64 MEANING AND METHODOLOGY
turn up applications by a range of approaches—from developmental historicism to Parsonian
functionalism. Such a survey would make possible nuanced consideration of which approaches
may use one or both of these notions without conflicting with their commitments, and of how the
practices associated with each notion can shift in accord with other aspects of various approaches.
Such a survey and consideration reaches well beyond the scope of this chapter, but given my
concern with comparative historical analysis, some brief reflections in relation to that one ap-
proach do seem called for.
Comparative historical analysts are, by their own reckoning, centrally committed to the
pursuit of modernist knowledge claims about recurring relationships—and, specifically, about
recurring macro-causal relationships. Can commitment to this one type of generalizing effort
be pursued alongside engagement with the “general” as conceived in the form of a general
problem or of a general historical movement? I do not see any reason why an appeal to a
general problem need prove hard to combine with macro-causal analysis. Indeed, examples of
such a combination can be found in some prominent works of comparative historical analysis.
Thus, Ruth and David Collier, in their Shaping the Political Arena (1991), conceptualize a
general problem of how to politically incorporate a rising labor movement, and then use this to
frame a macro-causal effort to specify and evaluate propositions about recurring relationships
that are suggested by patterns they discern in the variation of responses to this problem within
Latin America.
It is, however, more problematic to try to combine the general conceived in the form of a
general historical movement with the modernist macro-causal inquiry pursued by comparative
historical analysts. Such inquiry employs cross-societal comparison primarily to identify and
probe recurring relationships of coexistence or sequence between conceptually isolated macro
factors. Such recurrences are, from a modernist standpoint, essential for causal analysis; but
they carry weight in this regard only to the extent that the instances that make them up occur
independently of one another. This independence stands in direct contrast to the conditions that
make cross-societal comparison most useful when the general is pursued in the form of a gen-
eral historical movement. Here, such comparison serves to help identify and characterize suc-
cessive moments in the cross-societal diffusion and evolution of beliefs and practices.
Cross-societal comparison is hence most effective precisely when developments in one society
influence those in another. In sum, the conditions presupposed if cross-societal comparison is
to serve modernist macro-causal analysis are directly at odds with those that make such com-
parisons most useful in recounting a general movement of history.
Although this may at first seem an all-too-abstract methodological point, it takes on added
significance when we situate our reflection upon it historically. Our contemporary era is marked
by a profusion of interpretations that situate the present as a period of unprecedented, and
further deepening, cross-societal interaction of diverse forms involving diverse actors. To the
extent that we credit such interpretations, we are pushed to query how far the vision of major
changes as occurring at the level of “societies,” and doing so independently on a society-by-
society basis, remains a plausible ground on which to construct general perspectives about our
contemporary world. For social scientists such as Tilly (1997) who remain committed to a
modernist agenda, this situation offers compelling reasons why macro-causal analysis should
be shelved in favor of searching for recurrent causal mechanisms at more micro levels of analy-
sis. But, if endorsed by comparative historical analysts, such a response calls for a change in
the character of their approach so substantial that it might be meaningfully said to bring it to an
end. For interpretive social scientists who seek to construct general perspectives, the implica-