removes the unit of analysis from theoretical contention and limits the scope and possibilities of historicalexplanation.As a result,comparativeinquirytends to be constructedaround an "external"relationshipbetween "cases"and theory,where"cases"or "wholes"areabstracted from theirtime/place setting. As an alternative to comparing discrete "cases"to mediatethe (presumed)poles of "the general"and "the particular,"the analyst can use "incorporatedcomparison"in which interrelatedinstancesare integralto, and define, the generalhistoricalprocess. Put anotherway, the particulars directly realize the general (c.f. Moore1958,p. 151),which cannotbe abstracted as a formaltheory. comparison"researchstratThe"incorporated egy can take two forms. The first is a multiple form, in which instancesare analyzedas products of a continuouslyevolving process in and across time.An example might be the development of the state system as an emerging configurationof states interrelatedalong several dimensions-,bothcontextual(capitalist,or military-industrial epochs) and compositional (economic hierarchy,geo-political relations). Here,comparisonreveals andposits a systemic process throughthe juxtapositionof instances in time. The second is a singular form, analyzing variation in or across space within a worldhistorical conjuncture. This is a "cross-sectional"comparisonof segmentsof a contradictory whole in which the segments (e.g., social units, cultures,or belief systems) "belong"to distinctsocial times. They arecomparableprecisely becausetheyarecompetitivelycombined, and thereforeredefined, in an historical conjuncture with unpredictable outcomes. Examples of such overlappingsegments are historical combinations of peasant and market
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economies, slave and wage labor systems, metropolitan and colonial cultures, etc. The comparativejuxtaposition of these segments reveals the contradictorydynamics(along part/ part and part/whole dimensions) that provide theirhistoricaltextureand that of the whole. The fact thatthe firstform has a generalizing thrust and the second form a particularizing thrustdoes not rule out combinationswherethe particularand the general mutually condition one another.The strategic division lies in the relative emphases on space and time coordinates in the analysis of historical configurations. Overall,this strategyreformulatestherole of comparison,subordinatingit to a substantive historical problem. Comparison becomes an "internal"rather than an "external"(formal) featureof inquiry,relatingapparentlyseparate processes (in time and/orspace) as components of a broader,world-historicalprocess or conjuncture.In short, this strategy seeks to avoid the formalconstructionof units of comparative analysis central to the comparative analytic method. LIMITSOF THE COMPARATIVEANALYTIC METHOD In comparative analytic inquiry, theory and concepts can only approach "generality"by units.The juxtaposingtwo or more "particular" goal is to find invarianceby analyzing several configurational"cases"(RaginandZaret1983, p. 744). In cross-nationalcomparison,for example, this appearsin the procedureof juxtaposing national societies assumed to be unrelated in time and space. This assumptionderives from evolutionarytheory (Bock 1956, p. 90), in which national societies are self-contained systems with common ontogenetic patterns. In this theory, the "national society" emerged in the nineteenth century as a comparativeconstruct,distinguishedcategorically from traditional societies in an evolutionary sequence. Nisbet writes: "Fundamentalto the ComparativeMethod and its assumed validity as a body of evidence are the very preconceptions - conclusions, too, actually - of the theoryof social evolutionthatthe Comparative Method purportedlyverifies" (1969, p. 190). Such premises formalize the comparative method in so far as the idea of evolving national societies (each independentlyreplicating a common systemic process) fulfills the criterion of uniformityof unit cases (Zelditch 1973,
390 p. 282). In principle, it allows indiscriminate cross-nationalcomparison.3 More important,the notion of separate,holistic national societies encourages comparative abstraction.Zelditch claims: "Thatgeneralization requires abstractionfollows simply fromthe uniquenessof wholes"(1973, pp. 2789). But this assumes uniqueculturalconfigurationsin societiesunconnectedin time andspace. It eliminatesthe possibility of a differentorder of generalization- an inverse procedurethat would posit the distinctivenessof modem culturalconfigurationsas productsandcreatorsof a connective historicalprocess (see Robertson and Lechner 1985). But to posit historical distinctiveness is a contradictionin terms if the unit of analysis correspondsto the unit of historical variance. One solution is to employ a unit of analysis that is not the nationalsociety, as world-systemtheory has done, by declaring that nation-statesare partial institutions of a broader,singular,global economy (Wallerstein 1983, p. 133). The frameof referencefor social change becomes a global unit of analysis.Thus Bach claims: "Long-heldstrategiesof concept formation and comparativeanalysis are challenged by the insistence upon singular processes as the starting point for inquiry...." (1980, p. 297).
