Ivan Ermakoff
8116a Sewell Social Sciences
(608) 262-8206
ermakoff@ssc.wisc.edu
Office Hours: by appt only (Fall'12)
Selected Publications:
BOOKS
Ruling Oneself Out. A Theory of Collective Abdication. Duke University Press. "Politics, History and Culture" series. April 2008
2012 Lewis A. Coser Award for Theoretical Agenda Setting (American Sociological Association, Theory Section)
2010 European Academy of Sociology Best Book Award
2009 Barrington Moore Best Book Award (American Sociological Association, Comparative and Historical Sociology Section)
ARTICLES
"Patrimony and collective capacity. An Analytical Outline," Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, July 2011, 636: 182-203.
"Rational Choice may take over," in Bourdieuian Theory and Historical Analysis, edited by Philip Gorski, Duke University Press. forthcoming.
"Theory of Practice, Rational Choice and Historical Change," Theory and Society, August 2010, 39: 527-553.
"Motives and Alignment," Social Science History, Special Section: Politics, Collective Uncertainty, and the Renunciation of Power, Spring 2010, 34(1): 97-109.
"Patrimonial Rise and Decline. The Strange Case of The Familial State," September 2008, Political Power and Social Theory, 19: 255-273.
"Strukturelle Zwänge und zufällige Geschehnisse" [Structural Constraints and Incidental Happenings], March 2001, Geschichte und Gesellschaft, Sonderheft 19: Struktur und Ereignis, pp. 224-256.
"Prelates and Princes: Aristocratic Marriages, Canon Law Prohibitions and Shifts in Norms and Patterns of Domination in the Central Middle Ages." July 1997. American Sociological Review. 62:405-422.
Areas of Interest:
Class Analysis and Historical Change
Comparative-Historical Sociology
Economic Sociology
General Social Theory
Organizational and Occupational Analysis
Political Sociology
Social Movements and Collective Behavior
Affiliations:
Sociology
Research Interest Statement:
My research agenda is centered on transition processes and collective
situations in which individuals are confronted with decisions that
challenge their sense of self-interest, preservation or identity. I have
been investigating aristocrats facing new matrimonial regulations in
Europe in the central middle ages, parliamentarians confronted with the
prospect of their own collective abdication, political leaders devising
strategies of political survival and/or democratic consolidation in
times of democratic crisis, and civil servants confronted with the task
of enforcing inhumane policies. In these different instances, to
identify collective processes and reconstruct the specifics of the
relevant empirical cases, I draw on multifaceted tools of
analysis—formal, quantitative and hermeneutic—applied to a variety of
historical sources. This approach combines historical research with a
set of methods geared to probing the empirical soundness of hypotheses
that can be transposed to different times and places.