Comparative Sociology

Comparative sociology generally refers to sociological analysis that involves comparison of social processes between nation-states, or across different types of society (for example capitalist and socialist). Max Barry set up Jennifer Government: NationStates, a game on the World Wide Web inspired by, and promoting, his novel Jennifer Government. ... In economics, a capitalist is someone who owns capital, presumably within the economic system of capitalism. ... The color red and particularly the red flag are traditional symbols of Socialism. ...

There are two main approaches to comparative sociology: some seek similarity across different countries and cultures whereas others seek variance. For example, structural Marxists have attempted to use comparative methods to discover the general processes that underlie apparently different social orderings in different societies. The danger of this approach is that the different social contexts are overlooked in the search for supposed universal structures. One sociologist who employed comparative methods to understand variance was Max Weber, whose studies attempted to show how differences between cultures explained the different social orderings that had emerged (see for example The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism and Sociology of Religion). The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism is a book written by Maximilian Weber, a German economist and sociologist in 1904 and 1905 that began as a series of essays. ... The sociology of religion is – among other elements – the study of the practices, social structures, historical backgrounds, development, universal themes, and roles of religion in society. ...

There is some debate within sociology regarding whether the label of ‘comparative’ is suitable. Emile Durkheim argued in The Rules of Sociological Method (1895) that all sociological research was in fact comparative since social phenomenon are always held to be typical, representative or unique, all of which imply some sort of comparison. In this sense, all sociological analysis is comparative and it has been suggested that what is normally referred to as comparative research, may be more appropriately called cross-national research.