AMERICANSOCIOLOGICALREVIEW the state, or nation, or people" - the world economy "within which there is an ongoing division of labor" becomes the site of social change (Wallerstein1983, p. 155). But the shift in levels of analysis is not simply an enlargement of view. The world system is not merely the site of social change, it is more the fundamentalsource of social change.One statement of this perspectiveis the following conceptualizationof the stateas neithera universal nor a discretecategory: Stateness ... is not a generic categoryof political life - whose variedforms areto be tracedwithin and across civilizations - but an historically specific category,one distinctiveto therelationally formedjurisdictions-the sovereignties-of the (initially) European-centeredinterstatesystem. It is a category conceptually given by, because factually imposed by, the developmentprocesses of the capitalist world-economy (Hopkins and Wallerstein1981, p. 245).
In positing the encompassing world system as the unit of analysis, the theory reformulates the conventionalbalancingact between generality and particularity.Analytic comparison takes historical diversity as a given and formally juxtaposes such particularityto produce general concepts. However, the world-system perspective offers alternative-epistemological assumptions:(1) that we are dealing in social of an integratedmodem world, and categories WORLD-SYSTEMTHEORY'S that they are not discrete, so the therefore (2) CHALLENGEAND LIMITS particularexpresses the general. Consider Wallerstein's account of incorpoWorld-systemtheory's epistemological interventionconcernedthe specificationof the arena rationof the Indiansubcontinent,the Ottoman of social action.4The shift was from the na- empire, the Russian empire, and West Africa tional society as a self-evident unit of analysis into the world system. He employs an "encomto the world economy as an historical social passing comparison"of the four more or less simultaneous processes where each "process system. Insteadof the "politico-culturalunitderived ... from the need of the world-econI Uniformity of units is a theoretical requireomy to expand its boundaries,a need which ment it does not mean that all existing (national) societies fulfill this criterion. According to was itself the outcome of pressuresinternalto Zelditch,"intelligiblecomparisons"demandthatthe the world-economy"(Wallerstein1989, p. 129). methodological rules be complemented with sub- Determiningthe point, or event, of "incorporastantiveknowledge of the societies underinvestiga- tion" in which "some significant production tion to produce relevant comparison.This includes processes in a given geographic location beallowing "unique" transnational or case-specific come integral to various of the commodity processes to guide selection of cases (Elder 1976, p. chains that constitute the ongoing divisioning 213; Ragin 1981, p. 114; and see Skocpol 1979, of labor of the capitalist world-economy"inchapter1). It also includesWeber'sideal-type(1949, volves identifyingresponses"tothe ever-changp. 93), which mediatestheory and historybecause it is distilled from historyand yet is createdaccording to some criterionof rationalitynot historicallygiven (see Kocka 1985, p. 141). 4 The epistemological shift is a substantiverevision of Parsons'snotion of a social system of socie-
ties (Parsons1973, p. 107), which qualifiedthe original evolutionist premise of national societies as social systems. While Parsons's notion derived from societies themselves, Wallersteinis skepticalof the utility of the concept of "society."
