Society fills the gap: A limiting theory of the state in society

Department seminar with speaker Andrew Herman.

All members of the Department of Sociology and research staff from across the faculty are invited to attend.

Abstract

States are part of society, even as they govern it. This poses serious challenges for empirical research hoping to make causal claims about the role of the state in shaping events. In contrast to Skocpol and colleagues’ famous call to “bring the state back in” this presentation proposes that we should usually “leave the state out” because in most empirical research we cannot prove that the state carries any causal force. The presentation will additionally consider what this means for the relationship between theory and empirical research in sociology.