Abstract

The last decade-especially the last five years or so-has witnessed a revival of comparative macrosociological analysis, within the framework of the analysis of world history. This is indeed a revival, because such analysis, combined with the examination of major problems in sociological analysis and theory, has constituted one of the major items on the sociological agenda during some of the most crucial periods in its development as a distinct intellectual and scholarly discipline. This was true of the period of the forerunners of sociology, such as Comte, Spencer, and the anthropology of Tylor; of the period of the so-called Fathers of Sociology, Durkheim and Weber; as well as earlier, in the works of Marx and Toqueville, who were later incorporated into the sociological tradition. This was also true of the period after World War II, when sociology burgeoned in the United States and then in other countries, and for the first time became a full-fledged and relatively central academic discipline. At that juncture, the connection between the emphasis on macrosociology, world history, and the central problems of sociological analysis was most fully epitomized in the works of the structural-functional school and in the classical studies of modernization-those linked with the names of Daniel Lerner, Karl Deutsch, Garbriel Almond, and others. The interest in this type of analysis seemingly disappeared in the late sixties, with the partialand to some extent paradoxical-exception of certain offshoots of Marxist analysis, especially those emphasizing various international system approaches. Its disappearance was tied in with far-reaching changes in the basic assumptions,

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