COMPARATIVEWORLD-HISTORICALANALYSIS ing 'marketconditions' of this world-economy (whateverthe sourceof these changes)in terms of efforts by those who control these production processesto maximizethe accumulationof capital within this market"(Wallerstein 1989, p. 130). In concreteterms, in each instancethe "emergenceof a three-tieredspatialspecialization withina zone 'export'cash crops, 'local market' food crops, and 'crops' of migrant workers- has been a telltale sign of incorporation"(Wallerstein1989, p. 138). In world-systemtheory,social concepts cannot be abstractedfrom their place/time dimensions as they can in formalcomparison. To focuson certainseeminglysimilarconditions those invariousplacesatvarioustimes;to abstract conditionsfromtheirplace-timesettings;andto intothecausesorconsequences abstractly, inquire, of theconditionsis to proceedpreciselyintheone wayclearlyruledoutof courtby theworld-system perspectiveon socialchange or world-historical (Hopkins1978,p. 212). Fromthis perspective,comparativegeneralization loses its point: "It is the a priori elimination of eachcase's distinctivenessthatthe world system's approachrules out, not the claim that there are comparabilities or similarities" (Hopkins 1978, p. 213). The differenceis twofold: (1) in conventionalcomparison,the units are themselves analytical points of departure, whereasin world-systemstudies they are-units of observationof systemic processes (analytically defined); and (2) generalizationfrom the comparativeoperation is intended to be substantiveratherthan logical. World-systemtheory's limits lie in its formalism.Like formalcomparison,it presumesa whole, an historical system "whose future is inscribed in its conception" (Howe and Sica 1980, p. 255). The determinacyof the system is both conceptualand real - an all-encompassing worldwide division of labor. Wallerstein writes: "My own unit of analysis is based on the measurablesocial reality of interdependent productionactivities, what may be called an 'effective social division of labor' or, in code language,an 'economy"'(1979, p. 270). Inother words, the unit of analysis is equated with the object of analysis (Friedmann1980). This is the centralambiguity.By mergingthe concept of the world-system (as a distributional mechanismin lieu of a single political center, qua ideal type) with its empirical scope, the world-systemperspectivehas no choice but to prefigurehistory.
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INCORPORATEDCOMPARISON An alternativeto a preconceivedconcretetotality in which partsaresubordinatedto the whole is the idea of an emergenttotalitysuggestedby "incorporatedcomparison."Here totality is a conceptualprocedure, ratherthan an empirical or conceptual premise. It is an imminent ratherthan a primafacie propertyin which the whole is discovered through analysis of the mutualconditioningof parts.A conception of totalityin which parts(as relationalcategories) revealandrealizethe changingwhole (cf. Green and Fairweather1984) overcomes the rigidity of world-system theory and builds on its insights. In constructinga holistic interpretation of an historical process, the unit of analysis neednot be simultaneouslythe empiricalwhole. As a method of inquiry, a world-historical perspectiveconceptualizes "instances"as distinct mutually-conditioningmoments of a singular phenomenon posited as a self-forming whole.6It is concernedwith reducingthe "external"oppositionalrelationbetweentheoryand history - an oppositionembeddedin generalizing strategiesand the use of a priori units of analysis - and promotingan "internal"relation between theory and history.7It is an alterI This parallels Marx's historical method of developing concrete concepts in which a social category is conceptualizedas "arichtotalityof manydeterminationsandrelations"(Marx 1973, p. 100). For example, the concept of "wage labor"(as a component of the "capital"relation)was not an empirical concept - wage laborwas not prevalentat the time nor a singularrelation.It presupposeda long history of social and political transformationinvolving dispossession of peasantriesandconstructionof a world market- both of which were decisive and related preconditionsof the emergenceof capital.The manysided determinationsof the concept of "wage labor" concretizedit historicallyat the same time as it was used in Marx's theoretical schema as an abstract analyticaldevice. The goal of Marx's method is to give historical context to the empirical problem at hand, i.e., to concretize it as a phenomenonin time and space (see Sayer 1987). 6The term"self-formingwhole" refersto the dialectial conceptionof totality in which "the partsnot only internallyinteractandinterconnectboth among themselves and with the whole, but also that the whole cannotbe petrifiedin an abstractionsuperior to the facts, becauseprecisely in the interactionof its partsdoes the wholeform itself as a whole" (Kosik, 1976, p. 23). 7 Developing an "internalrelationbetween theory and history"refers to the conceptualizationof his-
