Summary
Sociologist whose approach to designing comparative research shaped Lev Grinberg’s comparative project in Moments of Resistance: following Lakatos (1978), a progressive research program whose goal of comparison is to discover how people’s struggle can succeed, rather than explain why they have failed (Moments of Resistance, PDF p.19-21).
Details
- Grinberg met Burawoy during his stay at Berkeley, where generous and open conversations led him to deeply understand Burawoy’s methodological approach and his interpretation of critical sociology, at a time of the Occupy movements in Oakland and in Israel (PDF p.19-20).
- Burawoy argued during their talks that the goal of comparison is to discover how peoples’ struggle can succeed, rather than explain why they have failed; comparative sociological research is designed to reveal variations that contribute to a progressive scientific plan for social change, and researchers are not outside of history but part of it (PDF p.20).
- His comparison of Theda Skocpol’s and Leon Trotsky’s theories of the Russian Revolution (Burawoy 1989) is given as an example of good and bad designs of comparative research programs: Trotsky understood the Russian Revolution better than Skocpol because Skocpol compares three revolutions as if they occurred out of time, ignoring the influence of one revolution on the other and the sequence of events (PDF p.20-21).
Related pages
Lev Grinberg, Movements of Resistance, Political Space, Moments of Resistance