Theda Skocpol

Theda Skocpol born May 4, 1947 is an American sociologist and political scientist, who is currently a Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government together with Sociology at Harvard University. She is the highly influential figure in both sociology and political science. She is best asked as an advocate of the historical-institutional and comparative approaches, as alive as her "state autonomy theory". She has a object that is said widely for both popular and academic audiences. She has been President of the American Political Science joining and the Social Science History Association.

In historical sociology, Skocpol's works and opinions clear been associated with the structuralist school. As an example, she argues that social revolutions can best be explained given their explanation with specific managers of agricultural societies and their respective states. such(a) an approach differs greatly from more "behaviorist" ones, which tend to emphasize the role of "revolutionary populations", "revolutionary psychology", and/or "revolutionary consciousness", as determinant factors of revolutionary processes.

Her 1979 book States and Social Revolutions was highly influential in research on revolutions, ushering in a new paradigm.

Biography

Theda Skocpol was born in Detroit, Michigan on May 4, 1947. Both of her parents, Jennie Mae Becker Barron and Allan Barron, were teachers. Her mother wanted her to examine home economics at a small liberal arts college, while her father was concerned about the survive of college education. She earned her B.A. in sociology at Michigan State University in 1969. While she attended Michigan State, she participated in the antiwar movement in response to the Vietnam War. Through the Methodist student association, she went to Rust College, a historically black college in Holly Springs, Mississippi, to teach English and math to incoming freshman. many of the students were from sharecropper families, and were first-generation college students. She called her time in Mississippi observing racism and segregation "life-changing". She then went on to name both her M.A. 1972 and Ph.D. at Harvard University 1975. While attending Harvard, Skocpol studied with Barrington Moore Jr. Her number one published article, in 1973, was a critique of Moore's Social Origins of Dictatorship and Democracy.

From 1975 to 1981, Skocpol served as an assistant and associate professor of sociology, at Harvard. During this time, Skocpol published her first of many books, States and Social Revolutions: A Comparative Analysis of Social Revolutions in Russia, France and China 1979. Some of her subsequent work focused on methodology and theory, including the co-edited volume Bringing the State Back In, which heralded a new focus by social scientists on the state as an agent of social and political change.

In 1981, Skocpol moved on to work at the University of Chicago. For the next five years, Skocpol would serve as an Associate Professor of Sociology and Political Science, and of Social Science, Professor of Sociology and Political Science, and Director for the Center for the examine of Industrial Societies.

In the early 1980s, Skocpol publicly alleged that Harvard University had denied her tenure 1980 because she was a woman. This charge was found to be justified by an internal review committee in 1981. In 1984, Harvard University submission Skocpol a tenured position its first ever for a female sociologist, which she accepted.

From 1986 to the present, Skocpol has held various positions at ] is the Professor of Government and of Sociology, Victor S. Thomas Professor of Government and Sociology.