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context, realizing Veblen's insight concretely, Moore representsthe transnationalextension of commodity relations as "the commercial impulse," a quite abstractideal-type. Furthermore, such causal generalityproduces a comparative design that rules out any cumulative interaction between the states concerned (Johnson 1980, p.51). Their individual modernizing phases/sequences are so varied in processual and chronological terms that an implicit world-historicalsequence is quite indeterminate. A better example of the multiple form is Walton's study, Reluctant Rebels (1984). It redefinesthe theoreticalfield of studiesof revolutionby reconceiving"nationalrevolts"with a global dimensionratherthansimply as discrete nationalevents with common conditions. Juxtaposing the Huk rebellion in the Philippines, the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya, and Colombia's La Violencia, Walton characterizes them as "integralpartsof continuousstrugglesthatbegan to take on definable features at the turnof the definite ones by the 1920s) in reToa verylimitedextentthesethreetypes. . . may century(and alternative routesandchoices.Theyare sponse to the socioeconomic inequalities and constitute muchmoreclearlysuccessivehistoricalstages. dislocations producedby the incorporationof relation local and largely precapitalistsocieties into the As suchtheydisplaya limiteddeterminate to each other.The methodsof modernization global economy" (Walton 1984, p. 169). In chosenin one countrychangethe dimensionof effect, Waltonaddressesrelated,parallelevents the problemfor the nextcountrieswho takethe in the evolution of the state system as an ongostep, as Veblenrecognizedwhenhe coinedthe ing, general process manifested in particular now fashionable term, 'the advantages of nationalsettings (althoughthe feedback effect backwardness' (Moore1967,pp.413-14). of the instances on the general process is disMoore's notion of determinacy,the general- counted, perhapsbecause of the state-building izing medium, is quite abstract.It is, in fact, focus). Walton'sreformulationof "nationalrevolts" close to a moral vision "of the tidal flow of history, a flow that encompasses crucial pas- directly addresses the world-historicaldimensages of violent change in a numberof socie- sion, employing a theory of internationalpatties" as "the unique history of humankind" terning over time. His study responds to (Smith 1984, p. 333). As such, it poses no theo- Skocpol's States and Social Revolutions by retical problem of determinacy,evidenced in broadeningher "exacting"definitionof "social his choice of analyticalcategories and the re- revolution"to include more recent and more searchdesign. In a study thatpotentiallycould limited rebellions within a broader epochal place national cases within a world market definition. He concludes: "In the historical processof capitalistrevolutionthatbegins with tory from the formativerelationsamong the facts at the classical Europeaninstances, national renativeperspectivebecauseit views comparable social phenomena as differentiatedoutcomes or momentsof an historicallyintegratedprocess, whereas conventional comparison treats such social phenomenaas parallel cases. The distinctionlies in the initial conceptualization of the coordinatesof the inquiry,which is the point of the formal/substantivedistinction of researchgoals in Table 1, and which can now be illustratedfor the two forms of incorporated comparison. The multipleform of incorporatedcomparison. The multiple form of incorporatedcomparisonanalyzes a cumulativeprocess through time- and space-differentiatedinstances of an historically singular process. Barrington Moore's (1967) Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy informs, but does not adequately exemplify, this comparativeperspective. Moore's alternative"modernizing"routes/ ideal types (democracy,fascism, and communism) arepoliticalphasesof a combinedworldhistoricalprocess of modernization.
hand. It is a dialecticalprocedurein which "logical investigationindicateswherehistoricalinvestigation a process of abstractionin which the analystmoves begins, and that in turn complements and presup- back andforthbetween partsand whole, developing poses the logical" (Kosik 1976, p. 29). This refersto the complexity and form of their interrelations,and the distinctionbetween the method of investigation in so doing concretizing both. Thus, an "historical and the method of exposition in which "that with fact is in a sense not only the prerequisite for which science initiates its exposition is alreadythe investigation but is also its result"(Kosik 1976, p. resultof research"(Kosik 1976, p. 16), i.e., the theo- 25). In the process of conceptualization,facts bereticalprocessingof data derivingfrom phenomena come historically concrete by locating them in a recognizedto be dynamicallyinterrelated.Theoryis complex and dynamiccontext.
