Notes on the Method of World-System Biography

C. Wright Mills boiled the social sciences down to one sentence: “They are attempts to help us understand biography and history, and the connections between the two in a variety of social structures.” This special issue considers biography as an fruitful entry point into macro-historical sociology....

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Published inJournal of world-systems research Vol. 21; no. 2; pp. 276 - 286
Main Authors Harris, Kevan, McQuade, Brendan
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published Pittsburgh University Library System, University of Pittsburgh 01.01.2015
Subjects
20th century
Agency and structure
Biographies
Braudel, Fernand
Capitalism
Essays
Habitus
Historical sociology
Males
Men
Methods
Mills, Charles Wright (1916-1962)
Nationalism
Scholars
Science
Social sciences
Sociology
Wallerstein, Immanuel
Weber, Max
World system theory
New York
Chicago Illinois
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ISSN1076-156X
1076-156X
DOI10.5195/jwsr.2015.16

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Summary:C. Wright Mills boiled the social sciences down to one sentence: “They are attempts to help us understand biography and history, and the connections between the two in a variety of social structures.” This special issue considers biography as an fruitful entry point into macro-historical sociology. With lineages from Marx and Weber to Wallerstein and Bourdieu, the sociology of the individual can produce a clearer path between the muddy oppositions of structure and agency or the longue durée and the event. This special issue unbinds biography from methodological nationalism and the teleology of great men tales. Instead, we aim to show how individuals are "a world within a world," an acting subject structured within world historical time and place.
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ISSN:1076-156X
1076-156X
DOI:10.5195/jwsr.2015.16