Theda Skocpol | |
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.jpg) Skocpol in 2011 | |
| Born | May 4, 1947 Detroit, Michigan, U.S. |
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| Awards | Johan Skytte Prize |
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| Doctoral advisor | George Homans |
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| Institutions | Harvard University |
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Theda Skocpol (née Barron; May 4, 1947) is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently the Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology at Harvard University. She is best known as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, as well as her "state autonomy theory". She has written widely for both popular and academic audiences. She has been President of the American Political Science Association and the Social Science History Association.[5]
In historical sociology, Skocpol's works and opinions have been associated with the structuralist school. As an example, she argues that social revolutions can best be explained given their relation with specific structures of agricultural societies and their respective states. Such an approach differs greatly from more "behaviorist" ones, which tend to emphasize the role of "revolutionary populations", "revolutionary psychology", and/or "revolutionary consciousness", as determinant factors of revolutionary processes.
Her 1979 book States and Social Revolutions was influential in research on revolutions.[6]
- ^ Skocpol, Theda (1979). States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of France, Russia, and China. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press. p. xvi. ISBN 978-0-521-29499-7.
- ^ Amenta, Edwin Louis (1989). Lost ground: American social spending and taxation policies in depression and war (PhD). University of Chicago. p. ii. OCLC 22176348.
- ^ Ganz, Marshall Louis (2000). Five smooth stones: Strategic capacity in the unionization of California agriculture (PhD). Harvard University. OCLC 77071181.
- ^ Goodwin, Jeffrey Roger (1988). States and revolutions in the Third World: A comparative analysis (PhD). Harvard University. p. iii. OCLC 435388161.
- ^ Cite error: The named reference
Skocpolwas invoked but never defined (see the help page). - ^ Beck, Colin J. (2018). "The Structure of Comparison in the Study of Revolution". Sociological Theory. 36 (2): 134–161. doi:10.1177/0735275118777004. ISSN 0735-2751. S2CID 53669466.