COMPARATIVEWORLD-HISTORICALANALYSIS volts are another stage that now shades into new forms that emerge with the international political economy of late capitalism"(Walton 1984,pp.207-8). Thedifferenceis thatWalton's comparativestrategylocates revolts in a cumulative historical context, whereas Skocpol's comparativestrategyclassifies the threeclassic revolutions(France,Russia, and China)by isolating theircommon configurativepatterns(cf. Burawoy1989). Skocpol's "transnationalcontexts" that impinge on the three state organizationsremain relatively abstract,conceived as "modernization" pressures(Skocpol 1979, p. 286). Maintainingthe irreducibilityof statesandthe world marketis undoubtedlya theoreticalchoice, but it also coincides with the formal conditions of the comparativemethod, which "assumesthat the contingentelements observedas partof the phenomenaare the same over time and space" (Bach 1980, p. 302). The comparativemethod specifiesthe sufficientandnecessaryconditions for socially-transformingrevolutions, but in doing so the states in questionare comparedas cases with common conditions and destinies (the prototypicalmodernbureaucraticstate).In other words, comparative logic produces a conceptionof state-formationas historicallyand theoreticallyunaffectedby the changingorganizational principles and structureof the world economy (cf. McMichael 1987a). In short, conventionalcomparativedesign discountsthe world-historicalsignificance of modern social revolutions. Arguing that "our interest centers more on understandingnationalrevoltsthanon classifying them"(Walton 1984, p. 175), Walton employs an alternativeform of generalizationthat is not abstractedfrom cases but emerges as an historically-situatedgeneralizationspecifying "nationalrevolts"as particularforms of "capitalist revolution."Generalizationdependsprecisely upon simultaneouslylocating anddifferentiatingthe revolts. Walton offers a formula for "incorporatedcomparison" in which he maintainsthat"themost fertile avenue toward greaterrefinementlies not with the conceptual premiseof separateuniversesbutalongthe same roadof continuitymarkedby differencesassociatedwith the natureof the revolutionarysituation,class structure,andworldsystemimpact" (Walton 1984, p. 188). Another example of the multiple form of "incorporated comparison" is Anderson's (1974) Lineages of the AbsolutistState, which
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investigates the phenomenonof absolutismas an historical interludebetween the feudal and capitalistepochs. Absolutism was not a singular occurrence: ... the storyof Absolutismhas many,overlapping beginnings and separate, staggered endings. Its underlyingunity is real andprofound,but it is not thatof a linearcontinuum.... The firstbourgeois revolutions occurred long before the last metamorphosesof Absolutism, chronologically (Anderson 1974, p. 10).
In spite of this, Andersonhas a conceptionof absolutismthat he develops througha combinationof theoreticalandhistoricalanalysis.He states: "The aim of this study is to examine EuropeanAbsolutism simultaneously'in general' and 'in particular':that is to say, both the 'pure' structuresof the AbsolutistState, which constitute it as a fundamentalhistorical category, and the 'impure' variantspresented by the specific and diverse monarchies of postmedieval Europe"(Anderson1974, p. 7). Thus absolutism,seen as a politicized form of class rule by the European aristocracy, obtained throughoutEuropein various"national"guises. At the same time, absolutism was intrinsically world-historical.Absolutist states shared processes (of recoveryof aristocraticpower via political centralization)precisely because they inhabiteda relationalsettingresponsiblefortheir creation as territorially-based(as opposed to dynastically-based)regimes in the first place. In these terms, state-buildingwas an international process, with "national"variantsshaped by this setting. The singularform of incorporatedcomparison. The singularform of "incorporatedcomparison"analyzes variationin or across space at an historicalconjuncture.It differs from the multipleform in thatit focuses on the multilayered characterof a social configurationrather than on its replicationacross time. Within the world-historicalframe of reference,the singular form has a particularizingthrust, whereas themultipleformhas a generalizingthrust.They share the goal of historical specificity, but the formerfocuses on a cross-sectionalanalysis in time (e.g., the conjuncture),whereas the latter focuses on process throughtime (e.g., the era). These foci are not mutually exclusive and a combinationis both feasible and enhancing. Perhaps the best example is Polanyi's The Great Transformation(1957) which employs both forms of incorporatedcomparisonin its overall critique of the ideology of economic
