Damon Mayrl

Historical and Comparative Methods

Wilson, Nicholas Hoover, and Damon Mayrl, eds. 2024. After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Publisher's description: What is the value of comparison for research in historical sociology? Today, social scientists regularly express doubt about the positivist premises that have long justified comparison’s use: that cases can be unproblematically compared as though they are independent of one another, that comparison can reliably yield valid causal inference, and that comparative methods can grapple with questions of meaning, sequence, and process that are central to historical explanation. Yet they remain reluctant to abandon comparison altogether, not least because comparisons are still manifestly useful in the research process.

After Positivism presents a bold new set of warrants and methodologies for comparison that takes these criticisms fully into account. The contributors to this book marshal a wide array of postpositivist approaches to knowledge to reconstruct the analytic potential of comparison for a new generation of social scientists. In addition to providing fresh answers to classic questions about case selection and causal inference, authors ponder the role comparison plays in a world where social phenomena are demonstrably time-, space-, and concept-dependent; where causation is typically conjunctural; where social structures and groups emerge and die; and where important objects of inquiry can be understood only in terms of relationships, emergent properties, or contingent and irregular effects. Engaging and timely, this book will be of interest to all those who seek to improve our explanations of historical change in social-scientific research.


Mayrl, Damon, and Nicholas Hoover Wilson. 2024. “Comparison after Positivism.” Pp. 1-25 in Nicholas Hoover Wilson and Damon Mayrl, eds., After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Abstract: Positivism has cast a long shadow over the practice of comparison in the social sciences. In this introductory chapter, we review the legacy of positivism in comparative-historical sociology and provide an overview of major epistemological and ontological critiques that have been lodged at it over the past several decades. We then lay out a set of guiding principles for rethinking comparison in a post-positivist era, and preview the contributions to the volume.


Mayrl, Damon. 2024. “Comparison in Action: Immersion and Recursion as Heuristics in Historical Sociology.” Pp. 54-75 in Nicholas Hoover Wilson and Damon Mayrl, eds., After Positivism: New Approaches to Comparison in Historical Sociology. New York: Columbia University Press.

Abstract: What is the role of comparison in historical research? The standard answer has been that it allows the researcher to infer causality. Yet comparison—at least according to the received model—seems to be a poor means of inferring causality, and historical sociology appears to be quite capable of producing compelling explanations without using comparison. In this chapter, I argue that the virtue of comparison lies less in its ability to generate compelling causal inferences, and more in its supporting role in generating theoretical cues and methodological leads for the narrative, sequence, and processual methods that do the heavy causal lifting. I show how the actual practice of comparison, with its emphasis on immersion and recursive revisiting of cases, contributes to our ability to abduct, attend, and draw analogies. I then draw upon my own research into religious education policy in the United States and Australia to illustrate how comparison works heuristically in practice, and conclude with thoughts about the implications of my analysis for case selection, methods training, and peer review.


Mayrl, Damon, Nicholas Hoover Wilson, Matthew Mahler, and Josh Pacewicz. 2024. “Theorizing Subdisciplinary Exchange: Historical Sociology, Ethnography, and the Case of SSHA.” Social Science History 48: 259-84.

Abstract: What happens at the point of interchange between scholarly communities? We examine this question by investigating the case of growing ties between historical sociology and ethnography, two social scientific methods that once seemed to have little in common. Drawing on methodological writings by ethnographers and original interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we argue that these ties have been shaped by structural and methodological homologies between the two disciplines. Structurally, ethnography and historical sociology are similarly positioned in sociology more broadly, as enterprises with sometimes-tense relationships with dominant assumptions of the social sciences. Methodologically, both ethnographers and historical sociologists face the challenges of bounding the research process, navigating access to data, analyzing and retaining data while “in the field,” and overcoming cultural distance between themselves and the worlds they are studying. Taken together, these findings extend work in the sociology of science and knowledge and suggest some key conditions for intellectual efflorescence.


Mayrl, Damon, and Nicholas Hoover Wilson. 2020. “What Do Historical Sociologists Do All Day? Analytic Architectures in Historical Sociology.” American Journal of Sociology 120: 1345-94.

Abstract: Drawing on an original data set of over 15,000 in-text citations, we use quantitative and qualitative techniques to analyze 37 award-winning publications in historical sociology between 1995 and 2015. We show that historical sociology comprises no fewer than four distinct analytic architectures that rely on different kinds of sources and use evidence and theory in different ways. We find suggestive evidence that the recognition of these different architectures has varied over time, such that award-winning works of historical sociology increasingly use architectures that favor the heavier use of primary sources and/or constructive theoretical syntheses. These findings suggest that analytic architectures are a consequential facet of the practice of social research that may yield important insights into dynamics of scholarly recognition, consecration, and methodological pluralism across the social sciences.


Mayrl, Damon, and Nicholas Hoover Wilson. 2020. “The Archive as a Social World.” Qualitative Sociology 43(3): 407-26.

Abstract: Historical scholars often adopt a solitary ethic, conceiving of their work as the product of a lonely and isolated individual toiling away in a dusty archive. In this article, we assess the validity of this ethic by examining the actual practice of archival research. Drawing on semi-structured interviews with practicing historical sociologists, we reveal that the solitary ethic is largely illusory, and that, instead, the archive is in fact a robustly social world. We identify two core sets of social relationships in the archive—relationships with the archivist and with the archival community—that shape the historical sociologist’s experience in the archive. We further show that historical sociologists mobilize these interactions to solve concrete research problems in the archive. We thus argue that the archive’s social character should be understood as a methodological opportunity for historical sociologists, allowing them to maximize and extend their research by inspiring creative research strategies.


Return to the Research Page