GENERALIZATION IN COMPARATIVE AND HISTORICAL SOCIAL SCIENCE 63employ a comparative and historical stance in pursuit of a general perspective. A second way of
proceeding in this regard is exemplified in Bendix’s (1978) and Geertz’s (1968) works when they
engage with the general as conceived in the form of a “general” movement of history. Here, their
initial conceptual move incorporates temporality and change: They envision a process in which
certain beliefs and practices originate and then diffuse across societies, changing those societies
and, as they do so, undergoing further development themselves. In envisioning such a process,
Bendix and Geertz do not assume that the changes that they bring together as moments in a
“general” movement all have the same exact shape or converge on an identical outcome. The goal
is, as Bendix puts it, to combine “an understanding of a country’s historical particularity with its
participation in a general movement of history” (1978, 4). Rather than envisioning a general
movement of history sweeping away particularities, both scholars envision it as interacting with
particularities in each society so as to produce a variety of outcomes. As we saw earlier with
regard to problems, a general conception again serves here to help illuminate how legacies of the
past play into the shape of developments in different societies.
Some interpretive scholars might, upon considering examples of the ways in which Geertz
(1968) and Bendix (1978) envision general historical movements, worry that they perpetuate a
long-standing tendency to privilege Europe as an origin point of such movements. This tendency
should not, however, be seen as inherent in the notion of a general historical movement. Other
possibilities are evident, for example, in Benedict Anderson’s Imagined Communities (1991),
where a general movement of nationalism is envisioned, with European developments appearing
not as the origin point but as an intermediary moment of a historical movement that starts in the
Americas and ends in Asia. Interpretive scholars may also explore how contemporary accounts of
“globalization” link the particular and the general. Alongside some broad similarities in form to
Bendix’s and Geertz’s general historical movements, such accounts are also different enough in
their details as to perhaps suggest how this mode of engaging the general might take onboard
more complex, multi-origin, and multidirectional notions of “movement.”
CONCLUSION
The strand of interpretive social science that I have used Bendix and Geertz to illuminate parallels
comparative historical analysis insofar as both approaches employ a comparative and historical stance
in pursuit of a general perspective. The approaches differ, however, in whether or not, in doing so,
they pursue the “general” in the one specific form—recurring relationships between conceptually
isolated factors—that the epistemological standpoint that I have labeled “modernist” sees as central
to the agenda of social science. In this chapter I have genealogically situated comparative historical
analysis as one variation upon the modernist agenda; and I have, in turn, highlighted some beliefs
that bring interpretive scholars together in contrast to that agenda. There is, however, much diversity
among interpretive social scientists, and I have been concerned here primarily with explicating one
specific strand of interpretive work: comparative and historical scholarship that, while diverging
from modernist epistemology, does endeavor to construct and employ general perspectives. My
explication has emphasized that the “general” can, in addition to the form of a general relationship,
also be conceived of in the form of a general problem, or of a general movement of history.
Because I have drawn the notions of a general problem and a general movement of history
from the work of interpretive scholars, it should be evident that both notions may be used to frame
engagements with the general that are compatible with interpretive commitments. This does not
entail the conclusion, however, that any use of either of these two notions necessitates adherence
to an interpretive approach. A broad survey of the ways that these notions have been used would