394 liberalism.Polanyi reconstructsthe nineteenth centuryas a contradictoryconjuncturein which the self-regulatingmarketreorganizessocial and political life - from the labormarket,through the interstatesystem, to the internationaleconomy. Here the comparisonof the substantivist (pre-capitalist)conception with the utilitarian conception of "economy"frames the critique and explains the countermovements to the marketsystem. On the otherhand,Polanyi identifies the institutionalizationof the nation-statesystemwith the imposition of the gold standard(although he discounts Britain's hegemonic role). He views the era as one in which the self-regulating mechanismof the gold standard(as institutional anchor of world commodity markets) subordinatednationaleconomic policy to currency stability.This was achieved throughthe institutionalframeworkof economic (central banking) and political (constitutionalism)accountability-both key elementsof state-building. The goal of currencystabilityforced state managersto internalizethe exigencies of world tradethroughbudgetarypriorities,which in turn affected domesticpolitics, generatingcountermovementsto marketdiscipline.The varietyof nationalpoliticalresponsesto the impactof the marketandits politicalmanagementprovidesa comparativeaccount of the social contention generatedin theprocessof Europeanstate-building. In sum, Polanyi's work combines both forms of comparisonin analyzingthe periodof economic liberalism as both a contradictory conjunctureand a harbingerof political reaction leading to the greattransformation. The singularform of "incorporatedcomparison" is also exemplified in the work of Friedmann. Challengingworld-systemtheory functionalism in which "themarketand the hierarchy of nations are coterminous"(Friedmann 1980, p. 248), she conceptualizesinternational structuringin termsof "threemutuallydependent but analyticallydistinct factors: state/state economicprocesses,and relations,transnational class or sectoralrelationswithinnations"(Friedmann 1982, p. S253).8 In her account of the
AMERICANSOCIOLOGICALREVIEW world wheat marketbetween 1873-1935, she argues that capitalistproductionof wheat was displaced by household production through conjuncturalmechanisms in the world economy, including changing technologies of production and circulation and the role of New Worldstate-buildingin securingfrontierlands. "Specialized (household) commodity production" on the U.S. plains successfully rivalled British "capitalistproduction"in what otherwise was an era of capitalist expansion based on the new social importanceof wage labor (both in terms of productionand wage-goods consumption). Proceedingwithin a world-economicframework, defined empirically as a world market "in which one price confrontedproducerseverywhere,"Friedmannemploys a comparative analysis that simultaneouslydistinguishesand relates the producing regions conceptually (Friedmann1978 p. 546). The relationshipbetween the Europeancapitalistproducerand the New World commodity produceris mediated by price movements, and the outcomes of this relationshipcrystallize in and throughthe national political economy. The whole emerges throughthe action of its parts, namely, processes of class formation "with origins in the world economy, but a location and political expression within nationaleconomies" (Friedmann 1982, p. S255). Friedmann'sstudy of the post-WorldWarII international food regime9 follows a similar logic of inquiry in which the conjunctureis explicitly defined as a political structuringof the internationalfood order via "complementary national policies." She examines two momentsof the postwarfood order:the immediatepostwarregimewhose "principleaxis was food aid from the United States to formerly self-sufficient agrarian societies" (1982, p.
world marketrelations(includingrivalrywith Britain), and regional plantationrelations. Each set of relationships was a necessary, but not sufficient, condition of the characterof slave production.The principlerelationship- of slaves to masters- actively realized these contextualconstraintsand ulti8 This kind of fluid multilayeredanalysiscaptures mately shaped them as an interactionof place in the interconnections in motion, exemplified in world time. 9 For a furtherdevelopmentof the concept of the Tomich's (1990) account of the decline of plantation slavery in the French colony of Martinique. food regimein which the historicaldynamicbetween Tomich employs several analytic levels as interre- capitalistagricultureand the nation-statetranscends lated determinationsof modem slavery.Thus, slave the economic coherence of the state (compelling a labordynamicsin the Frenchcolonies stemmedfrom rethinkingof analytical units), see Friedmannand the interactionbetween the Frenchcolonial system, McMichael (1989).
COMPARATIVEWORLD-HISTORICALANALYSIS S248), and the decomposition of this order during the 1970s into a more market-oriented regimecharacterizedby higherfood prices.The "worldeconomy" is conceptualizedas the interactionof nationalpolitical economy and internationalprice relations - the latter being ,concreteexpressions of the internationaldivision of labor and "the immediatesignals guiding and constrainingstates, enterprisesand individuals"(Friedmann1982,p. S254). Within the singular form of "incorporated comparison,"multilayeredanalysis can be spatial or temporal.In my researchon settleragroexportsystems, I have triedto link both dimensions in establishing the parametersof social change. Accounts of Australianwool-growing (McMichael 1984) and the ante-bellumcotton culture(McMichael1987b, 1988, forthcoming) are framedin termsof the reorganizingspatial and ideological currentsof the nineteenthcentury world economy. Spatially, the transition from mercantileto industrialcapitalism set a trade- and price-unifiedworld market against politically-regulated markets of the various colonial systems. The reorganizationof London-centeredcommercial financing, sponsoring new needs for global inputs and markets, spun a web of commercialcredit and competitive relationsaroundstapleproduction.On each frontier,commercially-specializedand migratory growers proliferated,challenging the social orderof the traditionalpartriarchalgrazier andplanterclasses. These challenges informed a temporaldisjuncturebetween residualtraditional-mercantilistand emergent liberal-commercialconceptionsof local politicaleconomy, shapingthe midcenturypolitical strugglesover land andlaborsystems in each polity. In worldhistorical terms, they consolidated a global wage-laborregime. Roseberry(1982) extends this conception of a global wage-laborregime to modernpeasantries, which he argues bear little relationto the classic Europeanpeasantry (see also Llambi 1988). His analysis of Venezuelan coffee producers as productsof the uneven development of world capitalismmediatedby state and producer politics leads him to reconceptualize as a globalprocess that is "proletarianization" heterogeneous and contingent, producing "a varietyof forms of laborrelations"(Roseberry 1982, p. 206). Methodologically, Roseberry reconstructsthe peasantconcept in world-historicalterms in orderto move "beyondthe typological exercise by which peasants are rei-
395
fied as a categoryamong variousothercategories," claiming that "reference to history as proletarianizationinvolves an attemptto grasp a totality"(1982, p. 204). Commonto these approachesis an attemptto reconstructthe history of the capitalist world economy as a complex unity of social relationships anchored in wage labor and linked by exchange relations, in which wage labor and otherformsof nonwage,value-producinglabor coexist in time and space (see McMichael and Buttel 1990).This theoreticalperspectivelends itself to the methodology of "incorporated comparison":blending theory and history in such a way to avoid abstractindividuality(e.g., perceivingwage, slave, or peasantlaborin isolation), and abstractgenerality (e.g., a world marketof undifferentiatedcommodityproducers). The point is to try to perceive the unity in diversity without reifying either. Insofar as incorporatedcomparison works with units of analysisspecified in time andplace, it enhances the possibility of approachingthis goal. CONCLUSION How can comparativeanalysiscapturevariation across time and space when time and space are not uniformand cannot be abstractedfrom the constructionof analyticalunits and categories? Underwhatconditionscan comparisonbe used to reconstructchanging social relationsin and of time and space?I arguethereis a strategyfor researchthatreforworld-historically-oriented mulates comparisonby subordinatingit to the development of historically-groundedtheory ratherthan using it to establish a causal logic that is generalizable outside time and space relations. In other words, where general (connective/cumulative) processes of the modem world are organized by time and place, comparison of time and place occurrencesreveals continuitiesandatthe sametime attachesworldhistoricalmeaning to those occurrences. Neither conventional comparativemethods based on modernizationtheory's assumptions of relatively uniform and discrete national societies nor a theory of a permanentworld-systemic structureadequatelyaccomplishthis. The point is to avoid "imperfect empiricism" (Spencer 1987) in which units of analysis are reified as self-evident or fixed entities. However, we can adapt the world-systemperspective of a theoreticallysingular,yet historically diverse,globalprocessas an approximatemeth-
396 odological principle. This resembles Laslett's (1980) inversion of the conventionalinductive procedure,which generalizes outcomes from multiplecases. She proposes applyinga theory of generalcauses to the analysis of "instances" processes in orderto relatetheoretically-general to historically-particular outcomes(cf. Hopkins and Wallerstein 1981), demonstratingthat in history there are divergentmanifestationsof a singular process (e.g., market expansion, nationalrevolt).Outcomes(as instances)may appear individuallyas self-evidentunitsof analysis, but in reality are interconnectedprocesses. Breakingout of the "modernizationproblematic" is a first step,10graspingworld-historical contingency is the next. I have tried to show that this can be addressedwith a multiple or a singular form of "incorporatedcomparison." The multipleform of comparisonaddressesthe problem of independentunits by focusing on continuityacross time, while the singularform avoids the all-encompassingunit by inverting the part/wholerelation.However, it is not the form that mattersso much as the intent - to develop historically-grounded social theory throughthe comparativejuxtapositionof elements of a dynamic,self-formingwhole.
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